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The digital transformation in the banking industry has brought about complexity and competitiveness which has made differentiation challenging for banks. Complemented by consumer empowerment through high accessibility of information on the internet, this has led to a phenomenon known as switching behavior. The purpose of this review is to examine the determinants governing switching behavior among bank customers. This review highlights the importance of research which looks beyond pre-adoption behavior by examining post-adoption behavior; what happens after initial technology acceptance.

This review examines 44 journal articles researching switching behavior published between 1995 and 2022 in top journals. From a synthesis of literature, a conceptual framework for analysis and understanding switching behavior is presented.

Although various scholars have investigated switching behavior among bank customers, there are few studies which provide a comprehensive review and research classifications in this area. This review classifies key determinants of switching behavior into socio-demographic factors, situational triggers, influential triggers and reactional triggers. Structural equation modelling is the most common research methodology utilized in reviewed articles. The literature review reveals that mediators and moderators are less commonly deployed compared to determinants. Findings also indicate switching behavior studies still lack theory-driven conceptual frameworks.

This paper is the first systematic literature review on switching behavior research among bank customers spanning across 28 years in top academic journals. It integrates insights from 44 relevant research papers through publication trends. This review identifies key research gaps and provides future research directions.

This study aims to examine the role of service customers’ variety-seeking and engagement in driving their service switching intention. The authors also explore the moderating role of customer relationship proneness in this association.

To test the hypotheses, the authors deployed a sample of 227 service customers, whose data was analyzed by using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The findings show that customer engagement mediates the relationship of customer variety-seeking and their service switching intention, as hypothesized. Moreover, customer relationship proneness weakens the negative effect of engagement on customers’ service switching intention.

Though scholarly acumen of customer engagement is rapidly developing, little remains known regarding its theoretical interface with customer variety-seeking and switching intention. Addressing this gap, the authors test a model exploring the mediating role of customer engagement in the association of customer variety-seeking and switching intention, and the potentially moderating role of customer relationship proneness in the association of customer engagement and service switching intention.

Facing the challenges posed by the pandemic of COVID-19, this paper aims to contribute to the resilience of businesses through the development of a real options approach (ROA) that provides alternatives and opportunities for a decision process under situations when future events and outcomes are unknown and not capable of being known from current information.

This paper involves a stochastic modelling process in generating a set of absolute option values, using available data and scenarios from the COVID-19 pandemic event. The modelling and simulations using ROA suggest how strategic portfolios resolve the growing problem during the endemic to all but in the most isolated societies.

This study finds the emergent correlation between circuit breakers and lockdowns, which have brought about a “distorted gravity” effect (inverse growth of global businesses and trades). However, “time-to-build” real options (i.e. deferral, expand, switch and compound exchange) start to function in the adaptive-transformative capabilities for growth opportunities of both government and corporate sectors. Significantly, some sectors grow faster than others while the compound exchange remains primarily challenging. Clearly, the government and corporate sectors are entangled, inevitably, the decoherence allows for the former to change uncertainty in the latter; therefore, government sector options change option values in the corporate sector.

The ROA by empirically focusing on both government and corporate sectors demonstrates under conditions of uncertainty how options in decision-making generate opportunities that hitherto have not been recognised and exercised upon by research in the immediate context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Importantly, the ROA provides an insightful concatenation (capability–behaviour approach) that drives resilience.

On the basis of the approach-avoidance motivation theory, this study aims to examine the role of information confusion in influencing consumer switching intention among social commerce platforms, with the mediating effect of emotional exhaustion and the moderating role of social overload.

This study applied a multi-method quantitative approach including a survey and two experiments. Data were obtained from consumers on popular social commerce platforms in China. The survey's sample size was 327 respondents, whereas a total of 1,621 consumers participated in the two experiments.

Findings from the survey reveal that information confusion affects switching intention directly and indirectly via emotional exhaustion. Moreover, social overload moderates the emotional exhaustion–switching intention relationship and the indirect impact of information confusion on switching intention. Results of the two experiments further confirm the relationships found in the survey.

This study develops and validates a mediation and moderation model which expectedly serves as a framework to better explain consumer switching intention on social commerce platforms. The study also offers fresh insights into consumer switching intention in the unique context of social commerce in an emerging market (i.e. China), which has been largely ignored in the prior literature.

This paper aims to analyse the governance structures of the Indonesian chilli value chain, price volatility issues across the chain and to critically explore the value chain actors' perceptions and responses to price volatility.

The authors used semi-structured interviews with 148 primary actors of the Indonesian chilli value chain. In-depth interviews with 22 key stakeholders – from local, provincial and national levels – were conducted in order to obtain additional information about their roles and the current policies and challenges in the chilli industry. The authors also conducted focus group discussions (FGDs) with farmers and support providers and held a national workshop to gather governance and price volatility risk-related information.

The Indonesian chilli value chains are long, complex and involve multiple actors. Most relationships within the value chains are based on market governance in which price regulates transactions. Most value chain actors shared a similar perception of price volatility and its causes. Under different governance structures, the value chain actors identified production, product characteristics and marketing as a major cause of price volatility. Although strategies applied by the value chain actors varied, in the main they are all aimed at minimising the impact of price volatility. Contractual arrangements are viable alternatives to minimising price risk.

This research relies primarily on qualitative data derived from purposive data collection methods, which may reduce the ability to generalise the findings. A quantitative analysis is required to validate the level of price volatility perceived by the stakeholders and to assess the cause and impact of price volatility across the chain. Future research should focus on proposing and assessing potential policy interventions that address price volatility, in order to facilitate the development of the Indonesian chilli industry.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the governance structures of the Indonesia chilli value chain, the value chain actors' perceptions of price volatility and their responses under the different types of governance in a developing country context.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been widely used as a financial technology (fintech) in the mobile banking (M-banking) domain. However, in the literature, how AI affects users' perceptions of social support and the users' satisfaction and continuance intention (CI) remains unknown. To fill this gap, the two core characteristics of AI, perceived intelligence (PI) and perceived anthropomorphism (PA), are combined with social support theory (SST) (including informational support (IS) and emotional support (ES)) to develop a research model to investigate how PI and PA affect IS and ES, which in turn affect users’ M-banking satisfaction and CI.

This study adopted a random probability sampling method to collect a total of 360 valid responses to verify the proposed model. Partial least squares (PLS) was employed for data analysis.

The results showed that PI and PA both have a significant positive impact on consumers' perception of social support (IS and ES). IS was a direct driver of satisfaction and CI. Surprisingly, although ES was positively associated with satisfaction, the study found that higher levels of ES will decrease CI. This study exposed how AI affects consumers’ satisfaction and CI through SST, and the role of AI in M-banking applications has been further confirmed.

This study expanded the SST to creatively integrate with AI features to reveal the impact of PI and PA on IS and ES, which in turn influence users' M-banking usage.

While existing research explores the impact of audit market competition on audit fees and audit quality, there is limited investigation into how competition in the audit market influences auditors' writing style. This study examines the relationship between audit market competition and the readability of audit reports in Iran, where competition is particularly intense, especially among private audit firms.

The sample comprises 1,050 firm-year observations in Iran from 2012 to 2018. Readability measures, including the Fog index, Flesch-Reading-Ease (FRE) and Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG), are employed to assess the readability of auditors' reports. The Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) is utilized to measure audit market competition, with lower index values indicating higher auditor competition. The concentration measure is multiplied by −1 to obtain the competition measure (AudComp). Alternative readability measures, such as the Flesch–Kincaid (FK) and Automated Readability Index (ARI) are used in additional robustness tests. Data on textual features of audit reports, auditor characteristics and other control variables are manually collected from annual reports of firms listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE).

The regression analysis results indicate a significant and positive association between audit market competition and audit report readability. Furthermore, a stronger positive and significant association is observed among private audit firms, where competition is more intense compared to state audit firms. These findings remain robust when using alternative readability measures and other sensitivity checks. Additional analysis reveals that the positive effect of competition on audit report readability is more pronounced in situations where the auditor remains unchanged and the audit market size is small.

This paper expands the existing literature by examining the impact of audit market competition on audit report readability. It focuses on a unique audit market (Iran), where competition among audit firms is more intense than in developed countries due to the liberalization of the Iranian audit market in 2001 and the establishment of numerous private audit firms.

The issue is which third-party logistics to engage, and escalating customer complaints about service quality of third-party logistics (3PL) enhances the tendency of online retailers to switch to another 3PL. The current study seeks to investigate the factors influencing the satisfaction and switching intention of 3PL services among online sellers in Malaysia.

Applying a purposive sampling method, data were gathered via an online survey among online sellers. Initially, the system gathered 418 respondents, but only 311 were useable for further analysis. Since we operationalised the measures as composites, a combination of reflective and formative measurement in the study and the study focuses on explanatory and predictive purposes, partial least squares structural equation modelling with SmartPLS 4 was applied to test the model developed.

The results indicated that conflict handling had a positive effect on satisfaction, and satisfaction had a negative relationship with the switching intention of 3PL among the online retailers. Moreover, satisfaction and customer relationship management sequentially mediated conflict handling and switching intention, whereas CRM strengthens the negative relationship between satisfaction and switching intention.

The respondents only limit to the online sellers in Malaysia which based on purposive sampling method, thus the findings cannot be generalised to another countries.

The study offers insightful information for the managers of the 3PL in crafting a better policy to avoid switching behaviour among their customers. The conflict between customers and providers is unavoidable since consumers have unlimited demand and businesses have limited resources. The findings also benefit online sellers and 3PL service providers to create attractive marketing strategies for business sustainability.

The study developed a new model for the 3PL studies using the S-O-R model in introducing conflict handling and customer relationship management as the stimulus, customer's satisfaction as an organism and switching intention as a response. The study introduced single and sequential mediators also contributes to the S-O-R theory to predict the switching intention among the online sellers towards the 3PL providers. Another important contribution, customer relationship management, was confirmed to play a moderating role to influence the relationship between satisfaction and switching intention.

The objective of this paper is to establish a solution strategy for obtaining dual solutions, namely trivial (conventional) and nontrivial (unconventional) solutions, of coupled pore-fluid flow and chemical dissolution problems in heterogeneous porous media.

Through applying a perturbation to the pore-fluid velocity, original governing partial differential equations of a coupled pore-fluid flow and chemical dissolution problem in heterogeneous porous media are transformed into perturbed ones, which are then solved by using the semi-analytical finite element method. Through switching off and on the applied perturbation terms in the resulting perturbed governing partial differential equations, both the trivial and nontrivial solutions can be obtained for the original governing partial differential equations of the coupled pore-fluid flow and chemical dissolution problem in fluid-saturated heterogeneous porous media.

When a coupled pore-fluid flow and chemical dissolution system is in a stable state, the trivial and nontrivial solutions of the system are identical. However, if a coupled pore-fluid flow and chemical dissolution system is in an unstable state, then the trivial and nontrivial solutions of the system are totally different. This recognition can be equally used to judge whether a coupled pore-fluid flow and chemical dissolution system involving heterogeneous porous media is in a stable state or in an unstable state. The proposed solution strategy can produce dual solutions for simulating coupled pore-fluid flow and chemical dissolution problems in fluid-saturated heterogeneous porous media.

A solution strategy is proposed to obtain the nontrivial solution, which is often overlooked in the computational simulation of coupled pore-fluid flow and chemical dissolution problems in fluid-saturated heterogeneous porous media. The proposed solution strategy provides a useful way for understanding the underlying dynamic mechanisms of the chemical damage effect associated with the stability of structures that are built on soil foundations.

The halal cosmetics industry continues to grow significantly. Furthermore, using halal cosmetics is a must for Muslims. This study aims to analyze the factors influencing the switching intention to halal cosmetics in Indonesia.

This quantitative study uses a Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) on 214 respondents. The variables include halal certification, halal awareness, product image, perceived behavioral control, subjective norm, attitude, advertisement and switching intention.

The product image plays the most influential role in deriving the attitude toward switching intention to halal cosmetics, following perceived behavioral control, halal awareness and subjective norm, but not halal certification and advertisement. The result indicates that the image of halal cosmetics influences customers’ attitudes toward switching to using halal cosmetics. Indonesian customers know the obligation to use halal products because they are Muslim. However, the existence of halal certification does not derive the switching intention to halal cosmetics.

This study conducts research only in Indonesia. As a recommendation, further studies might conduct a comparative test using multicultural respondents in several countries. Other studies also suggested examining factors of switching intention through different generational, especially in countries with high individualism traits.

This study will encourage the halal industry, especially the halal cosmetics industry, to pay more attention to the product image. Meanwhile, the government can provide incentives or rewards to promote industry participation in halal cosmetics. The findings provide a more detailed understanding of how product image can influence someone to switch to halal cosmetics.

Research on switching intention to halal cosmetics is still limited. This study uses halal variables, while previous studies only used religiosity. This study also introduced the product images motivating customers’ switching intention to use halal cosmetics.