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The use of over-the-top (OTT) platforms grew substantially after the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. With the pandemic receding, there is a concern that users may not continue with their subscriptions. To counter this, OTT service providers must strategize proactively to retain and acquire new users once the pandemic abates. Positing that understanding the consumption values that users ascribe to OTT platform usage can provide useful customer retention insights, the purpose of this paper is to use the theory of consumption value (TCV) to study the values that users derived from their use of OTT following the onset of the pandemic.

The mixed-method approach is used to collect qualitative and quantitative data. Analysis of qualitative responses collected through interviews of 12 current OTT platform users helped identify two categories of OTT platform-specific values: attribute-level and benefit-based. Next, the study examined the association of values thus identified with one another, as well as with continued intentions to use OTT platforms, by analyzing data collected from 371 existing users.

The findings indicated that functional value quality and social value, representing the attribute-level values, were positively associated with two benefit-based values – functional value price and emotional value (EMV). Next, EMV was not only associated with intentions but also partially mediated the association of attribute-level values with intentions. Premium subscription purchased and increased viewing time were confirmed to have moderating effects on the association between attribute-level and benefit-based values.

The study is amongst the foremost research initiatives to examine consumption values derived from OTT platform usage after the onset of the pandemic. Its novelty also comes from its identifying OTT platform-specific consumption values for the first time and adding a new dimension to the TCV by examining the interplay of these values in the OTT platform context.

Although extant literature exists on luxury consumption, limited studies have focused on motivation and values to consume luxury brands among athletes. The study aims to uncover the motivations that guide athletes’ decision-making processes to consume luxury brands.

The study utilized the theory of prestige consumption to develop a model. The model posits that bandwagon, snob and veblen motivations guide athletes to seek social and conspicuous values in their consumption of luxury brands. A survey-based questionnaire approach was used to collect data from 343 athletes from Turkey by considering brands from different product categories.

Findings indicated that bandwagon and veblen motivations are associated with social and conspicuous values. The findings also suggested that bandwagon, snob and veblen motivation are positively associated with luxury consumption intentions. Also, the social and conspicuous values of athletes determine their intentions to consume luxury. The mediating effects of social and conspicuous values are also confirmed.

The study's findings are first to empirically examine the influence of motivations on social and conspicuous value among athletes. The results show that the luxury consumption motivations of the athletes have a strong role in their intention to purchase luxury products. The findings also offer novel managerial implications.

The primary objective of this article is to examine current procurement, inventory control and management practices in modern healthcare, with a particular focus on the procurement and management of surgical supplies in a prominent public, highly specialized healthcare sector.

This study was conducted in three phases. In Phase 1, the study team interacted with various hospital management stakeholders, including the surgical hospital store, examined the current procurement process and identified challenges. Phase 2 focused on selecting items for a detailed study and collected the qualitative and quantitative details of the store department of the healthcare sector chosen. A detailed study analyzed revenue, output/demand, inventory levels, etc. In Phase 3, a decision-making framework is proposed, and inventory control systems are redesigned and demonstrated for the selected items.

It was observed that the demand for many surgical items had increased significantly over the years due to an increase in disposable/disposable items, while inventories fluctuated widely. Maximum inventory levels varied between 50 and 75%. Storage and availability were important issues for the hospital. It is assumed the hospital adopts the proposed inventory control system. In this case, the benefits can be a saving of 62% of the maximum inventory, 20% of the average stock in the system and optimal use of storage space, improving the performance and productivity of the hospital.

This study can help the healthcare sector administration to develop better systems for the procurement and delivery of common surgical items and efficient resource allocation. It can help provide adequate training to store staff. This study can help improve management/procurement policies, ordering and delivery systems, better service levels, and inventory control of items in the hospital business context. This study can serve as a pilot study to further investigate the overall hospital operations.

This study can help the healthcare sector administration develop better systems for procuring and delivering common surgical items and efficient resource allocation. It can help provide adequate training to store staff. This study can help improve management/procurement policies, ordering and delivery systems, better service levels and inventory control of items in the hospital business context. This study can serve as a pilot study to further investigate the overall hospital operations.

This study is an early attempt to develop a decision framework and inventory control system from the perspective of healthcare inventory management. The gaps identified in real hospital scenarios are investigated, and theoretically based-inventory management strategies are applied and proposed.

The purpose of this study is to extensively explore the vehicular network paradigm, challenges faced by them and provide a reasonable solution for securing these vulnerable networks. Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication has brought the long-anticipated goal of safe, convenient and sustainable transportation closer to reality. The connected vehicle (CV) paradigm is critical to the intelligent transportation systems vision. It imagines a society free of a troublesome transportation system burdened by gridlock, fatal accidents and a polluted environment. The authors cannot overstate the importance of CVs in solving long-standing mobility issues and making travel safer and more convenient. It is high time to explore vehicular networks in detail to suggest solutions to the challenges encountered by these highly dynamic networks.

This paper compiles research on various V2X topics, from a comprehensive overview of V2X networks to their unique characteristics and challenges. In doing so, the authors identify multiple issues encountered by V2X communication networks due to their open communication nature and high mobility, especially from a security perspective. Thus, this paper proposes a trust-based model to secure vehicular networks. The proposed approach uses the communicating nodes’ behavior to establish trustworthy relationships. The proposed model only allows trusted nodes to communicate among themselves while isolating malicious nodes to achieve secure communication.

Despite the benefits offered by V2X networks, they have associated challenges. As the number of CVs on the roads increase, so does the attack surface. Connected cars provide numerous safety-critical applications that, if compromised, can result in fatal consequences. While cryptographic mechanisms effectively prevent external attacks, various studies propose trust-based models to complement cryptographic solutions for dealing with internal attacks. While numerous trust-based models have been proposed, there is room for improvement in malicious node detection and complexity. Optimizing the number of nodes considered in trust calculation can reduce the complexity of state-of-the-art solutions. The theoretical analysis of the proposed model exhibits an improvement in trust calculation, better malicious node detection and fewer computations.

The proposed model is the first to add another dimension to trust calculation by incorporating opinions about recommender nodes. The added dimension improves the trust calculation resulting in better performance in thwarting attacks and enhancing security while also reducing the trust calculation complexity.

The tech savvy generation Z consumers constitute a significant market of online shopping. Understanding their shopping behavior is thus a pressing need to expand the e-commerce business. Under this backdrop, the study aims to predict the online shopping behavior of generation Z customers in Bangladesh.

This study used the theory of consumption values (TCV) along with shopping enjoyment to understand the online shopping behavior of generation Z. A structured set of questionnaire was used to gather the responses on a five point Likert scale. A total of 411 valid responses were considered after discarding incomplete responses. The collected data were analyzed using the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) approach with the help of smart PLS 4.0 software.

The statistical findings reveal that functional value is the most significant determinant of online shopping behavior among generation Z followed by social value, conditional value and epistemic value. The study also reveals that relationship between emotional value and online shopping behavior and relationship between conditional value and online shopping behavior is moderated by shopping enjoyment.

The paper contributes to the consumer behavior literature as the findings provide a comprehensive model from values perspectives to understand online shopping behavior among Gen Z customers in a developing country like Bangladesh. The findings of this study offer important insights to the marketers also since it reveals the values consumers consider while shopping online. The findings might help practitioners develop their online strategies to expand the business.

The young generation (Gen Z and Millennials) has a different set of values that the brand needs to interpret better. There is evidence of a correlation between luxury brands and sustainability. The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of consumers’ consumption values (functional, experiential, and symbolic) and ethical values (ascribed responsibility) through flow experience (FE) on consumers’ attitudes towards sustainable luxury brands (SLB) in the young generation based on stimulus-organism-response theory.

The research design consists of Studies 1 and 2. Study 1 used a structured questionnaire on a sample of 396 respondents based on the scales of luxury consumption values. For Study 2, the authors collected 30 qualitative responses from the target group (young Indian shoppers who indulge in luxury fashion shopping frequently) via open-ended essays. PLS-SEM was used to test the hypothesised relationship.

As per the results, functional values are the most significant predictors of FE, followed by AR, experiential values and symbolic values. The study also discovered that FE has a substantial influence on the formation of attitudes towards sustainable luxury fashion brands. The qualitative findings were in line with the quantitative findings, except that the respondents have reservations with respect to the authenticity of sustainable initiatives by the brands.

As the young consumer represents the future development of the luxury market, it is crucial to fully comprehend their view with respect to consumption value and AR in an emerging economy like India, which constitutes one of the highest populations of young consumers. The new research framework will also assist luxury brand managers in the formulation of efficient brand marketing strategies for sustainable luxury apparel.

Previous studies have mainly focused on FE in the context of the service industry. There are limited studies exploring the impact of achieving FE in framing the attitude towards sustainable luxury fashion brands. Academic research in the area so far has limited its scope to quantitative and a few qualitative studies, but this study provides a mixed-methods approach in a luxury setting, contributing to the study’s distinctiveness.

To respond to recent calls for better understanding of the complexities related to happiness management, especially from the employees' perspective, this study examines how corporate volunteering (CV), as one form of corporate social responsibility (CSR), creates sustainable happiness in business organizations.

Theoretical knowledge of CSR and CV as well as the literature on happiness management was examined to form a preliminary understanding of the phenomenon. The empirical section includes a qualitative multiple case study including two company cases of CV in Finland. The data were collected through qualitative interviews. Empirical analysis was made using thematical coding based on existing theory but also by allowing themes to emerge inductively from the data as well.

The study found that CV enables the emergence of sustainable happiness by allowing individual employee volunteers to transition from individual and rational mindsets to collective and emotional mindsets. A third transition was also identified, a process of change in the volunteers' approach in life that the authors describe as “from actual to potential”.

The study provides a theoretical contribution to the existing literature on happiness management by identifying the third dimension, from actual to potential, and depicting the way this allows employees to move from a state of being to becoming and thus the emergence of sustainable happiness. The study also contributes to existing literature on CV and CSR by revealing the way CV, as a form of practical CSR activity, generates happiness. This study concludes that companies' strategic activities that engage with society can create sustainable happiness for employees who participate. In order to achieve this, volunteering employees should have the chance to reflect on their experience and constant support from managers.

Under the background of low consumer financial knowledge and accumulated credit card liabilities, this study investigates the relationship between financial knowledge and responsible credit card behavior using data from the 2019 China Household Finance Survey (CHFS). From the perspective of consumer economic well-being, this study defines accruing credit card debt to buy houses and cars when loans with lower interest rates are available as irresponsible credit card behavior.

This study uses probit regressions to examine the association between financial knowledge and responsible credit card behavior because the dependent variable is a dummy variable. To alleviate endogeneity problems, this study uses instrument variables and Heckman’s two-step estimation. Furthermore, to explore the potential mediators in this process, this study follows the stepwise regression method. Finally, this study introduces interaction terms to examine whether this association differs in different groups.

The results indicate that financial knowledge is conducive to increasing the probability of responsible credit card behavior. Mediating analyses reveal that the roles of financial knowledge occur by increasing the degree of concern for financial and economic information and the propensity to plan. Moderating analyses show that the effects of financial knowledge on responsible credit card behavior are stronger among risk-averse consumers and in regions with favorable digital access.

This study measures responsible credit card behavior from the perspective of the consumer’s well-being, which enriches practical implications for consumer finance. Furthermore, this study explores the potential mediators influencing the process of financial knowledge that affects responsible credit card behavior and identifies moderators to conduct heterogeneous analyses, which helps comprehensively understand the nexus between financial knowledge and credit card behavior. By achieving these contributions, this study helps to curb the adverse effects of irresponsible credit card behavior on consumers’ well-being and the economic system and helps policymakers promote financial knowledge to fully prevent irresponsible credit card behavior.

This study aims to analyze how restaurants' collaboration with mobile food delivery applications (MFDAs) affects product development efficiency and argues that technological capabilities moderate relational ties impact the joint decision-making and development efficiency of restaurant products.

A product development efficiency model was formulated using a resource-based view and real options theory. In all, 472 samples were collected from restaurants collaborating with MFDAs, and partial least squares structural equation modeling was applied to the proposed model.

The findings of this study indicate three factors are critical to the product development efficiency between restaurants and MFDAs; restaurants must develop a strong connection with the latter to ensure meals are consistently served promptly. Developers of MFDAs should use artificial intelligence analysis, such as order records of different genders and ages or various consumption attributes, to collaborate with restaurants.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the few that considers the role of MFDAs as a product strategy for restaurant operations, and the factors the authors found can enhance restaurants’ product development efficiency. Second, as strategic artificial intelligence adaptation changes, collaborating firms and restaurants use such applications for product development to help consumers identify products.