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The purpose of the study is to investigate the influence of direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) on consumers’ decision-making (CDM).

Practical data were used in the empirical analysis collected from 484 consumer surveyed by means of a questionnaire. Statistical techniques such as descriptive statistics, correlation, simple and multiple regressions were employed. A Cronbach’s alpha was used to confirm the suitability of the data collection instrument.

The results of the study indicated a positive significant relationship between DTCA and CDM. The results indicated that there was significant impact of healthcare awareness on CDM, but there were no significant impacts of drug–drug interactions, medical information source and consumer economical situation on CDM.

The data are also limited to a Jordanian market; therefore, generalizing results of a Jordanian setting to other countries may be questionable. Extending the analyses to other settings represent future research opportunities.

The current research may be considered as an initiative study that highlights the effect of DTCA on CDM in Jordan and in the Arab world. The results can provide the reference for further research about the relationship between DTCA and CDM.

This paper explores the potential impact of mobile marketing tools on consumer buying behaviour within the context of dining. The aim is to examine the influence of mobile marketing tools through their different functions on the stages of the consumer buying process. The study addresses a lack of relevant research with evidence from both customer and supplier perspectives.

The mobile tools that are found useful for dining were considered in this study. Qualitative interviews with marketers and consumer opinion leaders were conducted, given the limited extant research.

The results reveal that mobile marketing tools influence consumers' decision-making differently and their effect varies according to the customer type. Additionally, it shows that loyalty has a direct influence on mobile marketing effectiveness, as the decision-making process of loyal customers is more affected by mobile marketing tools than the non-loyal customers.

The limitations are mainly based on the qualitative nature of this study and are relevant to the research context. Further research could examine these findings in different service and geographical contexts.

Marketing activity through the smartphone should focus on loyal customers and opinion leaders with the use of appropriate mobile tools.

The study provides empirical evidence on the variable influence of mobile marketing tools on consumer decision-making and develops a conceptual framework. It is also found that loyalty is an important factor that positively affects smartphone tools adoption.

The present study attempts to shed some light on tourists’ destination brand loyalty (DBL) in the Malaysian ecotourism context. More specifically, this study aims to examine the relationships between electronic word of mouth (eWOM), destination brand quality (DBQ), destination brand image (DBI), psychological engagement (PE) and DBL.

Based on the Stimulus–Organism–Response theory and buyer black box model, this study developed a framework to address tourists’ loyalty towards ecotourism destinations. An online survey was carried out to collect data, which yielded 210 completed usable responses. Structural equation modelling – partial least squares was used to test the study hypotheses.

Findings from this study revealed that eWOM and destination product quality affect DBI. Moreover, data support the mediating effect of PE between DBI and DBL.

This study provides valuable insights for practitioners and policymakers of the tourism industry in creating a DBI, keeping tourists psychologically engaged and retaining their loyalty to the ecotourism destinations.

This study is amongst the first to examine the effect of eWOM and DBQ on DBI in the ecotourism context. It also examines PE in relation to the DBI, which is a comparatively new area in the literature.

With rapidly changing marketing landscape, nowadays, the formulation of various marketing strategies is increasingly focused on how consumers tend to make decisions. To meet the highly demanding consumer expectations, market segmentation can be used as an important marketing strategy. Due to gender marketing concept familiarity in the contemporary world, gender difference is one of the reference features in the process of market segmentation for marketers. This research is aimed to examine various determining factors that foster consumer purchase decision-making and the differences between consumers of different genders while making shopping and purchase decisions with special reference to an emerging economy, i.e. Pakistan.

Based on a cross-sectional sample of 367 consumers, the study adapted Sproles and Kendall's (1986) Consumer Style Inventory (CSI) to scrutinize the decision-making of both genders in Pakistan. For data analysis, the exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis in addition to the structural equation modeling has been used.

The study emphasized that, with the exception of quality awareness, brand consciousness, fashion consciousness, option overload and price consciousness greatly affect buying decisions. In addition, when it comes to consumer purchase decision-making, significant gender variations were discovered for both fashion consciousness and price consciousness.

Drawing upon the distinctive cultural characteristics of Pakistan and its people, in-depth research was conducted on purchasing behaviors of Pakistani consumers and the decision-making characteristics of customers of different genders were summarized. The outcomes are expected to make a significant contribution to the field of gender marketing by organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to identify critical Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) benefits and assess their relative significance in the context of developing economies (e.g. India).

This study has conducted face-to-face (offline/online) discussions with experts in order to identify appropriate criteria and related CDM benefits. Further, this study has used subsequently, using the analytic hierarchy process, a multi-criteria decision-making method and assess the relative significance of benefits of CDM projects.

The results reveal that knowledge and capacity building, technology transfer and social benefits are the most significant CDM benefits, respectively. It is because the knowledge and capacity building tends to disseminate the awareness on CDM benefits among policymakers and stakeholders, thereby, lead to efficient policy-making and encourage effective technology transfer in a way to achieve sustainable economic growth in the host country.

The literature is dominated by studies of CDM projects in Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Africa and China. Within the thousands of CDM projects globally, India only has 1,376 registered CDM projects. To the authors' knowledge, this is one of the first studies that highlight the relative significance of CDM benefits in the context of India. This study will enhance the implementation in the Indian scenario.

Since Jan. 1, 2019, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) rule requiring hospitals publish their “standard charges” (also called “charge description masters” or “chargemasters”) in a public, machine-readable format has been in effect. The research at hand assesses hospital compliance with the federal regulation. In addition, a sentiment analysis of the chargemaster webpages compared to hospital homepages is performed to assess the consumer friendliness of the content in terms of language usage. A stratified sample of 212 hospitals was used to conduct observations. Strata were based on patient satisfaction scores drawn from the Hospital Consumer Assessment of health care Providers and Systems survey, and controls for hospital bed size and geographic US census region were utilized from the American Hospital Association Annual Survey. Descriptive statistics are presented, and chi-square testing is used to test for statistically significant differences. Key results are presented for compliance and sentiment. Most hospitals' websites are not presenting chargemaster data in a way that is readily collectable or comparable to other facilities. In addition, the tone of language used on chargemaster transparency webpages is generally more negative than that of hospitals' homepages. In particular, the messaging on transparency pages routinely suggests consumers to not use the data for decision-making purposes.

Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are a critical part of a country or region’s economy. They have contributed to more than half of Indonesia’s gross domestic product. However, MSMEs today are still getting problems and obstacles in the Indonesian industry. One of them is the lack of knowledge about entrepreneurship that hampers the development of a business and the emergence of innovation. This study aims to understand the innovation process and extend the knowledge regarding entrepreneurship in food and beverage MSMEs in Greater Jakarta Area.

This study is descriptive–associative research. It uses the online survey as a data collection method with a cross-sectional design. The sampling technique is purposive sampling with the criteria foodpreneurs from MSMEs in Greater Jakarta Area. The data are measured using Likert scale and analyzed using structural equation modeling-partial least squares.

The results suggest that centralized decision-making positively impacts collaboration, communication and contributes to innovation. Communication effects the entrepreneur's knowledge and collective entrepreneurship. In terms of collaboration, it affects entrepreneur's knowledge and collective entrepreneurship. Then, the entrepreneur's knowledge and collective entrepreneurship influence innovation.

This research is only conducted using MSMEs of food and beverages in Greater Jakarta Area as the samples. Hence the results cannot be generalized. Different sectors may have different results.

A centralized decision can be done but limited in certain situations only. Then, foodpreneurs should collaborate and communicate more intensely with their employees. It will impact the harmonious collaboration and collective problem-solving to achieve creative solutions.

There is limited research focusing on foodpreneurs and the innovation process. So, this research results can add to the existing literature review.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the levels social media (SM) platforms are influencing consumer decision-making process for Generation X and Y consumers in the retail fashion environment.

This study adopts an interpretive, exploratory approach, applying a qualitative design. The research involved eight in-depth interviews and two focus groups in order to gain in-depth insights of two generational cohorts opinions, arguments, motivations and ideas.

The findings revealed that consumers use a variety of internal and external motivations that influence their behaviours and perceptions of high-street fashion retailers, and these factors are aided and facilitated by the use of SM. However, the research also revealed that SM is not the only source that motivates their consumer decision-making process, and with the proliferation of active users on SM, these platforms are (and will continue to have) an ever more increasing impact on consumer decision-makings. Participants were found to actively use SM to gain inspiration and information regarding high-street fashion retailers, however their final intentions to purchase were not as highly influenced by the content produced as previously expected.

Prior to consumers’ making any decisions they are impacted by various stimuli, however, with the proliferation of active users on SM, the influence these platforms unconsciously have on consumer behaviour is vast. Therefore, suggesting that consumers are not as predictable as traditional consumer decision-making process (CDMP) theory postulates. Although thought processes do appear to exist, consumers now demonstrate a much more complex process, which create multiple layers of motivations where internal and external factors overlap.

The findings of this study present valuable implications for high-street fashion marketers and are anticipated to enhance and deepen fashion marketers understanding of CDMP when using SM. Thus, they must strive to understand and provide relevant content to consumers’, not only for Generation Y but also Generation X, responding to quickly changing consumer demands and expectations with both of these cohorts. Overall, these findings propose that high-street fashion retailers on SM must understand the complexity of internal and external factors motivating consumers to interact with retailers online and off, and therefore, generating added value for their consumers. This is useful within marketing practises.

This paper gives some clarity and insight into the motivations of consumers in the fashion retail environment, from a digital influential perspective.

The findings concluded that SM has created a consumer that can be impacted at any stage of the decision process and has added to the research regarding unplanned consumer behaviour. Participants behaviours were stimuli-driven and user-controlled. Therefore, this had a larger impact on inspiration as opposed to modifying their behaviours to align exactly with trends or products.

This study intends to understand if managerial coaching, a sustainable competitive strategy, has an impact on sales performance, through customer and results orientation of the salesforce. It also aims to investigate whether pressure for results, one of the predominant demands in organizations today, and the centralisation of decisions, a traditional management demand still present in several organizations, undermine the effect of coaching on performance.

The 167 responses collected, through the distribution of questionnaires among workers in the commercial area, were analysed through a structural equation model using the partial least square (PLS) technique.

The results of this study confirm that managerial coaching has a positive impact on sales force performance through customer and results orientation, with customer orientation having a greater impact on performance. It was also found that centralised decision-making and pressure for results do not undermine the relationship between managerial coaching and performance, and they even reinforce the positive impact of results orientation on performance.

Managerial coaching practices can impact sales, especially when associated with customer orientation, freeing employees from the pressure for results and the centralisation demands. This scenario favours a more sustainable and emancipatory sales force management.

This study is the first to integrate organizational demands, namely pressure for results and centralisation, to better understand the effect of managerial coaching on sales performance, through customer and results orientation, thereby extending previous research on this topic.