Determinants of consumers’ intentions to use smartphones apps for flight ticket bookings

This study examines customers’ adoption and acceptance of smartphone apps to book their flight tickets. By integrating customers’ innovativeness, involvement and perceived trust as additional variables, this study extends the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and proposes a theoretical model that includes seven explanatory variables of the customers’ behavioural intentions: performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, customers’ innovativeness, customers’ involvement and perceived trust. Data were collected from 369 customers who had booked their flight tickets via smartphone apps and was further analysed by employing partial least squares (PLS). Findings suggest that performance expectancy, facilitating conditions, customer innovativeness and perceived trust are positive and significant determinants of customers’ intentions to book their flight tickets on smartphone apps. Accordingly, several important implications for academics and industry decision makers are formulated.     

Loyalty toward online food delivery service: the role of e-service quality and food quality

This study assesses the direct influence of food quality and e-service quality on customer loyalty toward online food delivery (OFD) service and its indirect influence through the mediation of customer satisfaction and perceived value. This study uses a survey of 405 OFD service customers from Bandung, Indonesia. By applying variance-based partial least squares to evaluate the proposed model, this study confirms the direct effect of food quality on online loyalty, but not e-service quality. Further, this study discloses the partial mediation role of customer satisfaction and perceived value on the relationship between both food quality and e-service quality on online loyalty toward OFD services.     

The relationship between laissez-faire leadership and burnout: Mediation through work alienation and the moderating role of political skill

We tested the relationship between laissez-faire leadership and job burnout and the mediating role of work alienation in this relationship. We also examined the moderating role of political skill in the relationship between laissez-faire leadership and burnout. Based on time-lagged (three waves, two months apart) survey data collected from 272 employees in 92 firms operating in China, our results showed that laissez-faire leadership was positively related to burnout both directly and via work alienation. Moreover, the positive relationship between laissez-faire leadership and burnout was contingent on political skill, such that the relationship was weak when political skill was high. The study provides useful suggestions to help managers curb employees' feelings of burnout and work alienation.     

Does Bank Diversification Improve Output Growth? Evidence from the Recent Global Crisis

This study examines whether the diversity of activities conducted by the banking sector in the years approaching the recent global financial crisis alleviated the adverse impact of the crisis. Using data for 28 industries in 66 countries, we find that bank diversification has strengthened country resilience to the crisis, as measured by industry growth over the period 2008–2009. However, we find that while both bank‐based and market‐based economies have been affected negatively by the crisis, the contribution of bank diversification in mitigating the real impact of the crisis is pronounced only in bank‐based economies. Overall, our findings suggest that countries with significant bank diversification have also been the most resilient to the recent global crisis.     

Transformation of Islamic Work Ethic and Social Networks: The Role of Religious Social Embeddedness in Organizational Networks

The aim of this study is to explore the influence of religious beliefs on social or work-related ties of managers who are member of organizational networks representing two different ideologies (religious and secular) in Turkey. In this research, the emergence of secular and devout entrepreneurs is considered as a phenomenon, and special attention is paid to religious transformation and secularism in Turkey. Social network analysis method is used to define the nature of communication links among 80 chairmen who are the members of two conflicting and dominant groups in Turkish business system. The findings show that Protestant work ethic suggested by Weber with regard to Christianity have attained a similar place over the past decade in Islamic organizational networks. The concern of political power in religion leads to organizational networks being nourished by religious norms and creeds in many developing countries. Especially in societies like Turkey where the state is dominant in the business life, organizations and managers prefer to be included in religious networks to make close contacts with the state. Another significant finding is that efforts of the members of religious networks—in spite of their relatively closed characteristics—in terms of being at the center of a network and taking the brokerage role, are highly developed on the contrary to the literature.     

Examining shopping mall consumer decision-making styles,satisfaction and purchase intention

Understanding consumer decision-making (CDM) styles is essential for market segmentation, positioning and crafting marketing strategies within a market. Few studies have examined the structural relationship among decision-making styles that consumers exhibit during mall shopping, level of satisfaction and purchase intention. The purpose of this study was to examine CDM styles as the antecedents and predictors of level of satisfaction and purchase intention. Based on the Consumer Styles Inventory, eight CDM styles that individual exhibit during shopping mall activities are proposed in terms of utilitarian and hedonic perspectives. We hypothesize these eight CDM styles as a set of predictors of customer satisfaction and purchase intention. A total of 327 valid paper-and-pencil questionnaires were collected from several shopping malls in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Partial least squares (PLS) path modelling approach, a structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) technique was performed to test the proposed structural relationships. The empirical assessment supports that hedonic shopping styles consumers that exhibit high level of habitual, brand consciousness, fashion consciosness, recreational conscious style have lower levels of satisfaction and purchase intention during mall shopping while novelty and fashion conscious style consumers have lower level of satisfaction but do not unveil lower purchase intention. Utilitarian shopping styles consumers that exhibit high level of price conscious, confused by overchoice and high-quality conscious style have higher levels of satisfaction while impulsive/careless shoppers do not; and while price conscious, impulsive/careless, confused by overchoice consumers have higher levels of purchase intention but the high-quality conscious consumers do not unveil higher purchase intention. Further, there is a positive relationship between satisfaction and purchase intention. The practical and managerial implications are discussed.     

E-mail Advertising in Syria: Assessing Beliefs,Attitudes, and Behaviors

The present study aimed at assessing Syrian consumers' beliefs regarding, attitude, and behavioral responses toward e-mail advertising and investigating the relationships among those variables. A cross-sectional survey was conducted and it yielded 273 valid responses. The proposed model was analyzed and tested using a structural equation modelling approach. Our findings showed that both informativeness and entertainment beliefs positively predicted Syrian consumers' attitudes toward e-mail advertising. Additionally, attitude was found to fully mediate the relationship between beliefs regarding and behavioral responses toward e-mail advertising.     

Cross-sectional determinants of bank performance under deposit dollarization in emerging markets

Dollar-denominated deposits and loans could increase financial fragility in emerging market banking systems. This currency mismatch does not only increase banks' currency risk when the proportion of dollar-denominated loans with respect to local-denominated loans increases but also it increases their clients' default risk if depreciation occurs. This paper investigates the profitability of 36 dollarized banking systems. Results suggest that after controlling for some macroeconomic and institutional variables, dollarization, as the currency mismatch hypothesis suggests, depresses bank performance and lowers bank profitability. Results also show that the effect of institutions more than offsets the negative impact of dollarization on banks' profitability.     

The Causes and Consequences of Accelerated Stock Repurchases

We examine the choice between accelerated share repurchase (ASR) and open market repurchase (OMR) as repurchase mechanisms between 2004 and 2007. For a sample of ASRs and OMRs that actually buy shares in the announcement quarter, we find that ASR firms have lower market‐to‐book ratios, less cash, but greater managerial entrenchment. Prior to repurchase, ASR firms are subject to significantly more takeover rumors than OMR firms are, and this, along with entrenchment and undervaluation, affects the choice to use ASRs. ASR firms experience positive average abnormal returns both before and after the announcement. Moreover, the latent takeover probability is significantly lower for both ASR and OMR firms (when compared with pre‐announcement levels), but the reduction for ASR firms is more pronounced. Our results suggest that repurchases, and especially ASRs, indeed make a firm a less attractive prospect for takeover.