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The purpose of this study is to empirically probe into the impact of product-related factors on the purchase intention (PI) of luxury products by Muslim consumers in Malaysia and their commitment to purchase (CP) these products. It tests if PI influences CP and how moderating variables affect the PI–CP relationship in the context of purchase of such products.

Data were collected from a sample of 186 Muslim consumers drawn through a series of carefully conducted mall intercept interviews in six major shopping malls located in different parts of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, using a structured, self-administered survey questionnaire. Data were analyzed using a moderated regression analysis.

Although Islam does not seem to encourage spending on luxuries, sampled Muslim consumers did not seem to have much inhibition about purchasing luxury products. Their PI was found to be significantly influenced by product advantage and brand awareness, while PI–CP relationship pertaining to luxury products appeared to be positive. Of the two moderating variables examined in the study, only advertising exposure was found to strengthen the PI–CP relationship, while perceived risk, the other moderating variable, seemed to weaken it.

As the study was conducted in a single country setting (i.e. Malaysia), the findings may lack generalizability. Future researchers may enlarge the scope of the study by including other countries, particularly other Muslim countries, to obtain generalized findings.

Manufacturers as well as marketers of luxury products should emphasize the product-related factors in their promotional efforts and increase familiarity of the brand through repeated exposures for brand recognition and brand recall.

This study also provides food for thought for Muslim scholars and researchers about the Muslim consumer psyche.

To date, this is the first research undertaking to empirically study the PI–CP relationship in the context of purchase of luxury products in a predominantly Muslim country. The study will be useful to marketers, academics and other researchers working in this area.

Despite its immense potentials as a sustainable and innovative means to solve specific social problems, the basic concept of the social business model (SBM) advanced by Professor Muhammad Yunus remains unclear to many. There exists no literature that objectively compares this model from empowerment and economic growth perspectives with other seemingly similar concepts, such as social enterprise, non-governmental organization (NGO) and corporate social responsibility. Although many NGOs have been showing increasing interest towards the adoption of the SBM to minimize social problems sustainably, lack of conceptual clarity of the model limits the scope of its adoption in addressing social issues. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This study is based on a systematic search, analysis and review of literature. It has made use of narrative synthesis of relevant literature on a diverse range of socially oriented models, frameworks and interventions.

This study identified five key aspects of social business, namely: business’s mission and outcomes, characteristics, operation, resource utilization and environmental considerations. Based on these five key aspects one may like to infer that unlike other social interventions, the alignment of SBM is specific to empowerment of disadvantaged people leading to sustainable economic growth. Analyzing a range of social business interventions in a developing country, Bangladesh, through the lens five key aspects demonstrates that social business is the most efficient way to sustainably maximize the social benefits and minimize specific social issues poverty of the people affected.

This study discusses the scopes of adopting SBM for the socially responsible organizations for sustainable empowerment and economic growth in emerging economies.

Researchers have paid little attention to elucidating how customer-perceived innovative apparel attributes are linked to brand reputation and consumer buying behaviors. This study intends to bridge that gap by providing empirical evidence on the effects of product novelty, product difference and product inimitability on brand reputation and behavioral intentions in the context of garment purchasing. We also investigate the moderating effects of self-congruity and value consciousness on the attribute‒brand reputation linkages, as well as their immediate influence on the domain variables.

The proposed model was estimated using data from a web-based survey of 299 female apparel customers. Structural equation modeling was employed to test the relationships between variables.

The results indicate that product novelty, product inimitability, self-congruity and value consciousness significantly influence brand reputation. The results also demonstrate that self-congruity, value consciousness and brand reputation have direct effects on behavioral intention, while self-congruity and value consciousness appear to moderate the relationship between innovative product attributes and brand reputation.

This study is the first to present a conceptual model that systematically encompasses product innovation, brand perceptions and behavioral links in the field of women's clothing. The findings have important implications for both academics and practitioners in the field of fashion marketing.

Considering the significance of customer satisfaction and commitment in the competitive banking industry of developing countries, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the alternative relationships of satisfaction with various types of commitment, benefits, quality and trust. It also attempts to identify the interrelationships among three types of trust, namely, competence, contractual and goodwill, as well as affective, calculative and normative commitment.

Structural equation modelling (AMOS-based) is used to analyse data collected from a survey of 212 bank customers in Bangladesh.

Findings show that satisfaction has a significant impact on affective, calculative and normative commitment, as well as on competence, contractual and goodwill trust. While core and relational service qualities, and confidence and social benefits influence the level of satisfaction, tangible service quality and special treatment benefit seem to have no significant effect on satisfaction. Finally, all three types of trust are found to have a strong influence on affective commitment; however, contractual trust and competence trust are found to have no impact on calculative and normative commitment.

The paper provides insights for bank management in order to understand the relative importance of each type of trust, commitment, quality and benefit, and their relationships with satisfaction.

It is the first to take the initiative to test a large range of relationships in a single study to better understand customer satisfaction in the banking industry in a developing country context.

The purpose of this paper is to report the results of a study undertaken to investigate the gift‐giving behavior of consumers in the People's Republic of China (PRC) during the Chinese New Year and the influence exerted by Chinese cultural values on such behavior.

Using a survey among a large sample of people in the city of Tianjin, gift‐giving behavior was measured by the importance accorded to gift‐giving, the amount given, the effort spent on gift selection and brand orientation when selecting gifts. The cultural values examined were renqing (human obligations), guanxi (relationship), yuan (destiny or fate), reciprocity, family orientation and Mianzi (face). Factor analysis and structural equation modeling were used to analyze the data.

Results indicated that Chinese cultural values as a whole as well as most of its components investigated in this research had positive effects on the various gift‐giving behaviors. The “face” component was, however, found to affect only the importance attached to gift‐giving, the amount given and the choice of brand.

Research results should be interpreted with caution as the study was limited to Tianjin – one of the several major cities in the PRC. Also the Chinese New Year may not be representative of other occasions when gifts are exchanged.

The results of this investigation would benefit practitioners involved in the marketing of “gift items” in the PRC by providing them with a clear understanding of the general consumption patterns of the PRC urban consumers, insights into the various antecedents of gift‐giving and linking them with various aspects of Chinese cultural values. The research findings would also benefit researchers, academics and others interested in the PRC market by making them familiar with some of the salient aspects that characterize Chinese consumers.

This study develops a new model describing the relationships among values (Chinese cultural value and personal value), motivation for gift‐giving and gift‐giving behavior. It also develops new scales for measuring the constructs such as Chinese cultural values, motivation for gift‐giving and gift‐giving behavior.

The purpose of this research is to empirically investigate the impact of religious commitment of Muslim consumers in a non‐Muslim country on their purchase decision‐making process and develop a broad‐based taxonomy of these consumers based on that. It also aims at identifying the sources of information that Muslim consumers perceive to be most important in influencing their decision making and then measuring them in terms of consumer trust and influence. Finally, it intends to examine the effect of product information/labelling on the decision making of different categories of Muslim consumers.

The study uses responses obtained from a convenient sample of Muslim consumers living in various suburbs of Sydney metropolitan area, who are the main grocery buyers of their respective households. It utilizes a single cross‐sectional design employing a combination of computer assisted and self‐completion survey.

The research reports that food and personal hygiene products, generally viewed as low‐involvement products in the non‐Muslim cultures, are actually high involvement products to religious Muslims. Religious commitment appears to be an antecedent to Muslim consumers' involvement in the brand decision but not in the product decision. There are four decision segments within the Muslim market; each tends to vary with respect to information search for the purchase of food and personal hygiene products, depending on their trust on information presented on labels and product packaging.

Consideration of only three decision‐making outcomes, use of a convenient sample drawn from a single Australian city are the two major limitations which might have resulted in overestimation of research results, reducing their generalizability.

The research results suggest the importance of adopting marketing strategies to stimulate product/brand purchase or trial for Muslim consumers. Results also show how product labelling impacts purchase decisions of Muslims and how best to design labels and product packaging for them.

This is an original research that both marketing practitioners and researchers would find useful. It also identifies certain areas for future research.

The study investigates different roles (antecedent, mediator and moderator roles) of customer involvement in rapport and satisfaction. It is also designed to reveal the comparative impact of three types of relational benefits (confidential, social and special treatment benefits) on customer involvement.

Structural equation modeling (using Amos) is used for analyzing the data, collected from a survey of 212 sample respondents of the private commercial banking sector.

Results suggest that customer involvement does have antecedent and mediated influence on rapport-satisfaction link while the moderation impact of customer involvement is not supported. In contrast, social treatment benefit is found as the most important relational benefit for developing customer involvement in Bangladesh followed by confidence and special treatment benefit.

Findings will assist bank management to set effective future strategies and to manage successful relationships with customers in order to motivate customer satisfaction with the bank. But the study may suffer from lack of generalization and poor sample representation as it focuses on a single country (Bangladesh) and a single industry (banking sector).

The paper for the first time attempts to reveal antecedent, mediator and moderator role of customer involvement in rapport and satisfaction. It also identifies the level of importance among three relational benefits for Bangladeshi bank customers.

Recent times have witnessed a heightened global interest in outsourcing of logistics functions. This is indicated by the volume of writings on the subject in various scholarly journals, trade publications and popular magazines. However, efforts to organize them in an integrated body of knowledge appear to be very limited. Keeping this in view, this paper makes an attempt to develop a comprehensive literature on outsourcing based on more than 100 published articles, papers and books on the subject.

The current trend of changes in global business is highlighting the importance of logistics in the development of Third World business and industries. Literature reveals that many of these Third World nations lack logistics facilities; the task of developing a good logistics system in these nations is quite challenging. Attempts to understand these challenges by looking at Bangladesh, a new entrant from the Third World in the globalization race. Based on a survey of the country’s logisticians, identifies five broad challenges facing logistics development in Bangladesh and proposes a schematic model that integrates efforts of, and inputs from, four sources to solve these problems. Argues that the proposed model is also adaptable in other developing nations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of calculative, affective and normative commitment on bank employee-customer rapport and customer satisfaction. The mediating effect of rapport between each of the three types of commitment and customer satisfaction is also examined.

Structural equation modelling by Partial Least Square method is used for analysing the data on 212 bank customers in Bangladesh.

Results indicate that affective and normative commitment of customers has strong influence in developing rapport, whereas the impact of customers’ calculative commitment on rapport was found to be non-significant. The study also found that rapport has a complementary mediation effect between the three types of commitment and customer satisfaction.

While providing training to front line employees, bank management should make them aware that not all customers may have the same level of positive attitude or cooperation for the rapport-building procedure. Employees should understand that different customers will respond differently to their efforts for building rapport due to their pre-existing commitment levels towards banks. Bank management should acknowledge that customers’ current level of commitment may be further strengthened or weakened by successful or unsuccessful rapport building with banks’ employees and thereby re-evaluate their satisfaction level with the bank.

The study contributes to the relationship literature by exploring the mediating role of rapport between commitment and customer satisfaction, and by considering the influence of normative commitment on customer-employee rapport in financial services.