Search results

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships between value orientation, i.e. terminal and instrumental values, consumer sustainability consciousness and behavioral intentions toward environmental-friendly products and its influence on the sustainable development goals (SDGs) endorsement.

Structured questionnaires were administered on 410 respondents from northwestern India. The two-step approach proposed by Anderson and Gerbing (1988) was employed to assess the measurement and structural models.

Terminal and instrumental values influenced consumer sustainability consciousness. Sustainability consciousness influenced behavioral intentions which endorsed consumers' SDG. Instrumental value had a greater impact on consumer sustainability consciousness and behavioral intentions than terminal value. Consumer sustainability consciousness partially mediated the relationship between terminal/instrumental value and behavioral intentions for SDG endorsement.

The findings will help marketers to endorse SDG promotion by linking them with values and develop an understanding of consumers' sustainability consciousness for SDG implementation.

Green marketers, policymakers and SDG promoters should develop messages to communicate and emphasize the importance of purchasing environmental-friendly products. From a functional perspective, it affects instrumentality orientation and societal responsibility toward the implementation of SDG.

The current study proposed an action-oriented, integrated, aspirational and universally applicable SDG framework. The findings may pioneer the way forward for sustainability-oriented consumption.

This research is the first of its kind that examined the relationships between value orientations (Rokeach, 1973) and their effect on consumer sustainability consciousness and behavioral intentions in SDG milieu.

Additive manufacturing (AM) is expected to significantly transform the operations in manufacturing sector. It is also proposed to have optimistic applications in the medical supply chains (SC). However, its adoption in medical sector is faced with a range of barriers. Motivated by the need to establish an AM-based medical SC in a developing economy, the present paper analyses the potential barriers that would hinder the adoption of AM in medical SC.

Based on an extensive literature review and expert discussions, 12 significant barriers have been identified, which are analysed using an integrated interpretive structural modelling–analytical network process (ISM–ANP) methodology. An interrelationship between these barriers using ISM has been analysed to determine the driving-dependence power of these barriers using MICMAC (Matrice d' Impacts Croises-Multiplication Applique' e a' Classement) analysis. The barriers are then ranked using the ANP approach.

It has been focussed that the non-availability of a variety of materials, lack of education and training to designers and workers and production technology limitation are the most critical barriers. The results suggest that the managers should give greater significance to the technological and organizational barriers.

An approach to overcome these barriers can help the managers and organizations to develop successful AM-based SCs. The study is the first to identify and analyse the barriers for successful adoption of AM in medical SC context.

The purpose of this study was to optimize meat slices for processing attributes to produce better sensory features in developed products from buffalo veal and chevon. The processing parameters such as meat particle size, fat content and binding ability without chopping were the subject of this study.

The study involved three experiments where the particle size, fat content and tumbling time were optimized for optimum binding and improvement in different sensory attributes of product followed by physico-chemical analysis.

The sensory scores clearly indicated that meat slices prepared from 3 mm meat particle size, 10% fat content and 1 h tumbling time were having best sensory features. The selected product was analyzed for different physico-chemical properties. Emulsion stability and cooking yield revealed significantly (p = 0.01) higher values of 91.6% and 89.7%, respectively, in buffalo veal than in values of 87.6% and 84.9%, respectively, in the chevon product. Similarly the results showed that buffalo veal slices had significantly (p = 0.01) higher (17.4%) protein than the chevon (15.2%), whereas chevon slices had significantly (p = 0.01) higher (10.3%) fat content. The texture profile analysis indicated that cohesiveness (p = 0.01) and chewiness (p = 0.05) were significantly higher in chevon product than in buffalo veal.

The study was conducted to explore the buffalo veal as a potential source of quality meat, as majority of buffalo meat produced in India from spent animals have compromised quality attributes. The comparison was done with chevon, the most popular red meat in the country for the comparative study.

The purpose of this paper is to bridge together seemingly disparate yet interconnected paradigmatic antecedents of e-tailing and servicescape, i.e., product assortment, order fulfillment, shopping assistance and its consequences for shopping efficiency.

The proposed conceptual model is well grounded in the extensive literature from e-tailing as well as retailing domain and to assess the plausibility of the model. Total 246 female online apparel shoppers were surveyed from an Indian university and the data were analyzed using structural equation modeling through SmartPLS.

The outcomes of the study indicate that the e-customer may derive a substantial share of shopping assistance and service interface through product assortment offered by e-tailing sites. Customer-perceived performance of this e-shopping process – a crucial element of e-tail servicescape – directly affects the shopping assistance, along with order fulfillment capability of retail scope.

The study used a sample of graduate students at a north-west university in India, which limits the generalizability of the research to other consumer groups. The paper links a significant body of literature within a conceptually developed framework and identifies key research areas in the e-tailing realm.

By better understanding the role of product assortment as a value-added feature in online value co-creation process, the e-tail managers can leverage the proposed integrated capability to improve e-tailing performance and customer outcomes in the form of business.

With rapid advancements in internet-led communication, we are witnessing the dawn of a new era of e-tail innovations around us which is expected to change the way people experience shopping.

This research is an attempt to enrich the level of understanding about online shopping environment in light of relationships among virtual and physical facets of e-tail, i.e., product assortment, order fulfillment, shopping assistance and shopping efficiency. The authors investigate customer-perceived product assortment performance in e-tailing and its significances on shopping outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to study the underlying relationships among two distinct forms of consumer values, namely, instrumental and terminal values, fashion consciousness and behavioural intentions in the context of online fashion apparel retail sector.

A conceptual model and subsequent measurement scale were developed, grounded on in-depth review of the extensive literature and validated with customers engaged in online shopping of fashion apparels. The model was empirically examined, and a total of 395 responses were gathered from an online survey administered at a northeastern university in India. The model was validated using structural equation modelling, and a two-step approach suggested by Anderson and Gerbing (1988) was used to evaluate the measurement and structural models for the research.

The results of the study indicate that instrumental and terminal values significantly affect fashion consciousness, and fashion consciousness has a significant impact on behavioural intentions as well. The research brings out that fashion consciousness acts as a partial mediator between instrumental/terminal values and behavioural intentions. It is noteworthy that compared to terminal values instrumental values display a greater influence on both the variables fashion consciousness and behavioural intentions.

The conclusion of present research will notably assist the fashion retailers, online marketing researchers and experts understand the importance of terminal and instrumental values in increasing fashion consciousness, leading to strategically design campaigns for promoting and instigate consumers’ positive behavioural intentions in the best interest of the online fashion retail sector.

The study results provide suggestions for competitive marketing strategies for online fashion companies operating in the emerging markets like India.

The present study is first of its kind attempt to use Rokeach’s (1973) two-dimensional measure of human values, in order to discover the terminal and instrumental values relationship and their influence on fashion consciousness and behavioural intentions in the online fashion retail industry.

The surface roughness of additively manufactured parts is usually found to be high. This limits their use in industrial and biomedical applications. Therefore, these parts required post-processing to improve their surface quality. The purpose of this study is to finish three-dimensional (3D) printed acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and polylactic acid (PLA) parts using abrasive flow machining (AFM).

A hydrogel-based abrasive media has been developed to finish 3D printed parts. The developed abrasive media has been characterized for its rheology and thermal stability using sweep tests, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and differential thermal analysis (DTA). The ABS and PLA cylindrical parts have been prepared using fused deposition modeling (FDM) and finished using AFM. The experiments were designed using Taguchi (L9 OA) method. The effect of process parameters such as extrusion pressure (EP), layer thickness (LT) and abrasive concentration (AC) was investigated on the amount of material removed (MR) and percentage improvement in surface roughness (%ΔR_a).

The developed abrasive media was found to be effective for finishing FDM printed parts using AFM. The microscope images of unfinished and finished showed a significant improvement in surface topography of additively manufactures parts after AFM. The results reveal that AC is the most significant parameter during the finishing of ABS parts. However, EP and AC are the most significant parameters for MR and %ΔR_a, respectively, during the finishing of PLA parts.

The FDM technology has applications in the biomedical, electronics, aeronautics and defense sectors. PLA has good biodegradable and biocompatible properties, so widely used in biomedical applications. The ventilator splitters fabricated using FDM have a profile similar to the shape used in the present study.

The present study is focused on finishing FDM printed cylindrical parts using AFM. Future research may be done on the AFM of complex shapes and freeform surfaces printed using different additive manufacturing (AM) techniques.

An abrasive media consists of xanthan gum, locust bean gum and fumed silica has been developed and characterized. An experimental study has been performed by combining printing parameters of FDM and finishing parameters of AFM. A comparative analysis in MR and %ΔR_a has been reported between 3D printed ABS and PLA parts.

Industrial Relations and People Management.

Graduate or Postgraduate level, Executive working in manufacturing sector.

This case highlights the industrial relation issues in a public sector undertaking, a government-owned company in India. The case depicted the issues taken place in the company in the year 2015-2016. The primary data were collected by a working professional, who dealt with and was involved in the scenarios discussed in the case. Other modes such as in-depth interviews were also taken as per requirements. This case also highlights the importance of roles of unions and association in these organizations. Factors which are important to maintain industrial harmony were analyzed and their perspective with respect to production loss were addressed.

Every employee must be dealt with in a dignified manner with rationale. Hierarchy is required to be in place but doesn’t need to be authoritative. Be communicative and transparent while taking action. There should be no compromise on indiscipline at workplace and decision to be taken accordingly. Manage conflict by involving all the concerned authorities from outset. The analysis of the case shows that if the rationale was followed while managing the people it will lead to industrial harmony. Role of trade unions and association will prove beneficial as they will become a part of creating a solution in the matter of discords, ensuring growth for the company and its employees. It is important to mention here that the case was developed on the basis of the first-hand experience of the author.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 6: Human Resource Management.

The study aims to investigate the consumers' adoption of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) using socio-cognitive perceptions and socio-demographic moderators in an emerging sustainable mobility market.

The conceptual model is analyzed via path analysis using online survey data collected from Indian respondents.

The findings substantiate to a greater extent the linkage of social-cognitive perceptions-attitude-intention with the moderation of socio-demographic variables and mediation of attitude towards BEV.

The study advocates several interesting theoretical and policy implications offering guidance to academics, policymakers and corporate professionals to encourage the adoption of BEVs in the milieu of the budding transportation industry.

The study is built upon a social-psychological linkage framework of ‘perceptions-attitude-intention’. Previous studies have overlooked the impact of social-psychological attributes and the socio-demographic moderators in envisaging the adoption of BEV, which largely remained understudied in the Indian backdrop.

The main aim of this research was to investigate the effectiveness of various strengthening techniques in restoring the structural performance of reinforced concrete (RC) beams damaged by elevated temperatures.

Three different strengthening techniques, namely, high-strength fibre reinforced concrete (HSFRC), ferrocement (FC) jacketing and externally bonded fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) were used. Series of RC beams were casted, heated, strengthened and tested to investigate the influence of various variables. The variables of the study were type of strengthening and level of heat damage.

Externally bonded FRP was found to be the best among the various techniques, especially with respect to strength and stiffness restoration. On the contrary, the FRP strengthening was not that effective in restoring the energy absorption capacity of beams compared to HSFRC and FC techniques of strengthening. The chosen strengthening techniques were able to restore the failure mode of beams to flexural failure, which was found to have changed to shear failure in case of heated unstrenghthened beams.

This research program has contributed to the fundamental understanding of designing post fire retrofit solutions for RC beams.

The purpose of this paper is to fabricate the scaffolds with different pore architectures using additive manufacturing and analyze its mechanical and biological properties for bone tissue engineering applications.

The polylactic acid (PLA)/composite filament were fabricated through single screw extrusion and scaffolds were printed with four different pore architectures, i.e. circle, square, triangle and parallelogram with fused deposition modelling. Afterwards, scaffolds were coated with hydroxyapatite (HA) using dip coating technique. Various physical and thermo-mechanical tests have been conducted to confirm the feasibility. Furthermore, the biological tests were conducted with MG63 fibroblast cell lines to investigate the biocompatibility of the developed scaffolds.

The scaffolds were successfully printed with different pore architectures. The pore size of the scaffolds was found to be nearly 1,500 µm, and porosity varied between 53% and 63%. The fabricated circular pore architecture resulted in highest average compression strength of 13.7 MPa and modulus of 525 MPa. The characterizations showed the fidelity of the work. After seven days of cell culture, it was observed that the developed composites were non-toxic and supported cellular activities. The coating of HA made the scaffolds bioactive, showing higher wettability, degradation and high cellular responses.

The research attempts highlight the development of novel biodegradable and biocompatible polymer (PLA)/bioactive ceramic (Al₂O₃) composite for additive manufacturing with application in the tissue engineering field.