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Isu diskriminasi antara kaum telah tular di media sosial berikutan isu pemberian vaksin secara jumpa terus yang mula dibukakan di Pusat Vaksinasi Stadium Tertutup pada hari Jumaat, 24 September 2021. Jumlah orang ramai yang ingin mengambil vaksin telah melebihi jangkaan sehingga menyebabkan keadaan menjadi tidak terkawal dan berlakunya pelanggaran Prosedur Pengendalian Standard (SOP). Kajian ini dijalankan untuk membincangkan isu diskriminasi kaum yang berlaku semasa gelombang kedua pandemik COVID-19. Penelitian menggunakan metode kualitatif secara deskriptif. Data yang diperolehi daripada komen-komen dalam halaman Brunei Dot Com, dan Facebook ini seterusnya dianalisis menggunakan model tiga dimensi Fairclough (1992). Hasil kajian mendapati kesemua komen telah menunjukkan sikap diskriminasi dalam kalangan masyarakat Brunei secara sedar ataupun tidak. Isu diskriminasi ini bukan sahaja dapat dilihat dari sudut representasi linguistik, tetapi juga penghasilan dan pewahanaan wacana berkaitan pada halaman Brunei Dot Com, dan Facebook. Kajian ini juga menunjukkan bahawa wacana bukan saja mampu dibentuk masyarakat tetapi juga membentuknya.

The issue of racial discrimination concerning the commencement of walk-in vaccination at the Indoor Stadium Vaccination Centre on Friday, 24 September 2021 was widely addressed in the social media. Chaos ensued as an influx of people attended the centre and violated the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). This paper examines the issue of racial discrimination during the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic in Brunei. As a qualitative-descriptive study, data obtained from Brunei Dot Com, and Facebook page, were analysed using Fairclough's (1992) three-dimensional approach. Findings have shown presence of discriminatory attitudes among the local community displayed as deliberately or unintentionally. This is manifested in its linguistic representations, discourse production and consumption in the selected Brunei Dot Com and Facebook pages. This study indicates that a discourse is not only capable of shaping but is also shaped by the community.

During coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, owing to several reasons, consumers behaved impulsively while shopping. Impulse buying has led to a distortion in the availability of various items in the stores. This study aims to explore the factors affecting the impulse buying behavior of consumers during a pandemic like COVID-19 in India.

Using an online questionnaire, 304 Indian consumers were surveyed using a convenience sampling technique. Proposed hypotheses and model were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The study confirmed that fear and resource availability are the most significant factors affecting consumer’s impulse buying behavior during a pandemic. The findings suggest that retailers can minimize the consumer’s fear and manage impulse buying to their advantage by providing better resources to their patrons while they shop.

During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, in the context of businesses, it is being observed that the purchase preferences of consumers have become chaotic and significant swings are visible in their shopping behavior. Thus, the study is an attempt to shed light on the factors that affect consumer impulse buying behavior in such disruptive settings.

This study aims to examine the moderating effect of internal control on the relationship between internal quality assurance implementation and higher education institution (HEI) quality.

The study employed a survey method with hypothesis testing using partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) technique with a second-order analysis approach. The questionnaire survey was administered to 191 HEIs.

The results revealed that internal control and internal quality assurance implementations are positively associated with HEI quality. Additionally, internal control implementation strengthened the relationship between internal quality assurance and HEI quality.

This study adds to the body of knowledge on the moderating role of internal control in the HEI sector and its role in the non-economic aspect, namely, the HEI quality.

This study aims to investigate whether frontline retail banking employees’ proactive personality helps in ameliorating customer engagement. This study further aims to investigate the mediational role of work engagement and service recovery performance in the employee proactivity – customer engagement relationship.

This study used a triadic approach for the collection of primary data. Each triad consisted of a customer, a frontline employee and an immediate colleague of the frontline employee. Structured questionnaires were used to solicit data from the respondents. Specifically, customers were asked to report their level of engagement with the bank and the recovery performance of the employee who redressed their grievances. Frontline employees responded to their level of work engagement while their colleagues reported about the proactive disposition of frontline employees at the workplace.

Empirical findings revealed under service scenario, Indian retail banking employees’ proactive disposition nurtures customer engagement. It was further observed that this relationship is sequentially mediated by work engagement and service recovery performance.

The role of frontline employees in enriching customer engagement has to date remained under-researched among marketing scholars. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the maiden attempt to relate frontline employee proactivity with customer engagement. Also, this study is one of the early research to investigate customer engagement under a service recovery context, thereby, opening pathways for further exploration.

This study aims to examine the factors that lead to loyalty in bank customers. It establishes a relationship of service quality (SQ) with satisfaction and attitude that leads to customer loyalty. The impact of SQ along with satisfaction and attitude on customer loyalty is explored.

Primary data was collected from 1,097 customers of the banking service. Structural equation modelling (SEM) and multiple regression analyses was used to analyse the data. The adaption of multiple regression and SEM for the analysis authenticates the similar findings in both the methods of analysis.

All the factors contribute to the formation of SQ. There exists a linear relationship of SQ, satisfaction and attitude in the formation of customer loyalty.

Sample can be more diverse and collected from different cities as well. Similar studies are possible for diverse demographic groups such as gender, age, education and others.

The results of this study have significant implications for understanding customer loyalty for banks of Saudi Arabia.

This research attempts to explore the factors responsible for the SQ in banks of Saudi Arabia so as to establish a relationship between SQ, satisfaction, attitude and loyalty.

This study aims to, first, propose a valid and reliable scale to document the COVID-19 Pandemic Shopping Experience (CPSE) and, second, determine the impact of its variables on the postpurchase shopping experience (PPSE).

For scale development, published studies were scanned and the variables were shortlisted. These shortlisted variables were validated by 52 faculties from four universities in Saudi Arabia. Data were collected from 318 respondents to purify the CPSE Scale. In Study 2, a path analysis was performed on a sample of 354 respondents to determine the individual impact of each variable on PPSE.

A total of 14 items were found to be aligned under four variables, social distance (SD), shop hygiene, operational time and entertainment venues. SD was found to have the greatest influence on PPSE, followed by operational time and shop hygiene.

This research has important implications for retailers to initiate changes in store layout so that they can implement social distancing by physically marking stickers on the floors and by placing barricading on billing counters. Store hygiene can be ensured by making sanitizers and hand gloves available at the entry points, periodically cleaning the floor and sanitizing the premises. Rationing the operating time proved to be an effective tool to minimize the exposure time, thereby limiting consumers' time inside the store.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to propose a full-scale measure of the customer shopping experience (SE) during a pandemic. This scale can be generalized to measure SE in similar situations.

This study aims to explore the factors responsible for influencing the service quality (SQ) of department stores in Albaha region, Saudi Arabia. This study also examines the level of influence on SQ.

Primary data was collected from 600 customers out of which 508 questionnaires were included for analysis using retail service quality scale (RSQS). Quota sampling technique was adapted for data collection from different cities of Albaha province. SPSS software was used to analyse the data using multiple linear regression analysis.

Three dimensions have a positive significant impact on SQ (physical aspect, problem-solving and reliability), whereas one dimension (personal interactions) has a negative significant influence and one dimension (policy) is found to be a highly insignificant factor.

Further investigation is required for the negative but significant behaviour of personal interaction and insignificant impact of policy as factors.

This study outlines the dimensions having positive and significant influence of SQ on the department stores.

This study suggests socially and culturally acceptable methods to improve SQ in Albaha.

The research suggests that personal interaction has a negative influence on SQ; this deviation of results from the literature may be due to the cultural variances in KSA which needs to be further investigated, as customers in Albaha are not willing to converse and interact with the seller.

The present study focused on examining the effect of treated wastewater (TWW) on soil chemical properties. Also, efforts were made to compare the soil chemical properties under TWW irrigation with that under groundwater (GW).

During the years 2021 and 2022, surface and subsurface soil samples were randomly collected in triplicate by using an auger fortnightly at two depths (20 and 40 cm) from the selected spot areas to represent the different types of irrigation water sources: TWW and GW. Samples of the GW and the TWW were collected for analysis.

This study examines the impact of TWW on soil characteristics and the surrounding environment. TWW use enhances soil organic matter, nutrient availability and salt redistribution, while reducing calcium carbonate accumulation in the topsoil. However, it negatively affects soil pH, electrical conductivity and sodium adsorption ratio, although remaining within acceptable limits. Generally, irrigating with TWW improves most soil chemical properties compared to GW.

In general, almost all of the soil’s chemical properties were improved by irrigating with TWW rather than GW. Following that, wastewater is used to irrigate the soil. Additionally, the application of gypsum to control the K/Na and Ca/Na ratios should be considered under long-term TWW and GW usage in this study area in order to control the salt accumulation as well as prevent soil conversion to saline-sodic soil in the future. However, more research is needed to thoroughly investigate the long-term effects of using TWW on soil properties as well as heavy metal accumulation in soil.

This study evaluates the moderating role of work-based social supports (i.e. supervisor support and co-worker support) in the relationship between job insecurity and job burnout among hospitality employees in Malaysia. Besides, the direct effect between job insecurity and job burnout is examined.

The cross-sectional data of this study were based on a total of 220 self-administered questionnaires that have been completed by hospitality employees from three different states in Malaysia. Respondents were recruited based on a snowball sampling approach. The data were collected during the COVID-19 pandemic, which was from October 2020 to January 2021.

Partial least square-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was performed via SmartPLS software. The finding confirmed that job insecurity significantly intensifies employees' job burnout. Supervisor support and co-worker support were found to moderate the link between job insecurity and burnout. As anticipated, the relationship between job insecurity and job burnout increased when supervisor support is low. But high co-worker support was found to strengthen the impact of job insecurity on job burnout instead of the reverse.

This study supplements the existing literature by clarifying which sources of work-based social support (i.e. co-worker support or supervisor) is more salient in alleviating the adverse impact of job insecurity on job burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic among hospitality employees in Malaysia.

Stock markets are considered as the largest and most important units for the development and growth of the economy. The present study attempts to provide a comprehensive view of factors influencing investment decision making process of stock market investors. A multi group analysis of gender is also carried out on the proposed model.

The data of 402 valid responses are collected through structured questionnaires from individual investors of North India. SPSS 23 is used to do the descriptive analysis and AMOS 22 is used to establish the validity of the constructs and for hypotheses testing. For performing multi group analysis, several invariance tests have also been conducted to check the robustness of the model.

The results reveal that all the factors such as firm image, accounting information, neutral information, advocate recommendation and personal financial needs significantly influence investment decision making concluding image of the firm being the most influential factor and advocate recommendation being the least influential factor for investment decisions. No significant differences between males and females were found.

The current study suffers from the limitation of restricted geographical area of North India. Moreover, there is also a scope to incorporate more demographic factors for predicting investment decisions.

This study incorporates a range of factors which covers all the aspects of investment decision making. This study also highlights the notion of signaling theory, thus contributing to the limited literature in Indian context.