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The purpose of this paper is addressing the negative environment and social impacts of the fashion industry that has emerged as a major societal challenge in the last century; however, people continue to over-consume and over-waste textile products in the form of fashion garments. More research is required to understand how fashion consumption connects with perceptions of sustainability and sustainable action by individual consumers.

This paper surveys 501 Australian and New Zealand consumers, on their fashion purchasing habits, and the role of sustainability in their fashion consumption behaviour.

The study found a relationship between higher levels of garment consumption and increased focus on sustainability in fashion choices. This finding is significant, as it suggests that fashion over-consumers are still mindful of the sustainable impacts of their consumption, and are motivated towards reducing that impact, despite not reducing their volume of consumption.

The study indicates the importance of a continued focus on transparency and traceability of fashion products in Australasia, as some over-consumers use this information to make better choices in the purchase situation, as opposed to acting on a general call to reduce consumption.

Over the years, despite the best efforts to evaluate service quality through multiple techniques, the connotation between service deliverance and consumer expectation remains sporadic. In the quest to quantify service quality from an innovative perspective, the current study has leveraged consumer-perceived experiences to unveil the novel intricacies of healthcare quality.

Anchoring on the dimensions of patient experience (PX), field data were collected from 244 patients at different private hospitals operating across India. Further, this study incorporated a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (F-AHP) to evaluate consumer preferences and prioritised the dimensions of PX in three categories of Indian hospitals, namely nursing homes (NHs), mid-tier corporate hospitals (MCHs) and top-tier corporate hospitals (TCHs).

The results establish a performance ranking by demonstrating that MCHs outperform the rest alternatives on the grounds of perceived experiences. Tukey's honestly significance difference (HSD) test was executed to confirm the heterogeneity among the participants' preferences across three different hospital categories. The results reveal that for most of the alternatives, the mean scores of the criterion were statistically significantly different.

In healthcare studies, PX dawned as an entity with an ability to propel healthcare quality in a better way than the classical techniques did. The study's findings present a comprehensive picture of a care delivery system by identifying relatively significant dimensions of PX, hence improving the quality quotients by adjusting healthcare offerings in alignment with consumer expectations and organisational strategies.

Consumer product firms renowned for marketing appear to be complementing brand creation, extension and acquisition with minority equity investments in entrepreneurial brand ventures (EBVs) for strategic purposes. Similarly, EBVs are looking for growth and resources that can be accessed via inter-organizational partnerships. This flourishing industry practice and the paucity of empirical research indicates the potential for new studies. The research objective was to examine why and how large incumbents were implementing strategic brand venturing (SBV), and with this understanding to develop a framework useful for descriptive and normative purposes.

This qualitative research study comprised in-depth interviews and multiple data sources across seven case studies drawn from US subsidiaries of global firms within the consumer products industry. Grounded in resource theory, the dimensions of strategic brand equity investments are abductively derived.

The findings delineate 16 process capabilities within four aggregate clusters entailing, the designing of the SBV program, opportunity identification, brand entrepreneur partnerships and venture portfolio management. Prefaced by endogenous and exogenous antecedents, these process capabilities help to contribute strategic and financial value when implemented.

This qualitative research study yielded analytical rather than statistical generalizations. A range of market and economic factors exist in the United States contributing towards a favorable entrepreneurial and brand incubation climate. This may render the SBV concept as contingent and contextual. Furthermore, the view of brand entrepreneurs' regarding the design of the process model were not explicitly sought but inferred from the discourses of the venturing units interviewed.

The article outlines several important implementation imperatives for corporations endeavoring to competitively advantage their brand portfolios via adoption of a minority equity investing strategy in EBVs. Practitioners are cautioned against myopically adopting this process alone as a success heuristic given other factors may impact success such as changes in corporate strategy or upper echelon sponsorship.

Mission preservation for social brand ventures being tethered to a large incumbent may need to be taken into account prior to and during SBV relationships.

The research contributes to the call for greater insights into the investment processes used in venturing relationships as well as coverage of new industry sectors beyond technology industries that often characterize corporate venture capital studies. Several novel findings emerged related to the importance of—the industry ecosystem; symbiosis between the founding brand entrepreneur and brand culture; synchronization of investment strategies with an emerging brand life-cycle model and serendipitous corporate entrepreneurial opportunities.

The rapid growth of emerging market firms (EMFs) has been a topic of interest for the past two decades, especially in China. However, few studies have discussed how and why EMFs can impel the upgrading of their capabilities to quickly win competitive advantages in the global market. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to unravel the implausible upgrading phenomenon from the perspective of technological proximity.

This paper adopts a single case study, specifically that of a leading Chinese e-bike firm, with a special focus on the dynamic nature of the capability upgrading process and underlying mechanisms.

The results show that taking advantage of technological proximity is an important way for EMFs to climb the ladder of capability upgrading. The stage-based process reveals how capability upgrading is achieved through elaborate actions related to technological proximity. Furthermore, this study finds three learning mechanisms behind the technological proximity, which enable firms to successfully upgrade to higher levels of capabilities. In particular, the trigger role played by contextual conditions in guiding firms' capability upgrading is highlighted and characterized.

This study enriches traditional capability upgrading literature from a technological proximity perspective, especially the traditional static upgrading research related to EMFs. The authors also contribute to the conceptualization of technological proximity. However, the research setting is China's e-bike industry; therefore, the study's generalizability to other emerging markets and industries may be limited.

The results show that it is important to recognize the value of the transfer and sharing of technology between proximal industries for local governments. Also, appropriate policies should be developed to break down the technology barriers between these industries. Moreover, rather than catching up with the superior technologies of multinational corporations in advanced countries, focusing on products with high technological proximity in local or regional areas may be more helpful for EMFs' upgrading.

This paper investigates the capability upgrading process and mechanisms in EMFs, particularly with respect to the role played by technological proximity.

The study aims to ratify skills necessary to bridge the gap between the existing models and emerging needs of a technology-enabled workspace; especially in the Indian context.

This paper extends the ongoing debate on a relevant employability framework suitable both for higher education institutes and corporates. To remain resilient to future catastrophes similar to the ongoing pandemic, the relevancy of established employability skills to suit the changing scenario needs to be established.

The partial least squares (PLS) technique has been used to present a framework confirming the importance of digital competencies, business fundamentals and behavioral skills. In-depth discussions with specialists ratified the proposed framework and recommended potential changes in curriculum and pedagogy.

This study validates an explicit and comprehensive employability skill framework and useful recommendations in teaching strategies, which may provide a broad skill base for graduates to prepare for the volatile business environment in the long run.

The study has been able to put forth significant employability skills as deemed significant by the three stakeholders. This will provide guidance to higher educational institutions (HEIs) to come up with a broad skill-base for the fresh graduates and prepare them for the volatile business environment and encourage life-long learning to remain productive in the long run.

The study is unique as it incorporates the perceived importance of the competencies assumed by each stakeholder, namely, employers, faculty and management graduates, which was unfortunately lacking in earlier researches.

This study aims to analyze the effects of cultural orientations (performance and sociality) on the trajectories of innovation inputs and their results in different countries worldwide between 2011 and 2021.

As a technique for data analysis, one of the spatial Bayesian models and Gray forecasting methods is used. This technique is adequate to achieve the objectives of the investigation because it allows analyzing how the variables move in time ranges and allow the generation of forecasts. This model also allows knowing if there are spills, which investing in a country can positively affect countries with geographical proximity. The databases used were the Global Innovation Index with data from 131 nations and the Globe Project with data from 157 countries between 2011 and 2021. The variables analyzed are institutions, human capital, research infrastructure, market sophistication and business sophistication. On the other hand, regarding moderations of cultural orientations, The Globe Project developed two factors: performance orientation (high degree of masculinity, avoidance of ambiguity, power distance and future orientation) and humane orientation (high-level of femininity, institutional and societal collectivism).

The results reveal that all inputs grow at different rates over time. In the case of institutions, it is the most difficult to generate changes over time. However, human capital, market sophistication and business sophistication are the ones that have grown the most over time, regardless of the country’s cultural orientation.

Among the main limitations is the set of data used because it only considers one approach to culture, especially the one considered by Hofstede. However, other approaches could help evaluate the results of this research. Considering the results obtained, the study attempts to provide a different view of the effects of cultural variables on companies’ innovation performance in different countries in the world. In the same way, evaluating these effects allows firms to consider variables associated with the country that will affect the strategies and performance of the firm.

The results achieved make it possible to strengthen the analysis of the countries’ strategies when it comes to innovation, especially in the permanent evaluation of the results that allow to encourage changes in the execution of innovative activities to maintain their performance over time.

The contributions allow us to understand the dynamics of innovation in the knowledge and creative outputs of countries over time.

The trajectory analysis used in the data analysis is perhaps one of the most robust techniques that makes a time series analysis. This allows identifying trajectories for the independent variables of the study and their influence on the innovation of the country.

This study explores the psychological determinants of buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) use in the UK and reviews the efficacy of existing payment constructs.

A total of 533 BNPL users engaged in story stem completion. Template analysis was used, supported by the identification of four BNPL sentiment groups to enable comparison.

Whilst positive attitudes towards BNPL dominate, other psychological determinants are apparent to a varied extent. Psychological distance and ownership of borrowed money are redolent, while transparency and transaction convenience are less appreciable. BNPL users understand temporality beyond its current conceptualizations. Some users construe BNPL as a “savings” product, and hence payment format conceptualizations may be erroneous. Those with a positive sentiment foreground BNPL’s consumption and budget management benefits. However, the potential for unintended consequences is manifest across all users.

The potentially unwanted consequences, or dark side, of BNPL use in the UK are highlighted. The specified constructs, whilst helpful, do not particularize the complex interconnected nature of the psychological determinants of BNPL use. Improved conceptualization offering richness and clarity is needed – temporality specifically requires consideration.

Users’ sophistication and misunderstanding are both evident, necessitating fuller conversations among various stakeholders, including, providers, policymakers, consumers and advocacy groups.

This research advances the scarce literature exploring consumers’ BNPL use determinants and challenges current conceptualizations surrounding payment format perceptions.

This study aims to understand how brand personality affects purchase intention through brand love and perceived quality in e-commerce.

Three hundred forty-eight users of e-commerce sites in New Delhi, India, were surveyed for the study. The data set was examined using confirmatory factor analysis, and the research hypotheses were assessed using structural equation modeling.

Two important conclusions emerged from the study. First, brand love and perceived quality have been considerably and favorably influenced by all six dimensions of brand personality of e-commerce brands. Second, the purchase intention toward the e-commerce sites is significantly and positively impacted by brand love and perceived quality.

This study by exploring various dimensions of brand personality, will assist e-commerce executives in increasing purchase intention toward the e-retailing sites.

This research is supposed to be the foremost to look at how brand personality, through brand love and perceived quality affects purchase intention toward e-commerce websites. The attachment theory is used in this study as a theoretical foundation for linking e-commerce brand personality to customers’ purchase intentions via brand love and perceived quality.

This study examines whether the gains from export sophistication is conditional on the level of globalisation. Previous studies have shown that the impact of export sophistication on growth varies depending on the level of a country's economic development. The authors argue that globalisation plays an important role in influencing the gains from export sophistication, mainly through the competition and scale effects. The competition effect disincentivises domestic firms to engage in export markets, while the scale effect incentivises knowledge accumulation and innovation.

The authors employ data from 163 economies from 1995 to 2018. The authors re-estimate values for export sophistication using ordinary goods from 1995 to 2018 and estimate a growth model using the generalised method of moments (GMM) to control for endogeneity and simultaneity issues.

The results show that the gains from export sophistication and globalisation is greater for economies with higher levels of economic development compared to economies with low levels of economic development. Moreover, the authors find that the gains from export sophistication are conditional on the level of globalisation. The authors’ results show that the marginal impact of export sophistication diminishes as developing economies become more globalised, while advanced economies gain more from export sophistication when globalisation precedes at a higher level.

Previous studies have generally examined the conditional growth effects of export sophistication on trade, economic development and other structural factors. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the impact of globalisation, and the authors exploit the multidimensional concept of globalisation to test the hypothesis.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-01-2023-0001.

The aim of this research is to explore how religiosity (RG) could influence the Islamic apparel brand personality (IABP) dimensions, and to determine the degree to which IABP, attitude (ATT), subjective norms (SN) and purchase intention (PI) are influenced by RG. In addition, this research attempts to investigate the significant relationship between IABP and the components of the theory of planned behavior in the apparel industry in Egypt.

This research adopts a quantitative research method to provide insights relating to relationships between variables. The research data were collected through a conducted survey of Muslim females in Egypt. A convenience nonprobability sampling technique for data collection was used. To achieve the research purposes, confirmatory factor analyses, reliability and validity tests and structural equation modeling were adopted.

The research results show that RG has a positive significant relationship with ATT, SN and PI of Islamic apparel. Moreover, it was that only ATT has a positive significant influence over the PI of Islamic apparel unlike SN and Perceived behavioral control (PBC). Results also found that there is a positive relationship between IABP with ATT and SN. However, the relationship between RG and IABP was not statistically supported.

The research provides practical implications for brand managers, designers and producers in the Islamic apparel sector on how to increase PIs by extending IABP as well as for Egyptian policymakers. The practical implications include the possible approaches that stakeholders of Islamic apparel brands need to address while promoting, and this will influence marketing strategies in general and branding specifically.

This study extends our understanding of consumers’ Islamic apparel purchasing intentions using TPB to determine its rationale. Unlike other studies, this study operated RG and IABP to assess their influence on Islamic apparel PI in Egypt.