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The purpose of this article is to determine the relative importance of the ecological attribute when other attributes referring to the functional performance of a brand are taken into account, and check the effectiveness of environmental labels.

The paper establishes an experiment in which 352 women responsible for the household shopping are exposed to different levels of environmental information. The study analyses the effect said information has on product attitude and purchase intention. In order to transmit the information, a leaflet specifically designed for the research was used.

This study confirms the presence of a positive effect of environmental associations on brand attitude, though this effect is smaller than that of other functional attributes. It also demonstrates that using independent environmental certifications strengthens beliefs in the product's ecological performance.

The use of washing powder can limit the feasibility of extrapolation of the results to other products. Therefore, a replication in other product categories is necessary/advisable.

In the light of the results, using environmental associations certified by independent bodies is recommended. This would help improve both brand attitude and brand equity.

This paper increases the knowledge about the precise commercial usefulness of environmental associations in relation with other attributes.

In order to analyse consumer response to differing levels of comparative advertising, we have designed a causal model that includes various measurements of advertising effectiveness (cognitive, affective and connative), along with some of the main moderating factors considered in prior academic research. Thus, we carried out an experimental study in Spain using a total sample of 720 consumers spread out over four large geographical areas of the country. The results drawn from estimating the proposed model indicate that the greater the comparative advertising intensity, the lower the consumer’s perception of believability. Likewise, the number of counter‐arguments presented by the consumer increases, which negatively affects both attitudes and purchase intentions. However, the less well‐known brands on the market are those that benefit most from this advertising strategy, increasing the audience’s attention and improving purchase intentions.

Before the CETSCALE can be used as a measure of consumer ethnocentrism on an international basis, it is necessary to assess its validity and reliability in as many countries and different conditions as possible. In this sense, the main purpose of this paper is to validate the CETSCALE as a measure of Spanish consumers’ ethnocentric tendencies. This was achieved by means of confirmatory factor analysis. We adopted a competing models strategy. Initially, two alternative models were formulated: a single‐factor model and a two‐factor model. Since both models equally fit the empirical data and after carrying out an in‐depth analysis of the estimated parameters, we considered a third model with two uncorrelated factors. After estimating this new model, the goodness‐of‐fit indices indicated a poor fit compared to the one‐factor model, therefore proving that the scale measures a unidimensional construct and that the measurement error is quite acceptable.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the field of trust research with a focus on optimising this perception via electronic transactions in the banking industry. Specifically, the study aims to examine trust toward a bank and its dependability using a variety of “institution‐based” trust mechanisms, such as security of transaction, reputation and web quality.

It is expected that the manner in which the trust‐generating mechanisms are presented has different effects on the level of trust in the internet banking services. The analysis of these influences is based on an experimental design applied to internet banking users with the aim of treating the scenarios defined by combinations of stimuli. In particular, a design was used with three intra‐subject factors: the first two, manipulated a priori, combine seals and their associated clauses or arrangements, while the third considered a bank website's quality from the user viewpoint.

The analysis discovers that the mere presence of seals is not in itself important for the explanation of beliefs about trustworthiness and dependability of a website with electronic banking services. However, the manner in which the trust‐generating mechanisms are presented, either individually or in their different combinations, has different effects on trust.

The study is limited to data from one country and a single specific context (a new electronic banking website), so care should be taken when generalising to other electronic businesses. The findings contribute several recommendations for web design and optimisation of the online services and/or content offered by a bank.

This paper is the first study to evaluate the combined effects of four seals generators of trust in a bank's website and its associated arrangements or clauses as well as design quality. The study will provide greater understanding of navigation behaviour and the decisions made by users of electronic banking.

This study attempts to carry out an approximation both to the conceptual delimitation and to the measuring of customer concern for privacy on the electronic market.

To complete the objective of this research, an overview of the literature is made in an attempt to summarise the main proposals as regards dimensions of the construct analysed. Furthermore, two studies were carried out with the aim of evaluating the instruments to measure concern for privacy on the internet and which support the conclusion concerning the construct's dimensionality, reached following the aforementioned literature overview.

From the main results reached, we can highlight that the concern for privacy on the internet construct has a structure consisting of two dimensions, which are confirmed through the scales evaluated for different contexts of use of the internet. These dimensions are: concern for control over the collecting of personal information, and its use on the electronic market.

The paper's main contributions are threefold: a conceptual revision of the construct; a proposal of the dimensions for the construct; and an evaluation of two scales to measure the construct in different situations.

The purpose of this article is to analyse the impact of the internet, as a new information channel for the consumer, on business results, and in particular, the consequences of attitude towards the web site with regard to customer behaviour and web site sponsor brand.

A survey instrument was used to gather data to test the relationships in the research model.

The paper shows the importance of attitude towards the web site and attitude towards the internet in explaining attitude towards the brand and consumer e‐behaviour, and identifies the hierarchy of effects operative among these three concepts of attitude: attitude towards the internet; attitude towards the web site; and attitude towards the brand.

This study only looked at one category of web site – free‐content sites. Future research could apply the conclusions of this study to other types of web sites, e.g. the e‐commerce web site and the corporate web site.

The main practical consequence of the study lies in the need to take into account that the profitability of an e‐business should not be measured solely in terms of direct profitability. Profits generated indirectly should also be considered, given the proven positive relationship between attitude towards the web site and attitude towards the brand. This conclusion is of vital importance since very few e‐businesses obtain direct profits. Brick‐and‐click firms eliminate their e‐businesses without bearing in mind the positive consequences they may be having on the brand itself.

The study aimed to take a more in‐depth look at the value of e‐businesses for brick‐and‐click firms. It analysed sources of indirect profitability for the e‐business that should be taken into account when looking at web site value.

Leadership is basically about influence and ability to cultivate followership. This chapter examined the nature of indigenous socio-political leadership in Africa using Zimbabwe, Sudan and Nigeria as caselets and compared this with the post-colonial or modern-day leadership realities. A survey was conducted among senior executives at Lagos Business School, Nigeria, with a sample size of 200 persons, to find out their perception of the African indigenous leadership system. An overwhelming 90% believe that culture plays a big role in shaping African leadership style. However, two-thirds of the respondents agreed that Africa lacks proper institutional structures to support good leadership, thus encouraging corruption (97% of the respondents) and non-accountability among the leaders. Also, only 5% thought cultural orientation was the reason why the African followers do not hold their leaders accountable. In other words, it is not in the African culture not to hold leaders accountable for their actions. So, what went wrong? We attempted a deeper look at the effect of colonial rule and the attendant militarisation of the African continent. Our conclusion is that the colonisation of the continent by Europe brought significant distortion to the traditional African indigenous leadership institutions and the psyche of the African leader and the followers alike. Post-colonial Africa has witnessed 133 recorded coups d’etat between 1952 and 2016. This chapter is recommended to all those who seek a deeper understanding of the nature of the African indigenous leadership practices and the factors that have shaped these over the years.

The purpose of this bibliometric analysis is to quantify the prominence and impact of published literature within the field. The research has been conducted with the intent of obtaining the expansion and characteristics of the literature on digital library.

More than 4,206 documents found in the period of 2002-2016 were collected from the ISI Web of Science and were analyzed to explore the annual productivity, yearly citation, most cited articles, prolific authors, eminent journals of the subject, productivity of institutes and contribution of countries. These results are based on the types of documents (articles, reviews, proceedings papers, book reviews, editorial materials and book chapters).

The core findings are that the most productive year of publication was 2016, and the growth of citation increased rapidly; the top source of title is electronic library. The result shows that the USA dominates in the research output, with Illinois University securing the first position; the most prolific author is Fourie I from South Africa. In the document types category, the most cited sources are research articles.

This research is useful for the researchers interested in the field of bibliometrics as it postulates an inclusive indication of provenance in the field of library and information science.

Growing concern over sustainability adoption has presented an array of challenges to businesses. While vital to an economy's success, banking is not immune to societal, environmental and economic consequences of business practices. The study has examined the sustainable performance of banking institutions on the suggested multidimensional framework comprising economic, environmental, social, governance and financial dimensions and 52 sustainability indicators. The study benchmarks the significant performance indicators of leading banks indispensable to sustainable banking performance. The findings attempt to address research questions concerning the extent of sustainable banking performance, ranking the sustainability dimensions and indicators and standardizing sustainability adoption metrics.

To determine the responsiveness of the banking industry to sustainability dimensions, content analysis was conducted using NVivo software for the year 2021–2022. Furthermore, a hybrid multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) approach is used by integrating entropy, the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) and VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija KOmpromisno Resenje (VIKOR) to provide relative weights to performance indicators and prioritize banks based on their sustainable performance. Sensitivity analysis is used to ensure the robustness of results.

In the context of the Indian banking industry, the pattern of sustainability reporting is inconsistent and concentrated on addressing environmental and social concerns. The results of the entropy methodology prioritized “Environmental” sustainability over other selected dimensions while “Financial” dimension has been assigned the least priority in the ranking order. The significant sustainable performance indicators delineated in this study should be used as standards to ensure the accountability and credibility of the sustainable banking industry. Additionally, the research findings will provide valuable inputs to policymakers and regulators to assure better contribution of the banking sector in meeting sustainability goals.

Considering the paucity of studies on sustainable banking performance, this study makes two significant contributions to the literature. First, the suggested multidimensional disclosure model integrating financial and nonfinancial indicators would facilitate banking institutions in addressing the five aspects of sustainability. As one of the first studies in the context of the Indian banking industry, the findings would pave the way for better diffusion of sustainability practices. Second, the inclusion of MCDM techniques prioritizes the significance of sustainability indicators and benchmarks the performance of leading banks to achieve better profits and more substantial growth.