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The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of the marketing mix, customer perceptions, and religion on the buying decision of Islamic banking products in an emerging market namely the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

This study adopts a quantitative approach to analyze the data of 435 respondents collected through an online survey during January–February 2022. Data analysis of direct and moderating relationships are done through Smart PLS (partial least squares) using structural equation modelling (SEM) technique.

The results indicate that marketing mix (product, price, place and promotion) and customer perceptions have a positive direct relation with the buying decision of Islamic banking products in the UAE. However, moderation analysis shows that religion is a non-significant moderator for the above relationships.

This study combines potential variables from the perspectives of marketing, human mindset, and individual beliefs. The findings of this study provide a wider understanding of consumer behavior toward Islamic banking products. Marketers of the Islamic banking industry can utilize these findings for effective market segmentation and well-crafted marketing strategies. This will ultimately contribute to the sustainable growth and development of the Islamic banking industry in the UAE and other regions.

This study aims to examine small-firm shifts in behavior during major supply chain disruptions that change supply chains permanently. The study focuses on small to mid-sized enterprise (SME) responses to suppliers’ opportunistic behaviors within a larger disruptive environment. The study addresses two broad research questions: how do small businesses adapt to supply chain disruptions, and under what conditions are such adoptions warranted?

This study used mixed methods, a qualitative netnography and a quantitative analysis of survey data. It tested a model based on responses from members of an online business-to-business community. The model development was driven by the findings from netnography and two theoretical lenses.

The responses suggested a strong relationship between the two theoretical approaches. The conditions described by the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm led to many real options. Supply chain disruptions and deceptive suppliers triggered rapid adaptation through traditional marketing tactics and strategies. Changes in the supply chain, and place, led to responses in price, promotion and product. Respondents hoarded, developed relationships with new, nonopportunistic suppliers and changed prices, products and product mixes. They developed cooperative relationships – coopetition – to deal with shared problems.

This study interprets supply chain disruptions through the lens of marketing in SMEs; it combines qualitative and quantitative methods to better understand supply chain disruptions in a marketing context; it applies the real options theory and the RBV of the firm to marketing in the context of supply chain disruptions, and it reflects real-time small-firm behavior in a crisis.

Advancements in responsive manufacturing have been supporting companies over the last few decades. However, manufacturers now operate in a context of continuous uncertainty. This research paper explores a mechanism where companies can “elastically” provision and deprovision their production capacity, to enable them in coping with repeated disruptions. Such a mechanism is facilitated by the imitability and substitutability of production resources.

An inductive study was conducted using Gioia methodology for this theory generation research. Respondents from 20 UK manufacturing companies across multiple industrial sectors reflected on their experience during COVID-19. Resource-based view and resource dependence theory were employed to analyse the manufacturers' use of internal and external production resources.

The study identifies elastic responses at four operational levels: production-line, factory, company and supply chain. Elastic responses that imposed variable-costs were particularly well-suited for coping with unforeseen disruptions. Further, the imitability and substitutability of manufacturers helped others produce alternate goods during the crisis.

While uniqueness of production capability helps manufacturers sustain competitive advantage against competitors during stable operations, imitability and substitutability are beneficial during a crisis. Successful manufacturing companies need to combine these two approaches to respond effectively to repeated disruptions in a context of ongoing uncertainties. The theoretical contribution is in characterising responsive manufacturing in terms of resource heterogeneity and resource homogeneity, with elastic resourcing as the underlying mechanism.

Equipment performance helps the manufacturing sector achieve operational and financial improvements despite process variations. However, the literature lacks a clear index or metric to quantify the monetary advantages of enhanced equipment performance. Thus, the paper presents two innovative monetary performance measures to estimate the financial advantages of enhancing equipment performance by isolating the effect of manufacturing fluctuations such as product mix price, direct and indirect characteristics, and cost changes.

The research provides two measures, ISB (Improvement Saving Benefits) and IEB (Improvement Earning Benefits), to assess equipment performance improvements. The effectiveness of the metrics is validated through a three stages approach, namely (1) experts' binary opinion, (2) sample, and (3) actual cases. The relevant data may be collected through accounting systems, purpose-built software, or electronic spreadsheets.

The findings suggest that both measures provide an effective cost–benefit analysis of equipment performance enhancement. The measure ISB indicates savings from performance increases when equipment capacity is greater than product demand. IEB is utilised when equipment capacity is less than product demand. Both measurements may replace the unitary cost variation, which is subject to manufacturing changes.

Manufacturing businesses may utilise the ISB and IEB metrics to conduct a systematic analysis of equipment performance and to appreciate the financial savings perspective in order to emphasise profitability in the short and long term.

The study introduces two novel financial equipment performance improvement indicators that distinguish the effects of manufacturing variations. Manufacturing variations cause cost advantages from operational improvements to be misrepresented. There is currently no approach for manufacturing organisations to calculate the financial advantages of enhancing equipment performance while isolating production irregularities.

The purpose of this article is based on the unit patent license fee model in the closed-loop supply chain.

This paper analyzes the impact of the bundling strategy of the retailer selling new products and remanufactured products on the closed-loop supply chain under the condition that the original manufacturer produces new products and the remanufacturer produces remanufacturing products.

The results show that alternative products can be bundled, and in many cases, the bundling of remanufactured products and new products is better than selling alone.

If the retailer chooses bundling, for the remanufacturer, when certain conditions are met, the benefits of bundling are greater than the separate sales at that time; for the original manufacturer, when the recycling price sensitivity coefficient is high, the bundling is better than separate sales.

Augmented reality (AR) has emerged as a new interactive technology, swiftly transforming the field of marketing. Driven by its rapid uptake in marketing practices, academic research on AR has proliferated. This study aims to offer a holistic view of the past, present and future of augmented reality marketing (ARM) scholarship by analyzing its current and evolving research profile as well as its social and conceptual structures to inspire further research.

This study enriches the ARM scholarship by integrating a quantitative bibliometric analysis with a chronological-thematic review and a qualitative content analysis to develop a more comprehensive understanding of this novel area and suggest future research courses.

The bibliometric analysis reveals the key performance indicators as well as the social and conceptual structure of the ARM research field. The chronological-thematic review exhibits the advancement of ARM research over time and forecasts the emerging trends for the domain. Finally, the content analysis of recent articles reveals the current research hotspots and provides future research directions.

The database limits the selection of literature, as the information in databases such as Scopus is updated regularly, resulting in alterations in the number of articles and citations.

AR developers and brand managers may use this study’s findings to understand the current ARM landscape better and make strategic decisions based on AR adoption and consumption patterns.

This study is singular in using a mixed methods approach by integrating the findings from bibliometric and content analyses for more reliable results and to offer a holistic perspective of the ARM sector, thereby significantly advancing the field of technology-led marketing.

The purpose of this study is to conduct a systematic study of important research trends and published electronic word of mouth (eWOM) studies over the past 20 years in the emerging economy. This research is designed to identify the key areas of eWOM based on the Antecedents-Consequence-Intervention (ACI) framework. This paper is also aimed to analyze the current research status of each WOM area and critically review each area for developing future research directions.

616 articles were selected from 112 journals for in-depth review analysis. For the systematic review of articles, an ACI framework was adopted. This paper used systematic review analysis methodology to critically analyze important research studies in each area of the ACI framework with a set of research questions.

Results identify six significant areas of eWOM, i.e. WOM antecedents, outcomes, senders, receivers, eWOM platform and eWOM management representing the whole environment. The result highlights increasing research interest on mixed eWOM and rich eWOM content and market-level source credibility factors. Research also identifies research gaps based on the ACI framework.

Analyzing the recent trends in the eWOM environment with the SLR approach and linking these trends to the ACI framework with a future research agenda in the emerging market indicated a pioneering attempt in eWOM research.

Interviewing the protagonist and collecting information from secondary resources such as company documents, company and competitor websites, industry reports and online databases like Euromonitor International.

The case explores the metamorphosis of JK Masale from a small-scale family business in India to a regional player. Over a period of six decades, JK Masale (JKM) has emerged against the backdrop of a fiercely competitive spice industry. India, being a confluence of varied regional cultures, poses a diverse consumption pattern. It varies to a great extent with respect to the specific food habits prevalent in each climatic zone of the country. While the brand had successfully captured the Eastern Market and the western market of the country, Mr. Vikash Jain, Managing Director of JK Masale, contemplated to venture in Southern India and introduce new product categories. The case delves into one of the major challenges faced by JKM over the brand architecture and labelling across product categories. Thus, the case provides an excellent opportunity for budding managers to: analyse the company’s performance in the backdrop of a dynamic competitive environment; understand the nature of strategic decision-making and its appropriateness for a small family-owned business; evaluate a brand amongst brands on the architectural framework and select appropriate brand architecture for new products; and understand applicability and risks associated with growth strategies.

The case study can be positioned in both undergraduate and postgraduate level programs for courses on marketing strategy and brand management. Primarily, this case would be ideal to discuss brand relationship and brand architecture in the given context. Instructors have an option to cover concepts like market structure, company analysis, growth strategies and emergent and deliberate strategy through the case.

The case study offers interesting learning possibilities and offers the following learning opportunities to the learner. assess and conduct a macro- and micro-environmental analysis, comprehend the nature of the competitive landscape and how it changes when one looks at a digital-only versus an omnichannel marketplace, examine the product mix and policy of the firm and evaluate how it delivers customer value and analyse the pros and cons of growth strategies available to a firm and arrive at a viable and actionable future business and product strategy.

The short case study presents the story of a young start-up called Country Delight. The firm began operations in 2011 and was the brainchild of Chakradhar Gade and Nitin Kaushal. The direct-to-consumer firm addressed urban consumers’ non-articulated, latent need to get “fresh and uncontaminated” milk to their doorstep. Country Delight delivered farmer-to-consumer fresh cow and buffalo milk and milk products based on a well-designed and efficient value chain where the supply chain was either wholly owned or quality monitored by the firm. The firm began operations in India’s National Capital Region and was spread across 15 metro cities. Slowly, over the years, Gade and Kaushal added more product categories.Country Delight had a subscriber base of around 500,000, and the ambitious duo wanted to double their subscriber base and reach one million subscribers by financial year 2025. The firm was looking at various paths to achieve this number. Should Country Delight expand into new geographies? Or look at adding to the existing product portfolio? Diversification into agritourism, like the Pune-based vineyard – Sula, also looked attractive to build consumer engagement. Would taking the consumer to the farmers from whom they sourced the milk and vegetables contribute additional revenue to Country Delight and their farmer-suppliers? As the firm got ready to raise another round of funding, it needed a well-articulated growth strategy that was exciting and profitable for all stakeholders.

This case study presents the dilemma entrepreneurs face as they look at the next phase of growth. Thus, this case study serves as a learning opportunity for a graduate-level course in management and as a sounding board for those who aspire to enter the start-up space. Though this case study has the potential to illustrate basic concepts such as value chain and macro- and micro-environment analysis, the protagonist’s dilemma and the problem statement make it apt for integrated discussions that are critical in advanced electives in marketing management.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

This research aims to investigate how manufacturing flexibility can address the challenges of an ever-changing and unpredictable business environment in Bangladesh’s labor-intensive ready-made garment (RMG) industry, which is underserved and situated in a developing country.

Using Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling, this study empirically evaluated the relationships between manufacturing flexibility, environmental uncertainty and firm performance. The analysis utilized 320 survey responses from potential RMG experts, representing 95 organizations.

The study achieved a decision-making model for implementing manufacturing flexibility in the RMG industry of Bangladesh with acceptable model fit criterion. The research pinpointed that workforce flexibility plays the maximum mediating among different types of manufacturing in coping with demand and supply uncertainty in the RMG sector.

The study made valuable contributions to theoretical and practical knowledge in the context of manufacturing flexibility in Bangladesh’s RMG and other underserved labor-intensive sectors in developing economies. It suggests that managers should shift from defensive and risky business strategies to more aggressive and proactive approaches by utilizing workforce flexibility resources adaptively to enhance manufacturing capabilities and align with dynamic market demand. Additionally, the study offers recommendations for future research to build upon its findings.

This study is unique in its approach because it presents a decision model for implementing manufacturing flexibility in a labor-intensive industry in a developing economy, specifically the RMG industry in Bangladesh, whereas previous research has primarily focused on high-tech industries in developed economies.