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This paper aims to engage with the social issues emerging from the increasing reliance upon app-driven services, as they pertain to precarious labor and ethical standpoints in a digital era. Popular ride services such as Uber have been lauded for bringing much needed transportation services that are superior to expensive taxis or unpleasant or inaccessible public transit.

As a result of over three years of ongoing research and analysis, this paper is a comprehensive assessment of a number of social issues facing the integration of practices both signified and enacted in an economy driven by apps such as Uber. While these companies are indeed profitable, questions remain as to just how much of a panacea these practices actually herald.

Findings indicate that privatization and a lack of labor regulation may present a significant savings to the user, but full cost economics suggest that the social and environmental costs require consideration.

The recommendations here refer to the ethical considerations forwarded in this paper and serve to open up dialog to further discuss the persistent issues facing a precarious future.

In terms of practical implications, there is a point of tension between governmental/regulatory bodies, disruptive innovators and users.

Stakeholders of all stripes are scrambling to keep up with the pace and problematics of digital innovations and an inclusive critical dialog on app-driven services has yet to become a priority.

The original value of this analytical framework from a social justice perspective stands to catalyze action on a number of pervasive social issues surrounding digital ethics and policy.

This study assesses the impact of source (influencer’s) credibility on brand trust that leads to loyalty towards a fast fashion brand.

The stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) framework is adopted in this study. A quantitative study was conducted by administering questionnaires to target respondents. A partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) using SmartPLS is implemented to analyze 206 collected responses.

SEM outcomes statistically support the suggested paths. Findings show that the order of importance of source credibility components in affecting consumer trust in a brand is trustworthiness, expertise, similarity and attractiveness. Additionally, brand loyalty is directly affected by brand trust.

The current study offers understanding into influencers' credibility and brand trust, which can lead to customer loyalty toward a brand. This study also aids marketing practitioners in keeping track of other attributes in deciding if influencers are a good fit for brands. Future research should explore the potential impacts of source credibility components on recommendation intention to build an effective word-of-mouth strategy.

This study explains the literature on brand trust and brand loyalty by justifying the S-O-R framework.

Trade credit (TC) provides access to capital for construction contractors globally and is an important source of finance in both developed and developing countries. The purpose of this paper is to explore key factors underpinning construction suppliers’ decisions to provide TC to Ghanaian construction firms.

Primary data from a structured survey of 75 construction suppliers are analysed. Principal component (factor) analysis explores complex structures among suppliers’ decision-making variables.

Underlying constructs of decision criteria exist among seven key factors: financial profile of the contractor; parties’ profit margins; asset portfolio and project particulars; TC quantum and repayment terms; age and experience of the contractor; contractor corporate image; and parties’ cash flows.

This is a new decision criteria framework for suppliers and contractors, who utilise TC.

The relationship between the size of state audit budgets, audit responsibilities, professional characteristics of staff, risk, and tax and expenditure limitations is explored. Bivariate relationships are examined and then a model is estimated which controls for size, complexity, financial risk factors, and political risk factors. This provides a framework for considering the incremental influence of specialized audit inputs. Both "brand names" and size have been used in past research to proxy for quality dimensions intended to differentiate the audit product provided by different suppliers. This research extends such work by considering characteristics of the auditing services as reflected by specific inputs and by using cost data rather than audit fee data. The states are observed to differ in their responses to financial and political factors by spending resources on peer review, continuing professional education, certifications of professional staff, and expertise in both the computer science area and in law. A positive association of cost and auditor differentiation, implicit in past audit fee literature is corroborated.

Organizations today strive to differentiate themselves from others with the help of various tools. Aaker’s brand personality model is one of them. It comprises five components namely, sincerity, excitement, sophistication, competence and ruggedness. This model has been tested and supported by various scholars in the past. Similarly, it also attracted a lot of criticism especially in terms of generalizability across countries and cultures. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to study Aaker’s model from an Islamic perspective; second, considering the dearth of brand personality knowledge in the services sector, to develop Islamic Banks’ Brand Personality (IBBP) model.

To propose IBBP model, traits in Aaker’s model have been investigated in the light of selected Quranic verses and sayings of Prophet Muhammad (ahadith). Later on, content validation was conducted as a pilot study with experts from the relevant fields.

Findings exhibit that Quran and hadith clearly elaborate and support majority dimensions of the existing model. Importantly, three new dimensions, namely, trustworthiness, justice and Shariah compliance, were added to develop a comprehensive IBBP model. Once the dimensions of IBBP model were finalized, the underlying items were content validated from 12 experts. Most of the items were approved; some were recommended for amendments and a few items were eliminated.

This research contributes to the branding as well as bank marketing literature as it is the first Islamic banks’ brand personality framework. With the help of IBBP model, Islamic banks can create a better brand image, use advertising strategies effectively and ultimately retain existing and attract more potential customers.

This research elaborates the personality traits of Muslim consumer market. Following IBBP model, financial needs of Muslim consumer market can be catered effectively.

The IBBP model being first of its kind is significant for Islamic banking industry as it reflects dimensions that are supported by the Quran and hadith, and therefore suits Muslim customer market.

The purpose of this paper is to study the spelling suggestion (SS) problem for extensible markup language (XML) keyword search, which provides users with alternative queries that may better express users search intention.

To return the suggested queries more efficiently, the authors evaluate the quality of the query by estimating the selectivity and quality of each query pattern. The selectivity estimation is based on the XSketch synopsis, which summarizes the structure and value distribution of the original XML data source. The authors propose an approach to generating the top-K query candidates.

Experiments with real datasets verify the effectiveness and efficiency of the authors' approach.

The authors proposed a SS approach based on the XSketch summary.

The purpose of this paper is to propose and demonstrate how Tourism2vec, an adaptation of a natural language processing technique Word2vec, can serve as a tool to investigate tourism spatio-temporal behavior and quantifying tourism dynamics.

Tourism2vec, the proposed destination-tourist embedding model that learns from tourist spatio-temporal behavior is introduced, assessed and applied. Mobile positioning data from international tourists visiting Tuscany are used to construct travel itineraries, which are subsequently analyzed by applying the proposed algorithm. Locations and tourist types are then clustered according to travel patterns.

Municipalities that are similar in terms of their scores of their neural embeddings tend to have a greater number of attractions than those geographically close. Moreover, clusters of municipalities obtained from the K-means algorithm do not entirely align with the provincial administrative segmentation.

The paper aims to develop a comprehensive framework for adopting an information and communication technology (ICT)-enabled customer relationship management (CRM) system, toward strengthening and expanding the customer basis of the organization.

Advanced ICT-enabled CRM includes mobile CRM, AI integrated CRM and social CRM and several business organizations have already started exploring their advanced utilization for direct financial gain and indirect “soft” benefits. Most of them, however, are challenged in the process, due to lower-than-demanded adoption of such CRM systems. To deal with the issue, the paper methodologically applies a dual qualitative case study approach that ultimately develops an advanced comprehensive CRM adoption framework.

The key findings pertaining to the evaluation of organizations’ readiness to adopt advanced ICT-enabled CRM systems in terms of infrastructure and resources, the identification of the critical functional areas of the organization’s focus and the differences in the requisite approaches across industries and organization types.

In the context of the internet and social media, the analysis and management of customer big data and their transcription into useable information is crucial. Traditional and conventional CRM was deemed unable to address this need, thus necessitating the use of advanced ICT-enabled CRM. The proposed corresponding framework tangibly and practically, thus, directs businesses toward the successful deployment of ICT-based CRM systems.

This study constitutes a novel attempt to identify the issues of deployment of ICT-based CRM systems in an organization and proposes a comprehensive framework, which will enable organizations to overcome the barriers when adopting a new system.

The present study aims to deepen the understanding of the relationship between nostalgic brand positioning, nostalgic brand relationship dimensions and brand love.

This study is based on the data collected from 401 citizens of Tehran aged over 18 years old. Respondents admitted that they have felt love for at least one Iranian brand in their lives. The data collected from a questionnaire and the hypothesized relationships were analyzed using the partial least squares approach using Smart PLS.

The results showed that nostalgic brand positioning positively and significantly impacts nostalgic brand relationship dimensions. Also, there was a positive and significant relationship between nostalgic brand relationship dimensions and brand love. Nostalgic brand positioning has a significant effect on brand love through the mediating role of the nostalgic brand relationship.

The major contribution of this research is that, based on the construal level theory and literature review, the authors developed a conceptual model in which nostalgic brand relationship dimensions, i.e. emotional attachment, brand local iconness, and brand authenticity, explain how nostalgic brand positioning results in brand love.