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The experience of rising trade imbalance between Nigeria and its key trading partners in recent years motivated this study. Previous studies on this issue either ignored bilateral level or assumed that the effect of crude oil price and/or exchange rate changes on trade balance is symmetric. Consequently, this study investigates whether Nigeria's bilateral trade balance with Belgium, China, United Kingdom (UK) and USA is responding symmetrically or asymmetrically to changes in oil price and exchange rate.

The authors used nonlinear autoregressive-distributed lag (NARDL) model that decomposed oil price and exchange rate into partial sum processes of positive and negative changes over the period 1999Q1–2019Q4.

The study finds that the effects of oil price hike and plunge asymmetrically influence Nigeria's trade balance with the UK and USA. Further evidence indicated that oil price plunge exerts greater influence than price hike in all the cases, except the UK in the long run. Furthermore, Nigeria's trade balance responds asymmetrically and significantly to changes in exchange rate with China in the long run and with China and the UK in the short run. Specifically, the depreciation effect is more prominent than appreciation.

Significant contributions to the existing literature in Nigeria include the recognition that the effects of oil price and exchange rate changes on trade are asymmetric and the disaggregation of trade into bilateral level to identify country-specific effect.

Education and knowledge have become the prerequisites for the growth and development of any economy or region. Knowledge is a liberator of individuals and societies from human poverty and is a precondition for rapid advancement in today's global knowledge economy (KE). Any nation or region which does not key into the global KE trend may find it very difficult to catch up and become competitive in the global market so as to benefit from the power of knowledge. The objective of this chapter is to investigate whether knowledge and human capital have contributed to the growth of sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Out of the four pillars of KE – the economic and institutional regime (including governance), education and human resources, the innovation system, and information infrastructure – this study focused on education and human capital in the estimation of how knowledge has contributed to growth of SSA countries. The data for the study were sourced from World Development Indicators published by The World Bank Group. Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model was applied and the results show that knowledge variables have a significant impact on economic growth of SSA countries. It is therefore recommended that welfare and working conditions of the labor force be improved so as to be more productive; SSA countries should key into the KE policies so as to be competitive in the production, use, dissemination and transfer of knowledge, ICT, and science.

The relationship between terrorism and foreign direct investment (FDI) has stimulated research curiosity given its effects on lives lost, injuries, property damaged, and the psychological aftereffects, which to a very large extent impact economic growth and development. The realization of the magnitude of its influence on bilateral economic ties engineered the study, which examined the impact of terrorism on FDI in Nigeria. The data for this study were sourced from Global Terrorism Index (GTI), Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) database, International Country Risk Guide (ICRG)’s Quality of Governance (QoG) database, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Bulletin, and World Bank Development Indicators (WDI) using autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach as described by Pesaran et al. (2001). From the results obtained, military expenditure, episode(s) of ethnic violence, and terrorist attacks have all been noted to have negative and significant impacts on FDI in Nigeria. The implication is that the reduction in FDI observed in the data is attributed to terrorism. Therefore, governments should overhaul the security apparatus so as to quell the menace of terrorists. This will go a long way to create a conducive environment for FDI to thrive, which will create more jobs for the growth and development of the Nigerian economy.

Nigeria has been ravaged by terrorist activities which has made the country unsafe for Nigerians and foreign investors. The motivation of this study arises from the dearth of research applying quantitative empirics to the determinants of terrorism in a specific country. To achieve this goal, vector autoregressive (VAR) model was applied using data from Global Terrorism Database (GTD), International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) data, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) data, and Transparency International. Stata 13 software was used for estimation. The results show that ethnic violence, absence of good governance, presence of corruption, and rises in military expenditure are part of the causes of terrorism in Nigeria. It is, therefore, recommended that internal security should be maintained to minimize the occurrence of ethnic violence and ethnoreligious biases (sentiments) in the discussion of issues concerning Nigeria. Also, politicians should stop the proliferation of arms, as this will cease the violent reactions before and after elections. Finding lasting solutions to corruption using constitutional means will improve the quality of governance, which will improve the welfare state of the people and reduce restiveness.

Given its importance in the brand management of sport teams, the present research initiative primarily concerns the investigation of the formation process of sport team loyalty. By integrating a hierarchy of effects model into a relational perspective, the study aims to investigate the role of sport consumers' involvement, self-expression, trust and attachment with a sport team in building loyal relationships. A conceptual model is proposed and tested in the context of professional soccer teams.

The data of the study comes from 287 consumers of a South East European country. The fit of the model is tested using structural equation modeling and the statistical program LISREL.

The results confirm that: all the hypothesized constructs constitute either direct or indirect determinants of sport team loyalty; a hierarchy of effects approach, cognition-affect-conation, can explain how strong consumers-team relationships can be developed; and team attachment acts as a partial mediator in the relationship between the cognitive components of the model (team involvement, trust and self-expression) and team loyalty.

The findings provide several implications to marketing managers of sport teams in how to go about and develop loyal sport fans.

No previous investigation has integrated relationship marketing with a hierarchy of effects in order to explain loyalty to a sport team.

Although customer experience has been widely researched, its effects on behavior toward a government policy are still unclear. Drawing on two theories with some similar and opposing perspectives, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of three components of customer experience (i.e. utilitarian experience, hedonic experience and relational experience) and customers’ intention on behavior within the context of the BVN policy implemented by the Nigerian apex bank.

Data emerged from one of the most populous districts in south-eastern Nigeria. Participants were recruited by mall-intercept. Out of the 283 participants approached, 246 participated but only 82.9 percent were valid for analysis. After subjecting data to statistical screening to confirm its suitability for parametric statistical analysis and examining data for the potential effects of common method variance as well as sample representativeness, a partial least squares structural equation modelling technique and the Preacher and Hayes bootstrapping procedures were utilized to test the hypothesized relationships.

Based on data obtained from Nigerian bank customers, the paper demonstrated that the customer loyalty arising from the implementation of a government policy is determined more by hedonic experience, followed by relational experience and very much less by utilitarian experience. Findings also indicate that the relationship between the components of customer experience and customer loyalty is complementarily mediated by intention to open new account(s).

Though the theoretical grounding of the paper strongly supports the study design, the authors strongly recommend that future research should examine customer experience-customer behavior models in situations of policy implementation with longitudinal design. Additionally, since intention to open new account(s) is a complementary mediator of the links between the components of customer experience and customer loyalty, there is need for future researchers to integrate other mediators into the conceptual framework that the authors examined in this paper.

This paper cautions that whilst the research findings play out effectively in situations where the benefits of the introduced policy and the consumers’ belief in the good intent of the policy are congruent and customers are susceptible to the manipulations of the social class leading to absence of volitional control; firms should not be deceived into relying too heavily on this kind of loyalty because it is situational and consequently promiscuous. Nevertheless, deploying more resources to seamlessly meet the needs of customers in such situations is counter-productive for service organizations.

Based on the findings, it has come to the fore that consumers will be at the receiving end of a government policy poorly implemented by service organizations. When such policies are rolled out therefore, governments should enforce operational modalities that will forestall potential negative experiences that consumers could possibly encounter.

By examining the effects of three components of customer experience and intention to open new account(s) on customer loyalty within the context of BVN implementation in an emerging banking sector, the authors contribute to the broad stream of literature that focuses on the effect of customer experience on company bottom-line. The strength of this contribution is based on the premise that this paper draw on the similarities and opposing orientations of two theories to uncover these effects. The authors show that the effects of the three components of customer experience on customer loyalty is different from the results of previous research because of the unique perspective adopted in this paper.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of organizational controls, both formal and informal, over the goal orientations of frontline employees. The goal orientations of employees, namely, in frontline settings, have been associated with a number of positive outcomes for organizations. Not surprisingly, past research has identified several personal characteristics with an influence on goal orientations. However, the contextual variables that influence employees’ goal orientations remain unspecified.

The authors distributed approximately 1,350 questionnaires through the frontline employees of a Brazilian bank and obtained 296 usable responses. The questionnaire relies on previously validated scales. The final confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) obtained a good fit and provided evidence of scale validity.

Overall, our results suggest that both formal and informal control mechanisms play a significant role explaining employees’ goal orientation. However, informal control mechanisms were found to play a more significant role explaining employees’ goal orientation.

This paper relies on employees from a single organization. In addition, it has a cross-sectional nature. The procedural and statistical remedies employed in this study suggest that method variance is not a concern.

The results show that managers may resort to control mechanisms to influence the goal orientations of frontline service employees in a manner that is consistent with organizational objectives.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that examines the impact of control mechanisms on employees’ goal orientation.

Many service employees rely on non-contractual voluntary customer tips as a major source of their income. The purpose of this paper is to empirically test the relationship between the service employee’s cognitive evaluation of the tip (expectations-disconfirmation tip gap), affective state (AS) and displayed emotions (DE) toward customers in the workplace.

An experimental, between-subjects, scenario-based research design was conducted on 107 waiters in the US restaurant industry. A simple mediation model was first tested, before testing a more complex moderated mediation model that was developed to investigate if employees self-control (SC) moderates the relationship between the employees tip gap, AS, and DE.

An employee’s negative disconfirmation tip gap negatively influences the employee’s AS, which in turn results in negative DE toward customers in the workplace. However, an employee’s positive tip gap does not positively influence the employee’s AS, relative to the control. In addition, employees’ SC does not moderate the relationship, which suggests that when employees experience negative tip disconfirmation they may openly violate the service provider’s display rules and service scripts, and display negative emotions toward customers in the workplace.

The scenario-based research design was limited to self-reported perceived levels of SC and DE. The scenario was also limited to one country and one tipping context (i.e. restaurants). Future studies could compliment these findings by conducting both qualitative studies, and survey research that relies on actual tipping data or re-enactments of actual service encounters.

Service managers not only need to manage display rules and service scripts to influence employee DE, but also need to manage employee tip expectations, especially when employees expect to receive tips that are greater than actual tips (i.e. negative disconfirmation). Communicating and educating employees on customer tipping and what tips to expect should be central to managing employees who rely on customer tips.

Tipping has received very little attention in the services management literature. This study broadens the focus of tipping research in the literature by presenting a more complex expectations-disconfirmation tip gap model.

The aim of this study was to integrate the hierarchical model of the perceived service quality (PSQ) theory with the bottom-up theory of satisfaction. It was hypothesised that satisfaction with sporting events would mediate the relationship between PSQ and life satisfaction. Study 1 was conducted to translate the Perceived Service Quality questionnaire (PSQQ) (Brady & Cronin, 2011) into Chinese and to validate it for sporting events. Study 2 was conducted to examine the main hypothesis. The results indicated that satisfaction-withevent partially mediated the relationship between PSQ and life satisfaction. The results are discussed in terms of both the examined theories.

Service employees are reported to influence negatively the development of a market orientation hindering thus the service company's effort to become more customer centric. A way to overcome this barrier is the implementation of internal marketing (IM) programs. However, the extant literature reports that the number of companies practicing marketing internally is disproportionate small compared to the number of companies trying to adopt the market orientation concept. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to offer a preliminary insight regarding the antecedents of practicing marketing internally.

To do this, data were collected from 583 first‐line personnel from 29 five and four stars hotels in Greece through personal interviews in order to investigate the impact of company culture and internal‐market orientation (IMO) as antecedents of IM and investigate the effect that the company's culture, IMO and IM have on employee's job satisfaction at the individual's level.

The analysis involved multilevel SEM and demonstrates that the company's culture influences the adoption of the IMO concept, which in turn is an important antecedent to the implementation of IM programs. Moreover, employee's job satisfaction level is directly conditioned by the degree to which the company has adopted the IMO concept and practices IM, although the effect of the former is significantly stronger than the latter.

Various directions for future research open from this study, which address the limitations of this study while facilitating further understanding of how the adoption of the IMO concept can complement the company's espousal of marketing philosophy. For instance, although assessing the impact of the IMO concept adoption and IM practice on the adoption of a market orientation and on customer satisfaction is beyond the scope of the present study, future research towards this direction through an integrated conceptual framework would be particularly helpful and welcome.

The practical implication from this paper is that IM programs, in order to be effective, require that the company is willing to invest in adjusting its culture and also in adopting the IMO concept, which translates to investing in understanding what the employee's value, developing bidirectional communication channels and becoming responsive to the needs of its employees.

This is the first study addressing the role of company culture and IMO adoption as antecedents of IM programs. Hence, it makes a contribution for both scholars and practitioners alike since the former derive a more comprehensive framework of studying further the practice of marketing internally while the latter obtain a more pragmatic picture of the actions required prior to launching an IM program.