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The purpose of this paper is to examine customer attitudes toward purchasing counterfeit luxury products (ATPCLP) in two cities in two different countries (Saudi Arabia and Malaysia) by testing the relationships between the various reasons for purchasing those products: social status insecurity, status consumption and value consciousness.

Questionnaires were distributed conveniently to urban customers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Altogether 658 useable questionnaires were collected and analyzed using descriptive statistics, general linear model of univariate analysis of variance and structural equation modeling.

Quality, price, popularity and status signaling represent the main motivating factors for their brand choices of counterfeit luxury products among the two country groups of customers. As expected, customers' social status insecurity influences their ATPCLP, but not their status consumption. However, status consumption does positively moderates the relationship of their social status insecurity and their ATPCLP. Furthermore, customers' value consciousness influences their ATPCLP and moderates the relationship between status consumption and ATPCLP. The impact of status consumption on ATPCLP depends on the importance one places on the value of the products. However, the authors found no differences in social status insecurity, status consumption and value consciousness, on their ATPCLP among the customers. Some implications and limitations of the results are discussed.

The use of convenience sampling and mainly college students (in Saudi Arabia) as respondents represent the main limitations of this study.

The practical implication of this study is to discourage the purchasing of counterfeit luxury products in their respective country Malaysian marketers need to stress that their genuine products are of top quality while Saudi marketers need to stress that their genuine products are of well-known brands that are sourced from well-known countries of origin. Besides, Malaysian marketers need to offer genuine products that are not overly priced or ones that indicate value-for-money while Saudi marketers need to convey the message that their genuine products could help enhance or uplift their customers' social status. In this study, the authors did not find any support for differences in ATPCLP between the two rather different Muslim-majority countries. This could be due to the fact that the majority of the respondents were females in their mid-20s and that both countries have a growing number of young customer base, which makes them particularly attractive target customers for branded/luxury products and, at the same time, easy preys to luxury products counterfeiters. This implies that there are still more opportunities for academics to study the topic or related topics in the future.

As far as the authors know, no one has undertaken a comparative study involving two very different Islamic majority countries (more conservative mono-cultural and mono-ethnicity Saudi Arabia versus less conservative multicultural and multi-ethnicity Malaysia) before.

The paper seeks to examine the impact of social exclusion on individuals' propensity to be employed and how, if employed, social exclusion affects individuals' perceived job insecurity and the likelihood of being covered by social insurance in their jobs.

Using the United Nations Development Program/United Nations Children Fund 2009 survey data from Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the paper employs comprehensive econometric methods that overcome challenges posed by endogeneity of social exclusion in labour market outcomes, self‐selection into employment, and the interdependency between perceptions of job security and social insurance coverage.

Results suggest that socially excluded individuals face hurdles in securing jobs and exhibit higher risk of job loss. Further, results suggest that a holistic educational policy could help promote social inclusion.

Formulation of policies aimed at promoting social inclusion and improved labour market outcomes should not be done in isolation; rather they should be based on a holistic understanding of the multi‐faceted nature of social exclusion.

The originality of the analysis is that it takes into account the multi‐dimensional nature of social exclusion by treating social exclusion as an outcome of a diverse set of an individual's socio‐economic characteristics that ultimately shape the way they feel about their exclusion or inclusion in their societies. This gives an indication of the types of people that are socially excluded and form the group for which a further investigation of labour market outcomes is conducted.

This study aims to assess both internal and external factors that impact consumer attitudes and intentions with regard to the purchase of non-deceptive counterfeits. More specifically, this study examines the impact of integrity, brand consciousness, performance risk and social risk on the attitude and in turn on the purchase intention of consumers towards non-deceptive counterfeits.

A total of 679 valid responses from the university students in two different Gulf countries, namely, Oman (264) and Qatar (415) were gathered through a self-administered structured questionnaire and analysed through partial least square‐structural equation modeling.

All the predictors of consumer attitude appeared significant in both country samples except integrity. However, brand consciousness appeared insignificant in the sample of Oman. In addition, Purchase intention towards the non-deceptive counterfeits was significantly predicted by attitude and subjective norm in both samples.

In the domain of non-deceptive counterfeit literature, the findings of the study will substantially add value. Particularly, in the Gulf country context, the impact of internal psychological and external risk factors on the attitude and purchase intention of non-deceptive counterfeits will enhance the insights of existing literature and extend and proof the robustness of the theory of reasoned action.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the dissatisfaction of library users and the manager of each federal university library vis‐à‐vis the complaint of the librarians working in those libraries on inadequate funding, lack of promotion, poor condition of service and lack of recognition which affected their career commitment.

Questionnaires were used to gather data from a population of 381 librarians in the 24 federal university Libraries in Nigeria. A total of 363 of them responded and their questionnaires were found to be valid for analysis. The response rate achieved was 95.3 percent.

The study found that job satisfaction has significant influence on career commitment of librarians working in the federal university libraries (F (9; 352) = 11.058, p < 0.05). The study also revealed that demographic variables and job satisfaction accounted for 20 percent (adj. R² = 0.2000) in variability of career commitment of the respondents.

The study ought to have generated data on demographic variables and job satisfaction as they affect career commitment of library paraprofessionals (library officers, library attendants and assistants) since they all carry essential library function.

It is recommended that the library administrators and the managers of the university libraries should consider the demographic variables and job satisfaction of librarians when planning and making decisions on their career commitment.

The library managers and administrators in federal university libraries in Nigeria should formulate job satisfaction policies such as adequate provision of working facilities, provision of conducive working environment, work incentives (car loan, housing loan, study leave allowance, etc) for improving career commitment of their librarians.

The paper provides valuable information on the career commitment of librarians in federal university libraries in Nigeria.

Drawing on socioanalytic theory, this paper aims to explore whether a moderation mediation model can describe the mechanism linking salesperson social reputation (perceived stability and plasticity) and performance (customer share of wallet) in relationship marketing. The mediator is the salesperson’s overall equity, and the moderator is the salesperson-customer congruence.

A structured questionnaire was used to obtain data from 233 customers, served by 44 personal finance advisors at five banking agencies in Canada.

A multilevel approach showed that both perceived stability and perceived plasticity predict salesperson equity and performance. In addition, the empirical results indicated that the relationship between perceived stability and salesperson performance is partially mediated by salesperson overall equity. However, equity fully mediated the relationship between perceived plasticity and salesperson performance. Finally, the salesperson-customer congruence moderated the effect of both perceived stability and plastic on the salesperson overall equity.

This research suggests that the moderation mediation model enables predicting the relationship between the perceived personality and performance. From a managerial perspective, the author encourages sales managers to pay attention to salespersons’ equity development as well as their performance. Notably, the author suggests that sales managers support and monitor salespeople with regard to improving their social status as well as their social popularity in their interactions with customers.

Previous research in sales force literature focuses on salespersons’ self-personality to predict sales performance. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first to show it is important to consider the perceived personality of a salesperson in predicting their performance. This study is also the first to introduce the salesperson reputation concept and its dimensions (perceived stability and plasticity).

The purpose of this paper is to compare rates of bullying and victimization between 50 adolescents in residential programs and 50 control adolescents in regular public schools. Individual (i.e. peer attachment) and contextual predictors (i.e. parenting styles, school belongingness) were also examined, and investigated in relation to bullying involvement.

Participants were matched based on ethnicity, gender (all male), and parents’ income. They completed questionnaires on their bullying involvement, peer attachment, perceived parenting styles of their parents, and school belongingness.

The findings revealed that adolescents from residential programs had higher rates of bullying and victimization, experienced more permissive parenting styles, had lower peer attachment, and poorer school belongingness when compared to control adolescents. The positive relationship between permissive parenting and bullying was stronger for boys from residential programs. In addition, peer attachment and school belongingness were more negatively related to bullying among control boys. Similar patterns were found for victimization. Differences were also found concerning the relationship of the individual and contextual predictors to adolescents’ bullying and victimization across the two groups.

These results underscore the importance of studying bullying and victimization among adolescents in secure settings, particularly residential programs.

Currently, a much-debated issue concerns the social and political significance of the emergence of the precariat, a social class consisting of people for whom uncertainty and unpredictability of life circumstances and employment relations make it impossible to plan for the future, forcing them to live on a day-to-day basis (Standing, 2011). However, it remains unclear how the precariat may be defined and operationalized. On the one hand, treating non-standard employment arrangements (fixed-term contracts, temporary agency work, etc.) as a basis for identifying precarious jobs is likely to be misleading, as research has shown non-standard employment to be heterogeneous with respect to working conditions and chances for achieving stabilization. On the other hand, subjective perceptions of security may also be misleading as indicators of precarity, as they are compounded by psychological coping mechanisms and perceptions of reference group status. This analysis attempts to disentangle the complex relationships between non-standard employment and perceived insecurity in order to provide grounds for a more adequate conceptualization and measurement of job precarity. Specifically, I assess the extent to which the relationship between worker contractual status and perceived job, labor market, and employment insecurity is conditional on various characteristics of workers, their jobs, and their households, taking into account the country-level economic and institutional context. The analysis is based on multi-level regression models using data from the 2010 European Working Conditions Survey.

This paper presents an analysis of how health intersects with the experience of housing insecurity and homelessness, specifically for migrant women. The authors argue that it is important to understand the specificities of the interplay of these different factors to continue the advancement of our understanding and practice as advocates for health and housing security.

An exploratory, qualitative, methodological approach was adopted, using a broad definition of housing insecurity: from absolute homelessness (e.g. residing rough) to invisible homelessness (e.g. couch surfing) to those at risk of homelessness. In total, 26 newcomer (foreign-born women who came to live in Canada during the previous ten years, regardless of their immigration status) women were recruited in Montreal, Canada. Participants were recruited directly through advertisements in public places and in collaboration with community organizations (women’s centers, homeless shelters, crisis centers, domestic violence shelters, immigrant settlement agencies and ethnic associations) and they self-identified as having experienced housing insecurity. Efforts were made to include a diversity of immigrant statuses as well as diversity in ethnicity, race, country of origin, family composition, sexual orientation, age and range of physical and mental ability. Women were engaged in semi-structured, open-ended interviews lasting approximately 1 h. Interviews were conducted in English or French in a location and time of participants’ choosing.

The findings are presented around three themes: how health problems instigate and maintain migrant women’s housing insecurity and homelessness; ways in which women’s immigration trajectories and legal status may influence their health experiences; and particular coping strategies that migrant women employ in efforts to maintain or manage their health. The authors conclude with implications of these findings for both policy and practice in relation to migrant women who experience or are at risk of housing insecurity and homelessness.

Intersections of women experiencing migration and housing insecurity in Canadian contexts have rarely been examined. This paper addresses a gap in the literature in terms of topic and context, but also in terms of sharing the voices of migrant women with direct experience with housing insecurity.

The purpose of this study is to estimate the determinants of household food insecurity in the Gauteng City-Region, South Africa. This is motivated by the fact that food insecurity remains a key challenge at the household level in South Africa. Furthermore, the Gauteng Province has been rapidly urbanising due to a migrant influx, both locally and internationally. The findings will assist the country in achieving its mandate on the local economic development policy, Agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals 1 and 2.

The study adopted a quantitative cross-section design, utilising the binary logistic regression technique, drawing on the Gauteng City-Region Observatory Quality of Life 2020/2021 data, consisting of 13,616 observations, randomly drawn from nine municipalities in Gauteng City-Region.

The main findings of the study highlight unemployment, health status, education, household size, indigency and income as the main determinants of food insecurity in Gauteng City-Region. Policies towards sustainable urban agriculture, improving access to education, increasing employment and income, and health for all can help improve the food insecurity status of households in the Gauteng City-Region.

Further studies would require an in-depth assessment of household coping mechanisms, as well as the influence of household income (notably government social grants) and access to credit on household food security status, to better understand the dynamics of food security in the Gauteng City-Region.

Determinants of food insecurity should be considered when developing and implementing policies to reduce food insecurity in urban municipalities.

The study is of interest as it interdicts food insecurity issues, which have an effect on socio-economic well-being.

The study adds value by providing evidence on the determinants of food insecurity in an urban setting in a developing country. Gauteng is the richest of all provinces in South Africa and is also at the receiving end of internal and international migration. Factors affecting food insecurity have changed in the nine cities. This compromises nutrition safety and calls for targeted policy interventions.

Many nations in Sub-Saharan Africa, including Nigeria have initiated programmes targeted at addressing food insecurity, but without any major significant breakthrough. This necessitates the call for inclusion of social network institutional framework into the food and nutrition security policy of many developing countries. This is touted as an important social safety net needed for farming households’ economic advancement and welfare. Consequent on this, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the importance of social networks in building resilience against food insecurity among farmers in Oyo State, Nigeria.

Data collected from a sample of 297 smallholder farmers during 2015/2016 agricultural production season were analysed using descriptive statistics to describe farmers’ notable characteristics. However, Foster–Greer–Thorbecke indices vis-à-vis food consumption expenditure-metrics technique was used to evaluate the food security profile of the respondents. Similarly, ordinary least square and two-stage least square (2SLS) models were applied to investigate the effects and “reverse causality” in the social networks food security model.

The study findings indicated that about 48.15 per cent of the smallholder farmers are food insecure. Similarly, the study revealed that age (p<0.01), years of formal education (p<0.05), marital status (p<0.05), number of persons in the family (p<0.01), executive status in social groups (p<0.05), aggregate social networks (p<0.1) and non-food consumption expenditure (p<0.01) made significant contributions to food security status of farming households. Importantly, 2SLS estimation indicated non-existence of reverse causality effect of social networks components and households’ food security status.

There is an urgent need for pragmatic policies that support systematic and organized social groups and networks formation in the rural/agrarian areas across Nigeria.

A widely accepted view of economic theory posits that traditional capitals (physical, economic/financial and human) drive households’ welfare including food security status. However, this study has established the relevance of social networks as an important component of human well-being. Apparently, this study also established the exogeneity of social networks in the framework of households’ food security status.