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Factors which have contributed to gold price fluctuation include the interaction between gold demand and supply, government intervention, uncertainty of the world political environment and global economic stability. Previously researchers looked at modeling the variation in gold price movements. Williams (1972) used a pure descriptive way to review the activities of the gold market during the period from 1968 to 1972, a time when great changes in gold prices occurred. He asserted that the private gold markets are relatively unstable, and that gold prices may show a rapid rise under conditions of crisis or acute uncertainty. In Williams' study, no precise relationship or functional forms were employed to explain the fluctuation of gold prices.

India has the biggest number of active users on social media platforms, particularly Twitter. The purpose of this paper is to examine public sentiment on COVID-19 vaccines and COVID Appropriate Behaviour (CAB) by text mining (topic modeling) and network analysis supported by thematic modeling.

A sample dataset of 115,000 tweets from the Twitter platform was used to examine the perception of the COVID-19 vaccination and CAB from January 2021 to August 2021. The research applied a machine-learning algorithm and network analysis to extract hidden and latent patterns in unstructured data to identify the most prevalent themes. The COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Amplification Model was formulated, which included five key topics based on sample big data from social media.

The identified themes are Social Media Adaptivity, Lack of Knowledge Providing Mechanism, Perception of Vaccine Safety Measures, Health Care Infrastructure Capabilities and Fear of Coronavirus (Coronaphobia). The study implication assists communication strategists and stakeholders design effective communication strategies using digital platforms. The study reveals CAB themes as with Mask Wearing Issues and Employment Issues as relevant themes discussed on digital channels.

The themes extracted in the present study provide a roadmap for policy-makers and communication experts to utilize social media platforms for communicating and understanding the perception of preventive measures of vaccination and CAB. As evidenced by the increased engagement on social media platforms during the COVID-19-induced lockdown, digital platforms are indeed valuable from the communication perspective to be proactive in the event of a similar situation. Moreover, significant themes, including social media adaptivity, absence of knowledge-providing mechanism and perception of safety measures of the vaccine, are the critical parameters leading to an amplified effect on vaccine hesitancy.

The COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Amplification Themes (CVHAT) equips stakeholders and government strategists with a preconfigured paradigm to tackle dedicated communication campaigns and assess digital community behavior during health emergencies COVID-19.

The increased acceptance of vaccines and the following of CAB decrease the advocacy of mutation of the virus and promote the healthy being of the people. As CAB has been mentioned as a preventive strategy against the COVID-19 pandemic, the research preposition promotes communication intervention which helps to mitigate future such pandemics. As developing, economies require effective communication strategies for vaccine acceptance and CAB, this study contributes to filling the gap using a digital environment.

Chan et al. (2020) recommended using social media platforms for public knowledge dissemination. The study observed that the value of a communication strategy is increased when communication happens using highly trusted and accessible channels such as Twitter and Facebook. With the preceding context, the present study is a novel approach to contribute toward digital communication strategies related to vaccination and CAB.

The purpose of this paper is to survey, explore and inform researchers about the previous methodologies applied, target audience and coverage of previous assessment of cybersecurity awareness by capturing, summarizing, synthesizing and critically comment on it. It is also conducted to identify the gaps in the cybersecurity awareness assessment research which warrants the future work.

The authors used a systematic literature review technique to search the relevant online databases by using pre-defined keywords. The authors limited the search to retrieve only English language academic articles published from 2005 to 2014. Relevant information was extracted from the retrieved articles, and the ensuing discussion centres on providing the answers to the research questions.

From the online searches, 23 studies that matched the search criteria were retrieved, and the information extracted from each study includes the authors, publication year, assessment method used, target audiences, coverage of assessment and assessment goals.

The review of the retrieved articles indicates that no previous research was conducted in the assessment of the cybersecurity awareness using a programme evaluation technique. It was also found that few studies focused on youngsters and on the issue of safeguarding personal information.

Examines the negative impacts of brand extension failure upon the original brand by calibrating the difference of brand equity. Using data collected from college students in Taiwan, establishes four hypotheses to identify various effects of a failed brand extension in diluting the original brand’s equity. Analyzes the different effects among four types of equity‐source brands for both close and distant extensions. Equity‐source and equity level of the original brand is identified first. All components of brand equity‐source are then used to evaluate the performance of a brand extension. Finds that an unsuccessful brand extension dilutes the original brand for all three high equity‐source brands. Effects of brand dilution differ according to the type of equity source possessed by the original brand, but there is no difference in brand dilution effects from close and distant extension failures.

The Chinese fashion market is becoming increasingly important in terms of consumption volume and value. A critical aspect of the Chinese fashion market is the role of the fashion retail buyer; however, there exists little literature on their role and their decision-making process. This paper, therefore, explores the role of Chinese fashion retail buyers, their decision-making process as well as the key factors that influence the retail buyer's decision-making process.

Informed by the inductive approach within Sheth's (1981) framework, in-depth interviews with a number of retail buyers in nine leading fashion companies in China were carried out to explore fashion retail buyers' decision-making processes.

The results show that management mentality, type of merchandise and type of decision context were the most influencing factors regarding merchandise requirements (MRs). Fashion retail buyers in China are substantially restricted by the management style of the firm, which also influences the product mix choice. To evaluate merchandise, fashion buyers take into account consumer demand, company position, geographical differences and fashion trends. In regards to supplier selection, production stability coupled with quality and cost factors become paramount. The study also demonstrates that country of origin (COO) is a less significant factor in the fashion buyer's decision-making process.

This is the first study that explores the fashion retail buyer's decision-making processes in the Chinese market. The results show Chinese fashion buyers' decision-making processes differ significantly from other markets. This paper offers guidelines for an efficient and effective fashion retail buying process in China. The findings offer important avenues for further research and provide insights for fashion professionals in the Chinese and other emerging markets contexts.

The importance of the European Union (EU) to international business cannot be stressed too greatly. Recently it has expanded to 25 country markets. Its total population has reached 455 million people, which is the world's largest economic organisation. Previous international marketing standardisation (IMS) studies focused on the EU are mainly descriptive in nature and they have not specifically examined issues related to firms’ operations in two or more EU country markets at one time. The purpose of this study is to examine issues related to the crossmarket standardisation strategy, i.e. whether a standardised marketing programme and process can be used across the country markets in the EU.

Using the pair‐wise comparison method originally developed by Sorenson and Wiechmann this study examines the marketing standardisation strategies selection process of 66 New Zealand firms which were concurrently operating in two or more EU markets. In total these firms were operating in 13 different EU country markets.

The outcomes of this study suggest that, although a complete similarity in the marketing environment is not likely to occur in the EU, it is possible for firms to locate a group of country markets which have shared similar marketing characteristics in the EU region. For instance, country pairs such as UK‐France, UK‐Germany, UK‐Ireland, Germany‐France, Germany‐Italy and Germany‐Sweden could offer some extent of similarity which allows firms to adopt a standardised marketing strategy across these countries.

This study generates a research framework for future studies and firms intending to operate in the EU region. The findings generated contribute to research in the areas of international marketing standardisation and international segmentation.

This paper examines the empirical patterns of futures prices volatility by using different seasonal adjustment techniques The average absolute month to month percentage (AAPC) figures are used to describe the extent of smoothness when seasonal adjustment methods are applied. Several interesting patterns are suggested from the observation of different futures contracts. The authors then suggest further that if seasonal patterns do exist for futures prices volatility, it is possible to focus the study of futures prices volatility on the different seasonal filters selection, and/or on the different seasonal models alternatives.

This study attempts to address the question of whether and how new product development (NPD) performance can be enhanced by interacting with users at specific stages in the process and whether performance can be affected by user knowledge management.

In this study, data were collected from firms in the software industry in Taiwan and a model of knowledge management capabilities was adopted to analyze the effectiveness of a firm's user knowledge.

The findings demonstrate that user interaction during NPD stages significantly promotes new product performance in the early stages and that user knowledge management competence has a positive effect on NPD performance – especially through the process capability dimension.

Drawing from the findings of this paper, further research directions and theoretical and managerial implications are projected.

This paper seeks to present a preliminary investigation into long‐term patterns of trade specialization among leading textile‐ and apparel‐exporting nations, assessing patterns of comparative advantage across the textile machinery, man‐made fiber, textile and apparel sectors of the textile complex to determine whether these conform with both trade specialization and industry evolution theories. A model of evolutionary change in intra‐complex specialization is defined and evaluated.

A revealed comparative advantage index is employed to evaluate international competitiveness for 30 nations over a 42‐year period. With repeated measures, ANOVA is used, to determine the significance of the observed patterns across five income‐defined groups of nations.

Long‐term patterns of specialization broadly reflect expectations of factor proportions theory and industry evolution models. Product and income group characteristics combine to influence comparative advantage. Higher income nations generally remain stronger in more capital‐intensive sectors, while lower income countries have emerged to dominate labor‐intensive sectors. However, inclusion of a more complex array of variables is necessary to obtain a fuller understanding of international competitiveness.

Established theory remains a useful but limited guide to understanding the dynamics of international competitiveness in the context of the changing business environment. Improved understanding of patterns of change can assist strategic planning.

By embracing a long‐term time frame, a broad array of nations, and a vertical textile complex perspective to identify shifting patterns of competitiveness, this paper highlights key dynamics in the global textile complex over the last four decades.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that various disposition patterns in terms of the price changes are plausible under the Prospect Theory (PT), which argues that investors have a greater tendency to sell assets that have risen in value since the purchase than those that have fallen. Numerous empirical evidences have shown that investors demonstrate the disposition effect (DE). This study highlights that, when the disposition measure is defined by the stock price changes, the PT predicts the DE indeed. It also indicates other seemingly contradicting disposition patterns: the reversed disposition effect and the pattern of the symmetry over gains and losses.

To show that the disposition effect is only one of the disposition patterns under the preference of PT, as part of this study the authors apply the mental account theory and propose two decision criteria for the gain and loss accounts, respectively, (i.e. maximum loss tolerated and minimum gain required). An empirical analysis was performed from a large‐scale market survey in Taiwan to examine individual investors' disposition patterns.

The findings show that more than 50 percent of individual investors demonstrate their disposition patterns other than the disposition effect. Many investors show the reversed disposition effect or the pattern of symmetry (holding about the same magnitude of gains or losses before realization).

This study answers the questions which, to the authors' knowledge, have not been incorporated in the studies of the PT or the DE: first, when do investors sell losers which they are inclined to hold on to? Second, for how long do they hold winners which they are eager to sell? The authors' arguments allow various disposition patterns to exist simultaneously, without changing the value function in the PT of convexity over losses and concavity over gains and without requiring strict assumptions on the expected stock returns.