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This paper seeks to empirically identify the major factors that influence physician loyalty behavior in prescribing certain brands of drugs.

Testable hypotheses were developed with respect to physician loyalty behavior regarding drug prescription practices, and a survey questionnaire was designed to capture the data from 71 physicians, as a convenience sample. The hypotheses were tested by PLS path modeling.

The major finding is that tangible rewards to physicians by the pharmaceutical companies lead to prescription loyalty. The second major finding is that the professional values of pharmaceutical sales representatives (PSR) impact significantly on physician prescription loyalty. The hypotheses related to the impact of PSR personality, drug quality, corporate reputation and professional influence on prescription loyalty were not supported in the study.

The results should prove useful to pharmaceutical companies in developing physician loyalty to particular brands as well as enhancing the understanding of drug control authorities and governmental health policy makers, in controlling unethical medical practices by physicians.

This paper reports an original empirical study on physician loyalty behavior in the context of drug prescription.

This case highlights a brave Syrian man’s act toward social responsibility. Mohammad Alaa Aljaleel, an ambulance driver established an animal sanctuary to save and take care of the animals who were victim of the Civil War in Aleppo, Syria. Instead of finding a safer place for himself, he preferred to take care of the animals who were left behind by their owners. But it was not an easy task for him to handle alone and thus he sought help and donation from others. He and his team not only created the animal sanctuary, but also established orphanage and children playground with the money they received. During this process, Alaa faced lots of challenges, but he did not give up his duty toward animals and the other needy. This case teaches that we have responsibility toward the nature and animals too.

Deployment of ICT facilities for teaching and learning in higher education is no longer a new trend, however, assessing the impacts of these deployment on lecturers and students requires more effort. The purpose of this paper is to employ a mixed method design consisting qualitative and quantitative procedures to examine the impact of ICT deployment in teaching and learning at a University in Nigeria. The survey data were drawn from 593 respondents (students and lecturers) and was analyzed using linear regression. For the qualitative part, one-on-one and focus group interviews were conducted among seven students and eight lecturers to seek their varying opinion on ICT impact on teaching and learning. Lecture-room observations were conducted across three classes to see how ICT is integrated. These multiple means findings were triangulated, compared and contrasted to validate the study. Predictors of ICT impact were found to be perception, integration, motivation and challenges. The qualitative interview and observation findings generated four similar themes as the quantitative result which was conceptualized as a model that serves as a framework for researchers on ICT impact assessment.

This study employed a mixed method design consisting qualitative and quantitative procedures to examine the impact of ICT deployment in teaching and learning at a University in Nigeria. The survey data were drawn from 593 respondents (students and lecturers) and was analyzed using linear regression. For the qualitative part, one-on-one and focus group interviews were conducted among seven students and eight lecturers to seek their varying opinion on ICT impact on teaching and learning. Lecture-room observations were conducted across three classes to see how ICT is integrated. These multiple means findings were triangulated, compared and contrasted to validate the study.

Predictors of ICT impact were found to be perception, integration, motivation and challenges. The qualitative interview and observation findings generated four similar themes as the quantitative result which was conceptualized as a model that serves as a framework for researchers on ICT impact assessment.

The use of multiple research designs to get rich and diverse view of participants incorporated in this study help to generate solid findings on the impact assessment of technology in education. The conceptual model (Adedokun-Shittu 2011 ICT impact assessment model) generated through a mixed method research design has four components which are substitutable to CIPP and Kirkpatrick models. It also fills a crucial gap left by both models.

This study produces a model that is conceived as a conceptual framework for researchers on impact assessment and is made up of the generated themes and named ICT Impact Assessment Model comprising Positive effect, Integration, Incentives and Challenges. This model is represented in a cyclic form because the assessment process can start from any stage and the assessment could be done individually or holistically. This makes it useful for both formative and summative assessment of ICT integration in teaching and learning (Adedokun-Shittu et al.S, 2012). The mixed method approach (survey, interviews and observations) used in the study that generated this model also supports its usefulness in any kind of evaluation (formative or summative).

Although there is evidence that the efforts of pharmaceutical marketing exert a positive and significant influence on physician prescription decisions, the specific mechanisms by which this impact occurs remain uncertain. To address this issue, this study aims to investigate whether the physician’s habit persistence may explain the relationship between marketing efforts such as brand attributes and drug promotion and prescribing behavior. This study also explores whether there was any significant difference between specialists and general practitioners (GPs) regarding the effect of brand attributes and drug promotion on physician’s habit persistence, which influences prescribing behavior.

A survey instrument was administered to physicians, encompassing specialists in a particular field and GPs who provide primary care services. A nonparametric partial least squares multigroup analysis was used to analyze 393 valid responses using partial least squares-structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that the decision to prescribe the drug may be affected by the physician’s habit persistence in the presence of vital brand attributes and drug promotion. The relationship between physician’s habit persistence and prescribing behavior is significant in GPs and specialist groups. The findings also reveal that brand attributes are the most influential and significant determinant of physician’s habit persistence in the GPs group. In addition, physician specialists are more aware of the influence of drug promotion initiatives than GPs. Furthermore, this study discovered that the relationship between drug promotion and physician’s habit persistence indicates a significant difference between specialists and GPs.

Although several marketing scholars discuss the factors influencing prescribing behavior, a few studies have shown the role of brand attributes and drug promotion and their effect on physician’s habit persistence. This study will specifically contribute by examining the mediating role of physician’s habit persistence between marketing efforts and prescribing behavior. In addition, so far, no studies have effectively made a comparative analysis across physicians regarding the effect of marketing efforts on physician’s habit persistence and prescribing behavior.

The study aims to examine the impact of migration on household consumption expenditures in Bangladesh.

The paper uses coarsened exact matching methods to examine the causal impact between migration and household welfare using the dataset on Bangladesh Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2010 on 12,213 households.

The study reveals that migration has a positive impact on household welfare improvement through increases in their consumption expenditures. Households with migration status are found to spend more on food, non-food (housing, durable goods, fuel, cosmetics, cleaning, transport, clothing, taxes, insurance, recreation) items and medical. However, the authors do not find any evidence of impacts on education expenditures.

The availability of panel data and the use of other variables (e.g. household investment expenditures, household budget allocation for agricultural input expenses, etc.) would have been able to provide vivid results.

This paper adds to the Bangladeshi migration literature by offering a novel empirical assessment of the Bangladeshi migrants and its impact on household welfare by drawing upon a recently published, nationally representative sample of Bangladeshi households.

The local food tourism in Pakistan is increasing rapidly, and it attracts scholars to determine the factors affecting local food tourists' buying choices. Particularly, the authors aim to investigate the role of food consumption values on predicting domestic tourists' attitude toward local food and its effect on the intention to try local food with the moderating effect of personality traits (neophobia and neophilia).

The authors tested the study model on 250 completed responses from local food tourists. They collected the data from three tourism locations (Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Peshawar) in Pakistan. Their study utilizes the consumption value theory within the limits of Pakistan's local food tourism.

The empirical findings show that consumption values, such as price, emotion, interaction, epistemic value, location value and variety value, effectively explain the domestic tourists' attitude toward local food. The authors further report that food neophilia strengthens the local tourists' positive reception toward the local food. However, food neophobia weakens the direction between local tourists' attitude toward local food and the intention to try local food.

This study provides insights pertaining to tourists' local food consumption values (LFCVs) to a local destination owner and marketing manager to strategically work on LFCVs that are crucial for domestic tourists to derive their intention to try local food. Practitioners should work on domestic tourists who possess food neophobia trait and enquire them for their rejection or avoidance of a particular local destination. This will enable practitioners to bring innovation and development in the local destination, which ultimately promote local food tourism.

This study is the first to incorporate the variety and local value in tourists' LFCVs to predict local tourists' attitude toward local food. Additionally, the authors contribute to local food tourism by empirically studying the moderating role of personality traits (food neophilia and food neophobia) to examine the direction between local tourists' attitude and intention to local food.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of trust and perceived risk on investment willingness considering the bidirectional relationship between trust and perceived risk in peer-to-peer (P2P) lending.

Data were collected from a leading Chinese P2P platform, PPDAI.com. In total, 328 valid responses were received and analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The results show that the influence of trust on investment willingness is significant, whereas that of perceived risk is insignificant. The results also indicate that platform reputation has a positive effect on trust, and the quality of alternatives is positively associated with perceived risk. In addition, the bidirectional perspective should be preferred to cope with the bidirectional relationship between trust and perceived risk in P2P lending.

This study extends existing research on the influence of trust and perceived risk on investment willingness from a bidirectional perspective, which has not been addressed in the P2P lending context. In addition, this research enriches the current literature about trust and perceived risk by providing more evidence that the relationship between trust and perceived risk is bidirectional and thus the bidirectional model should be preferred. For practice, the study suggests that managers can earn trust and reduce the perceived risk of lenders by continuously providing high-quality products, services and enhancing platform reputation, ultimately improving their investment willingness.