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Blogs are websites that contain posts about a wide range of topics, often written by fashion enthusiasts referred to as bloggers. With the increasing prevalence and popularity of digital media and social media, fashion bloggers help to attract business and influence and engage various stakeholders, especially customers. The present exploratory study provided valuable insights regarding fashion consumption, preference, and buying behavior of young women consumers of metropolitan cities of India like Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune, and Mumbai. The study was conducted under the domain of exploratory study. Snowball and Purposive random sampling techniques were employed to identify and reach respondents of both categories – women consumers and bloggers. A conscious attempt was made to include women from different demographics such as age, marital status, income, area of residence, employment status, etc. Primary data were collected with the help of questionnaires. The findings of the research revealed bloggers through their blogs are the new trendsetters and influence fashion adoption, especially by the young social media savvy consumers. Their blogs impact public perceptions of fashion and sometimes are precursors of new fashion trends. The findings of the study interestingly brought forth the fact that millennial women buying decision is significantly influenced by fashion blogs for the purchase of clothing and accessories. The findings also clearly indicated that blogs significantly influenced respondents’ attitude toward the purchase of branded merchandise. Fashion bloggers besides providing information and inspiration to the blog readers, also at times assist and/or give consultation to their followers.

Introduction: In today’s world of increasing competition, diminishing product differentiation, higher customer expectations, easy product replacements and lowering brand loyalty, organisations are evolving new marketing strategies for economic, societal and sustainability. Cause-related marketing (hereafter referred to as CRM), a strategic sustainable philanthropic practice, is the upcoming form of CSR. CRM plays an instrumental role in achieving self-brand connection and brand loyalty.

Purpose: To explore, integrate and interconnect concepts of CRM and self-brand connection to get more insights into the imperative role of CRM strategy in developing self-brand connections that can lead to brand loyalty in the most sustainable way. For this, CRM and self-brand connection, as proposed by societal marketing and branding literature, were explored. This chapter is a propositional inventory where the researcher has explored the antecedents of CRM strategy and its role in developing brand loyalty through self-brand connection.

Methodology: This chapter is centred upon the existing literature on sustainability, CRM and branding to understand better the relationships between dimensions and consequences of CRM and its interlinkage with brand loyalty.

Findings: The literature recommends that selected dimensions: Cause-brand fit, product type, altruistic motivation and brand credibility determine the effectiveness of CRM strategy. It also establishes the profound impact of attitude towards brand, brand perception and brand distinctiveness on self-brand connection. A theoretical framework based on the existing literature represents an amalgamated groundwork for developing effective, sustainable CRM strategies in conjunction with the self-brand connection. The proposed framework is distinct as no study conjoins the abovementioned concepts and aims to comprehend whether this integration is brand loyalty.

This chapter investigates pandemic impact in a variety of industries, including food, travel, education and pharmaceuticals, considering elements such as isolation, emotions and social influences, which can lead to panic buying. The goal of this research is to ascertain how COVID-19 influences the buying decisions of customers. Additionally, the study aims to identify consumer consumption trends for a spectrum of products and services, including fast-moving consumer goods (FMCGs), entertainment, pharmaceuticals, travel and tourism. A comprehensive review of different research papers is done to conclude. The papers considered are from 2020 to 2022. Different keywords are used to search the relevant papers such as ‘pandemic’, ‘COVID-19’, ‘behaviour’, ‘impulsive’, etc. TCCM framework has been applied while reviewing the articles. During the isolation, consumer behaviour moved to panic buying and stockpiling, favouring organic basics, and encouraging e-commerce, as well as economic nationalism favouring made-in-India products. This study helps in knowing the reasons for change in consumers' behaviour for different products and services due to unforeseeable situations like COVID-19 and can find possible ways to deal with them. Business owners learn about changing consumer purchasing behaviours and how to modify products. The government can change policies to improve medical tourism and social protection.

This chapter examines how information and communication technology (ICT) initiatives affect customers’ everyday routines with an emphasis on how electronic word of mouth (eWOM) affects their purchasing decisions and determines if eWOM might serve as a useful trust factor when making purchasing decisions. This chapter is based on both primary and secondary data and examines how eWOM affects customers’ buying decisions in this era of increasing social media platform usage. One hundred individuals from various regions of Karachi provided the primary data, collected through an online survey. Secondary data are also employed, such as details from business websites, scientific papers, and other related publications of businesses. In Karachi’s developing digital market, it was discovered that eWOM via social media used to have a substantial impact on consumers’ shopping habits. The effectiveness of social media content depends greatly on how appropriate it is for the intended audience. Social media marketing doesn’t quite simply aim to improve consumers’ impressions or directly advertise things. It also entails maintaining and fostering relationships between businesses and prospective customers. According to the research, consumers’ recommendations and ratings of goods and services made on social media, whether through eWOM or another channel, influenced their decisions to buy. Customers consider social media to be trustworthy when making decisions about what to buy. Customers are currently adopting social media as opposed to more conventional means to learn about new products. Most customers believe that eWOM from social media greatly affected their shopping choices, according to the results of the study.

Purpose: This research investigates how producers of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) in Karachi, Pakistan, embrace sustainable manufacturing and consumption practices.

Study design/methodology/approach: This study employed a mixed research design, incorporating both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The primary method of data collecting utilised in this study was semi-structured interviews. The survey sampled 11 FMCG manufacturers, and the data were analysed using thematic analysis.

Findings: The research revealed that economic variables were crucial in adopting sustainable consumption and production (SCP) practices among Karachi’s FMCG businesses. The economic reasons were motivated by the notion that adopting sustainable practices could result in financial benefits and enhanced market competitiveness. The research additionally discovered that consumer preferences were pivotal in stimulating sustainable practices within the FMCG business. Manufacturers indicated that adopting sustainable products and packaging was driven mainly by consumer demand.

Originality/value: This study contributes to the literature on SCP within the FMCG business. It offers valuable insights into the factors influencing sustainable practices and customer preferences. This study emphasises the importance of economic, social, and environmental aspects in fostering sustainable practices within the FMCG industry, specifically focusing on developing nation environments such as Karachi. This study’s findings can contribute valuable insights for policy formulation and decision-making processes about SCP within Karachi’s FMCG business and other similar contexts.

Knowledge of consumer behavior is important to a corporation's accomplishment. Organizations may change for the better deal with the promotion mix, product administration, and buyer interaction by knowing how the buyer performs and what motivates him. Selecting the influencing elements for consumers is frequently exceedingly challenging to accurately detect because they are inside forces. The COVID-19 pandemic's wide-scale spread has significantly altered peoples' daily lives and purchasing patterns. The Indian government implemented several steps across the nation to limit the fatal disease to slow the spread of COVID-19. Following its initial breakout in China in early 2020, the novel coronavirus pandemic rapidly developed all over the globe, giving an unfavorable influence on the global financial system and industries. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors seek to uncover changes in consumer behavior when purchasing everyday items including food, medications, clothing, footwear, and technology. To understand how the current pandemic conditions compare to the aforementioned shock events, we carried out a comprehensive review of the literature with a focus on the presentation of panic buying and pack mentality behavioral patterns and changes to voluntary consumer spending as defined by Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

The COVID-19 pandemic had severely impacted global commerce, leading to market closure and travel restrictions. Due to the extreme limitations on shopping and market possibilities, consumers’ buying habits have changed significantly and they are still changing what they buy and how they purchase for everyday necessities. They are trying to shop locally, carefully, and economically. Consumers are buying their stuff from wherever goods are available. Purchasing nonessential items is restricted. Restaurants, tourism, apparel, and furniture are the industries that have been impacted the most. The objective behind this study is to find out the post-COVID-19 effects on consumer buying of essentials from a convenience store over hypermarkets and how consumer behavior will revive postpandemic toward retail shopping. In the study, responses were collected through structured questionnaire to explore the consumer buying behavior for their daily essentials both at convenience stores and hypermarkets. The study reveals that consumers prefer to buy essential commodities/goods of daily needs from convenience store compared to hypermarket due to the risk of being exposed to COVID-19 pandemic and this behavior will change future trend of retail shopping experience. The major limitation of the study is sampling frame. Future studies can replicate this study in different context with different target population. Pertaining to the current ongoing situations of the pandemic, a very high percentage of the respondents would still choose nearby convenience stores over hypermarkets. This study estimates the behavioral change in retail consumers in future; therefore, it suggests retailers adopt innovative marketing strategy in future.

Global value chains (GVCs) have been challenged by several emerging macro-trends during the last years. Among them, sustainability of production and consumption patterns is becoming a central theme given the necessity to mitigate the degradation of the environment and the over-exploitation of scarce natural resources. In this respect, scholars and practitioners increasingly propose the circular economy (CE) approach as a systemic solution to overcome the conventional linear “take–make–use–dispose” model underlying the structure of contemporary global economy. However, the international business (IB) community has introduced the topic of CE only marginally in its debate. The aim of the present study is to fill this research gap identifying the opportunities for integrating IB and CE principles. Thus, the main objective is to investigate whether and how the adoption of the CE paradigm by multinational enterprises (MNEs) may affect activities, geographical configuration, and governance of their relevant GVCs.

The authors address the issue from a conceptual point of view, identifying direct and indirect impacts of CE adoption on GVC, relative enablers, and possible broader implications. Lastly, the authors propose some reflections for future investigations.