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The purpose of this paper is to examine the perception and experience of counter pharmaceuticals in Nigeria compared to the European Union.

The findings from this paper are based upon a survey of 362 Nigerians sourced in public places with the data and then compared results from a survey by the European Union.

The key findings from this research showed some areas of similarity between Nigerians and Europeans on their views on the acceptability of purchasing counterfeits. However, Nigerians were more open to purchasing counterfeits despite the risks. There was also more anxiety over the risk of purchasing counterfeit medicines compared to the European Union.

Due to security issues, survey data could only be sourced from Abuja, Lagos and the relatively peaceful southwestern region of Nigeria. The data is, therefore, not representative of Nigeria.

The purchasing experience of counterfeit medicines by Nigerians along with their anxieties highlights the need for more enforcement action to tackle this problem and reassure the public.

The paper highlights the challenges of securing genuine pharmaceutical products in the Global South and the need for more greater cross-border action to tackle the problem.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first survey of Nigerian citizens on this issue.

The study aims to study the extent of research done in luxury marketing in an emerging economy like India by conducting a bibliometric analysis. A period of 21 years has been considered to present a comprehensive picture for results and analysis. Key findings indicate the gaps and scope of further research for academics in India and abroad. The findings indicate a dearth of research by scholars and academicians in luxury, counterfeit and masstige, especially when there is a surge of the upper middle class in India. More specifically, Indian-grown luxury brands also present a massive scope for future research.

This study employs a multi-method approach to investigate how perceived relationship marketing investment affects perceived relationship value and consumer gratitude, influencing consumer involvement, word-of-mouth intentions, and long-term relationships across three retail consumer types.

The study analyses a model involving 542 consumers, employing structural equation modeling and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to identify distinctive factor configurations across public, semi-public, and private retail organizations.

A retailer’s investment in relationship marketing significantly enhances relationship value and consumer gratitude, leading to increased engagement and word-of-mouth intentions. Perceived benevolence moderates the effect of relationship marketing on gratitude. However, gratitude alone does not ensure long-term relationships. Using fsQCA, we identify four distinct consumer configurations, providing nuanced insights.

Retail organizations broaden relationship marketing strategies to boost perceived value and elicit consumer gratitude, influencing consumer performance outcomes.

Retail organizations should broaden relationship marketing strategies to boost perceived value and elicit consumer gratitude, influencing consumer performance outcomes.

Managers should develop strategies that lead to consumer gratitude toward the firm, such as journey mapping can help visualize retail delivery. Grateful consumers may contribute to firms’ profitability by influencing current and potential consumers in their social networks and communicating their expertise through review/feedback for improvement. Therefore, various strategies are needed to stimulate positive comments from grateful consumers about the firm’s excellent performance.

This study builds on Lawler’s affect theory, highlighting how relationship value and consumer gratitude profoundly influence exchange process outcomes. It introduces new psychological mechanisms to explain the impact of perceived relationship marketing investment on performance outcomes. Integrating these elements provides a comprehensive understanding of retailer–consumer dynamics, revealing how emotional and psychological factors shape marketing strategies and business performance. This contribution enriches theoretical frameworks and offers practical insights for enhancing relationship marketing practices.

Food quality and safety issues have always been imperative topics discussed by people. The anti-tampering of blockchain technology and the transparency of information make it possible to improve food traceability and safety quality. How to effectively apply blockchain traceability technology to food safety has great research significance for improving food safety and consumer quality trust.

The paper aims to analyze the differences in product quality levels and market participants’ profits before and after the use of blockchain-driven traceability technology in the food agricultural product supply chain (SC) in the dynamic game frameworks of supplier-led and retailer-led modes, respectively, and explores the willingness, social welfare and consumer surplus of each member of the agricultural product SC to participate in the blockchain. Besides, We investigate the SC performance improvement with the mechanism of central centralized decision-making and revenue-sharing contract, compared to the SC performance in dynamic games.

The results are obtained as follow: The adoption of blockchain traceability technology can help improve the quality of food agricultural products, consumer surplus and social welfare, but the application and popularization of technology is hindered by traceability technology installment costs. Compared with the supplier leadership model, retailer-led food quality level, customer surplus and social welfare are higher.

How to effectively apply blockchain traceability technology to food safety has great research significance for improving food safety and consumer quality trust.

Food quality and safety issues have always been hot topics discussed by people. The anti-tampering of blockchain technology and the transparency of information make it possible to improve food traceability and safety quality.

The research results enrich the theories related to food safety and quality, and provide a valuable reference for food enterprises involved in the decision-making exploration of blockchain technology.

Based on the characteristics of blockchain technology, the demand function is adjusted and the product loss risk of channel members is transferred through a Stackelberg game SC composed of agricultural products suppliers and retailers.

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  We introduce two features of blockchain: quality trust and product information tracking.

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  The willingness of each member of the supply chain to use blockchain for product traceability was explored.

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  The overall traceability effect of the retailer-led blockchain is better than that of the manufacturer-led blockchain.

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  The cost of blockchain technology is a barrier to its adoption.

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  Blockchain brings higher consumer surplus and social welfare.

We introduce two features of blockchain: quality trust and product information tracking.

The willingness of each member of the supply chain to use blockchain for product traceability was explored.

The overall traceability effect of the retailer-led blockchain is better than that of the manufacturer-led blockchain.

The cost of blockchain technology is a barrier to its adoption.

Blockchain brings higher consumer surplus and social welfare.

Building upon the foundational eight dimensions of quality proposed by Garvin (1987), this research formulates a modern meaning of “quality.” This new meaning aligns with and encapsulates the evolving sophistication of consumers, the strategic quality investments made by firms, and the current dynamics of sales.

Due to the complexity of the concept of quality, a triangulation approach is used, which is composed of the following: a review of the literature, an analysis of consumers’ quality dimensions using both qualitative (interviews) and quantitative (survey) methods, as well as a quantitative investigation (survey) of firms’ investments in quality dimensions and the links to sales.

Our findings reveal the existence of 21 new and emerging dimensions through which consumers measure product quality, all of which complement Garvin’s dimensions. These dimensions contribute to a fresh and modern interpretation of quality. Although there are 29 dimensions of quality in total, firms should shape their strategies by focusing on usability, customization, efficiency, innovation, performance, perceived quality, serviceability, pricing, conformance quality, ethics, and sustainability. These dimensions align with consumer wants and positively correlate with firms’ sales.

This research identifies novel and contemporary dimensions of quality, serving to complement the eight dimensions previously delineated by Garvin (1987). Consequently, it contributes to updating the operations management literature on Total Quality Management, 36 years subsequent to the introduction of Garvin’s foundational dimensions.

The expansion of online shopping aligned with challenging economic conditions has contributed to increasing fraudulent retail product returns. Retailers employ numerous interventions typically determined by embedded perspectives within the company (supply side) rather than consumer-based assessments of their effectiveness (demand side). This study aims to understand how customers evaluate counter-fraud measures on opportunistic returns fraud in the UK. Based on the fraud triangle and the theory of planned behaviour, we develop an empirically informed framework to assist retail practice.

We collected 485 valid survey responses about consumer attitudes regarding which interventions are effective against different types of returns fraud. First, a principal component section evaluates the policies' effectiveness to identify any policy grouping that could help prioritise specific sets of policies. Second, cluster analysis follows a two-stage approach, where cluster size is determined, and then survey respondents are partitioned into subgroups based on how similar their beliefs are regarding the effectiveness of anti-fraud policies.

We identify policies relating to perceived effectiveness of interventions and create customer profiles to assist retailers in conceptualising potential opportunistic fraudsters. Our product returns fraud framework adopts a consumer perspective to capture the perceived behavioural control of potential fraudsters. Results suggest effectiveness of different types of interventions vary between different types of consumers, which leads to the development of propositions to combat the fraud.

This study is unique in assessing the perceived effectiveness of a range of interventions based on data collection and advanced analytics to combat fraudulent product returns in omnichannel retail.

Gillette’s historically successful “razor and blade” business model (RBM) has been a promising benchmark for multiple businesses across diverse industries worldwide in the past several decades. The extant literature deals with very few nuances of this business model notwithstanding the fact that there are several variants of this business model being put to practical use by firms in diverse industries in grossly metaphorically equivalent situations.

This study adopts the 2 × 2 truth table framework from the domains of mathematical logic and combinatorics in fleshing out all possible (four logical possibilities) variants of the razor and blade business model for further analysis. This application presents four mutually exclusive yet collectively exhaustive possibilities on any chosen dimension. Two major dimensions (viz., provision of subsidy and intra- or extra-firm involvement in the making of razors or blades or both) form part of the discussion in this paper. In addition, this study synthesizes and streamlines entrepreneurial wisdom from multiple intra-industry and inter-industry benchmarks in terms of real-time firms explicitly or implicitly adopting several variants of the RBM that suit their unique context and idiosyncratic trajectory of evolution in situations that are grossly reflective of the metaphorically equivalent scenario of razor and recurrent blades. Inductive method of research is carried out with real-time cases from diverse industries with a pivotally common pattern of razor and blade model in some form or the other.

Several new variants of the razor and blade model (much beyond what the extant literature explicitly projects) have been discovered from the multiple metaphorically equivalent cases of RBM across industries. All of these expand the portfolio of options that relevant entrepreneurial firms can explore and exploit the best possible option chosen from them, given their unique context and idiosyncratic trajectory of growth.

This study has enriched the literature by presenting and analyzing a more inclusive or perhaps comprehensive palette of explicit choices in the form of several variants of the RBM for the relevant entrepreneurial firms to choose from. Future research can undertake the task of comparing these variants of RBM with those of upcoming servitization business models such as guaranteed availability, subscription and performance-based contracting and exploring the prospects of diverse combinations.

Smart entrepreneurial firms identify and adopt inspiring benchmarks (like razor and blade model whenever appropriate) duly tweaked and blended into a gestalt benchmark for optimal profits and attractive market shares. They target diverse market segments for tied-goods with different variants or combinations of the relevant benchmarks in the form of variegated customer value propositions (CVPs) that have unique and enticing appeal to the respective market segments.

Value-sensitive customers on the rise globally choose the option that best suits them from among multiple alternatives offered by competing firms in the market. As long as the ratio of utility to price of such an offer is among the highest, even a no-frills CVP may be most appealing to one market segment while a plush CVP may be tempting to yet another market segment simultaneously. While professional business firms embrace resource leverage practices consciously, amateur customers do so subconsciously. Each party subliminally desires to have the maximum bang-to-buck ratio as the optimal return on investment, given their priorities ceteris paribus.

Prior studies on the RBM have explicitly captured only a few variants of the razor and blade model. This study is perhaps the first of its kind that ferrets out many other variants (more than ten) of the razor and blade model with due simplification and exemplification, justification and demystification.

Despite the proliferation of cyberthreats upon the supply chain (SC) at large, knowledge on SC cybersecurity is scarce and predominantly conceptual or descriptive. Addressing this gap, this research examines the effect of SC cyber risk management strategies on integration decisions for cybersecurity (with suppliers, customers, and internally) to enhance the SC’s cyber resilience and robustness.

A research model grounded in the supply chain risk management (SCRM) literature, with roots in the Dynamic Capabilities View and the Relational View, was developed. Survey responses of 388 SC managers at US manufacturers were obtained to test the model.

An impact of SC cyber risk management strategies on internal cyber integration was detected, which in turn impacted external cyber integration with both suppliers and customers. Further, a positive effect of internal and customer cyber integration on both cyber resilience and robustness was found, while cyber integration with suppliers impacted neither.

Industry practitioners may adapt certain risk management and integration strategies to enhance the cybersecurity posture of their SCs.

This research bridges between the established domain of SCRM and the emergent field of SC cybersecurity by forming and testing novel relationships between SCRM-rooted constructs tailored to an SC cyber risks context.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the progression from trade-based money laundering to service-based money laundering using the Regulatory Dialectic Theory with an explanation for the success of this progression arising from Agency Theory.

The authors provide a literature review regarding agency theory and the regulatory dialectic as the framework to examine service-based money laundering using three documented case studies. Using the caselet approach, this paper demonstrates that innovation in financial crime typologies is ongoing.

The short cases in this paper illustrate the factors related to the regulatory dialectic theory that have yielded innovation in service-based money laundering.

This paper examines only three recent SBML innovations.

Service-based money laundering represents an incremental advancement in money laundering beyond trade-based money laundering, in part supported by agency conflicts between financial intermediaries and stakeholders.

Managers and regulators should take into account that typologies will change as predicted by the regulatory dialectic and that the regulatory response can be burdensome to financial sector entities. This paper also provides recommendations for managers and regulators.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to uncover new innovations in SBML in a high-risk geographic region.

Blockchain technology (BCT) can play a vital role in manufacturing industries by providing visibility and real-time transparency. With BCT adoption, manufacturers can achieve higher productivity, better quality, flexibility and cost-effectiveness. The current study aims to prioritize the performance metrics and ranking of enablers that may influence the adoption of BCT in manufacturing industries through a hybrid framework.

Through an extensive literature review, 4 major criteria with 26 enablers were identified. Pythagorean fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method was used to compute the weights of the enablers and the Pythagorean fuzzy combined compromise solution (Co-Co-So) method was used to prioritize the 17-performance metrics. Sensitivity analysis was then carried out to check the robustness of the developed framework.

According to the results, data security enablers were the most significant among the major criteria, followed by technology-oriented enablers, sustainability and human resources and quality-related enablers. Further, the ranking of performance metrics shows that data hacking complaints per year, data storage capacity and number of advanced technologies available for BCT are the top three important performance metrics. Framework robustness was confirmed by sensitivity analysis.

The developed framework will contribute to understanding and simplifying the BCT implementation process in manufacturing industries to a significant level. Practitioners and managers may use the developed framework to facilitate BCT adoption and evaluate the performance of the manufacturing system.

This study can be considered as the first attempt to the best of the author’s knowledge as no such hybrid framework combining enablers and performance indicators was developed earlier.