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Services Marketing: People Technology Strategy (Eighth Edition) By Pearson, Authored by Wirtz Jochen, Lovelock Christopher, Chatterjee Jayanta, 2017; Service-Marketing: Text and Cases (Second Edition) By Pearson, Authored by Harsh Verma, 2011.

Students will gain an understanding of business models, which has a positive impact on the environment.

This case study intends to help learners understand the concept of segmentation, targeting and positioning (STP) in the case of services. The idea of services is different from that of a product as in services; intangible elements dominate the value creation. By exploring the practical scenarios faced by the protagonist, in this case, readers would enhance their problem-solving abilities in similar situations.

Prerna is the founder of Ecoplore, an aggregator cum booking platform for eco-hotels. It onboards hotels only if they are made up of vernacular architecture and maintains at least 33% of greenery on its premises. Listed properties also harvested rainwater, used renewable source of energy, used sustainable options instead of single use plastic, composted organic waste. Most of these properties grow vegetables, fruits and herbs, and the visitors enjoy homemade organic meals. Ecoplore is the only aggregator platform to visit and verify these eco-hotels directly. Ecoplore is an early-stage startup; all customer queries were handled by Prerna, on-call or through a chat box. It included interacting with prospective clients, understanding their requirements, suggesting the most suited options and booking the eco-hotels. Prerna had to spend most of the time interacting with clients. Over time, she comprehended that only a few prospective clients became Ecoplore’s customers, and the conversion rate was low of owing to various reasons like ticket size, clients' age and psychology.

For students: This case is aptly designed for marketing students pursuing Bachelor’s in Business Administration and Master of Business Administration courses to understand and apply STP theory and service marketing concepts.

CCS 3: Entrepreneurship.

The present study's goal is to analyze the impact of audit quality (AQ) on earnings quality (EQ) using different audit attributes. The study shows empirical evidence from India, considered an emerging market.

The sample selected represents the 376 non-financial firms listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). With a 20-year time frame, the authors used the absolute value of discretionary accruals (McNichols, 2002) (DA) as a proxy for EM, which is inversely related to EQ. The authors analyzed data using OLS, fixed effect (FE), 2SLS and Panel-IV estimators.

The authors found that most audit attributes positively affect EQ. In the Indian context, joint auditor (JA), auditor size (A_SIZE), auditor fee (A_FEE) and auditor tenure (A_TENURE) have a negative association with EM indicating high EQ. In contrast, auditor rotation (A_ROTATON) positively affects EM confirming low EQ.

The present study uses Big-4 and its member firms as a proxy of auditor size (A_SIZE); instead, other bases may be taken for it, like the dominant audit firms in a particular industry in sample data, etc. The authors have started audit tenure from the base year, i.e. 2001, which may ignore the association of auditor and auditee just before 2001.

The study findings would enhance policymakers' willingness to prepare appropriate regulations regarding JAs and auditor rotation, which might improve financial market efficiency and reduce financial fraud among Indian corporates.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to incorporate “Joint Auditor” (JA) as a proxy for audit quality in the Indian context, which might significantly contribute to the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the scholarly contributions to the field of marketing by analyzing top ten journals of marketing.

The marketing journals were selected using SciMago marketing journal list, and SCOPUS database was used to identify the publications of the journals. A total of 9,190 articles were analyzed having 562,322 citation references. Methodologies like Wordle and Gephi were used to understand the most researched keywords and co-citation analysis among top five researchers. This paper also captured the information on most cited article along with author, most published author, most publishing country, most publishing university, the year with maximum publications and most used keywords.

The analysis indicates that “Kumar, V.” is most published author, that is, 68 publications, the most cited article is “On the evaluation of structural equation models” by Bagozzi and Yi (1988) with 6989 citations. The USA contributed the highest 6,720 publications, while University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School topped the list with 235 articles. In 2009, highest publication work was done by publishing 382 articles. “Game theory”, “Pricing” and “Advertising” are most used keywords which have been discussed in the literature.

This analysis will help researchers in understanding the growth in the field of the marketing in recent years and possible direction it could take in future. However, this paper considered only top ten marketing journals as listed in SciMago marketing journal list; therefore, future researchers may incorporate more research journals to get a clearer picture of the field of marketing.

This paper is one of the first attempts in recent time to understand the research work in the field of marketing considering top ten journals.

This exploratory study aims to investigate the financing issues faced by Indian small and medium enterprise (SME) owners. It also classifies the financing constraints into four financing gaps, namely, demand, knowledge, supply and benevolence.

The study uses the convergent interviewing technique to highlight the key issues being faced by SME owners in financing. Forty-four owners from different industries and having dispersed demographics have been interviewed in the study.

The findings reveal the real-time issues being faced by SME owners. SMEs faced both demand- and supply-side constraints. The most common financing challenges are high cost of credit, complex procedures of lending institutions, information asymmetry, creditworthiness and self-abstaining from external financial resources. Issues pertaining to lack of knowledge and awareness about the financial products and services are also being noticed by the researchers.

This study identifies the major financing concerns of SMEs and thereby provides a directional approach to the policymakers in the area of SME financing.

The study offers a better and data-based understanding of financing issues being faced by the SME owners. The usage of convergent interviewing allows the researchers to highlight the common issues raised by the SME owners.

Visual merchandising has a direct impact on shopping experience, making it pertinent for the retailers to ensure that their store environment has an effective design. This study blends fuzzy numbers and Analytical Hierarchy Process to create a fuzzy evaluation model prioritizing the relative weights of visual merchandising dimensions of online fashion apparel store. This study will help the fashion retailers in creating more engaging and informative online stores leading to subsequent increase in online retail sales.

Visual merchandising dimensions and sub dimensions used by retailers for online stores were identified through review of literature and discussion with experts. Twenty experts were interviewed and their responses captured. The responses were analyzed using Fuzzy AHP technique resulting in prioritizing the dimensions according to the weight. For testing the stability of the results, sensitivity analysis was conducted.

Four key dimensions and sixteen sub dimensions were extracted. Weights were calculated using FAHP. “Pictorial Presentation” has the highest weight followed closely by “Product Information” dimension. Amongst the sub-dimensions “Number of Product Images” scored highest followed by “Product Presentation mode”. “Alterable Background” scored the least weight.

Previous studies have identified Online Visual Merchandising dimensions and have also studied the impact of some of these dimensions on consumer buying behavior, but the relative significance has not been determined yet. This study fills the gap.

The purpose of this study is to consolidate the state of research in mobile commerce (m-commerce) technology adoption from 2008 to 2017. This study not only reviews the evolution of m-commerce literature but also highlights the significant contribution of authors and their productive collaborations in the development of this area.

A total of 184 peer-reviewed articles focusing on m-commerce adoption were obtained after applying search criteria on Scopus database. After using inclusion and exclusion criteria to achieve the objective of this study, 86 journals were shortlisted. The study further discusses the dispersion of various m-commerce applications being explored in m-commerce literature. In addition, dominating technology adoption theories and the most used keywords have also been identified and discussed in this study.

This study indicates that technology acceptance model and unified theory of acceptance and use of technology are the most exploited technology adoption theories. Moreover, the dominating constructs in literature are perceived usefulness, ease of use social influence/social norm on behavior intention, attitude intention followed by performance expectancy, facilitating condition and effort expectancy influence on intention.

This study presents a detailed association rule mining and community analysis to show the association among constructs such as usefulness, ease of ease, social influence and intention as dominant group in this area. The study also identifies lesser explored constructs and indicates possible future research to validate and strengthen their understanding further.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the status of the research on women’s financial planning for retirement. This paper provides a brief review of the work carried out so far along with a conceptual framework of factors influencing women’s retirement financial planning. In addition, it lists significant gaps and recommends avenues for future research.

The review is based on 151 articles appearing in various peer-reviewed journals published during 1980–2017. The study establishes its prominence by studying the publication activities based on the year of publication and region, citation analysis, research designs, data analysis techniques and findings from the selected articles.

Most of the literature on women’s financial planning for retirement indicates a lack of financial management amongst women and their susceptibility to poverty in postretirement years. The majority of the research works in this field have taken place in developed economies. Empirical research with regression-based models for analysis is the most popular research design. This review also highlights the significant determinants of women’s retirement financial planning as identified through literature. These include socio-demographic factors, psychological constructs, financial literacy, economic and circumstantial forces.

This paper covers the research works done in this area in the past 38 years. To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to provide a systematic and comprehensive compilation of the knowledge in this subject. It further synthesizes the findings of various studies on factors influencing women’s retirement financial planning and gives recommendations for future studies.

The purpose of this paper is to review existing literature on users’ digital learning acceptance behavior and to identify gaps in the current body of knowledge and suggest future research directions. The paper also includes identification of motivating as well as inhibiting factors previously explored by academicians in the acceptance of digital learning.

The systematic literature review based on PRISMA methodology was conducted, and 200 articles from peer-reviewed journals on digital learning acceptance behavior using technology adoption theories were examined.

The study found an overall rise in the number of papers published yearly during 2002–2017. Most of the studies were published in two journals, i.e. Computers & Education and Computers in Human Behaviour and were carried out in Asia followed by Europe, North America, Africa, Oceania and South America. It was also noted that most of the studies have used the technology acceptance model and were empirical in nature. The study also found that prominently students’ digital learning acceptance behavior was investigated. The review also indicates a lack of qualitative and mixed method (qualitative and quantitative) approaches to study digital learning acceptance behavior.

The study identified gaps in the current body of knowledge by reviewing published articles that will suggest future directions for further research. The top three determinants of digital learning acceptance that have been analyzed were the behavioral intention, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, followed by attitude and user behavior. The study articulates the implications for providers in marketing digital learning products, for higher education institution in expanding digital content, for students seeking digital education tools, for educators in motivating students to accept digital learning and for governments in delivering cost-effective public education by utilizing digital learning.

The paper analyzes 200 publications on digital learning acceptance through technology adoption theories. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first initiative to provide systematic and exhaustive summarization of the knowledge in this subject. It further explores the various factors influencing digital learning adoption behavior and provides avenues for future research. The paper is useful for researchers working on digital learning acceptance behavior.

This paper aims to review the status of literature on financial risk reporting practices (FRRP) for the purpose of synthesizing mounting literature to suggest the relevant risk reporting measure across the globe.

Using a systematic literature review method, a total of 61 articles from 42 referred journals and international conferences published from 2000 to 2018 are reviewed.

It has been found that despite the growing attention on and importance of corporate risk disclosure, academic literature on corporate risk disclosure is limited. Also, research linking risk disclosure with governance mechanisms is rare. Scrutiny of the literature on corporate risk disclosure shows that most of the researchers have focused on the limited or single period to examine the risk disclosure practices, determinants and corporate performance. The limitation of these studies is that with single period data analysis generalization of findings is limited. Findings of longitudinal studies are more reliable, and in extant literature, only a few studies have used data of more than a single period.

This paper contains a comprehensive listing of publications on financial risk reporting and corporate disclosure and its classification according to various attributes. The paper will be useful to researchers, finance professionals and others concerned with risk reporting to understand the importance of risk disclosure.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the existing literature on financial risk disclosure by examining a sample of non-financial Indian companies listed on the Bombay stock exchange (BSE) to explore the degree of information about financial risks contained in their annual reports.

To study the financial risk disclosure of Indian companies, a sample of 206 non-financial companies has been derived from the top 500 listed companies at BSE. The method used in this study to analyze risk disclosure is content analysis. A total of 1,854 annual reports are scanned through software Nvivo-12 to find different types of risk words. Overall, risk disclosure, category wise risk disclosure, year-wise risk disclosure and sector-wise risk disclosure are assessed. The risk disclosure index is also computed.

The results show that there are some risk disclosure practices in Indian companies. No general pattern is observed. Companies are following vague method of risk disclosure. In the true sense, Indian companies are now started risk disclosure practices since 2018. This may be because of pressure from regulating bodies and stakeholders with greater detail about their financial risks.

This study is carried out for Indian non-financial companies. The paper adds to the literature relating to financial risk disclosure in developing countries.