Factors that Influence Consumers’ Future Purchase Intention

The main aim of this study is to examine the key factors that influence future purchase intention and shape the consumers’ attitude towards brand social media pages. Data were collected through a questionnaire survey from Lahore city, Pakistan. A total number of 380 responses were collected from which 274 were analyzed by using structural equation modeling. The outcomes of the study shows that brand credibility, brand familiarity, and attitude towards brand social media page are the key factors of future purchase intention. Moreover, the study found a negative significant association of brand familiarity and e-wom with future purchase intention for the female group. The study further found that involvement is positively significantly associated with consumers' attitudes towards social media. So far; no study examines the factors of future purchase intention based on gender. This study contributes to explaining the inconsistent results between e-WOM and future purchase intention. Implication concerning offers for managerial brand marketers, firms, and research practices and directions for future research presented.

Stock market volatility and it's determinants in Pakistan stock market.

Stock price volatility is considered as one of the most important areas of concern for the capital markets regulators, investors and academicians in recent years. Corporate dividend policy as a determinant of stock market volatility is a significant area of concern for the investors as well as the managers of the company due to political instability and the current economic crisis in Pakistan. This study aims at determining the effect of significant factors such as dividend yield, dividend payout ratio, foreign exchange rate and foreign direct investment on stock price fluctuation in Pakistan, which contributes to overall variation in stock price volatility. The study used a sample of 200 Pakistani listed companies by employing the regression analysis. The endogeneity issues were addressed through the generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation. The study concludes that stock price volatility has a negative association with dividend policy. The study also suggests that foreign direct investment and foreign exchange rates both negatively influence the stock price fluctuations in emerging markets. The findings of this study provide practical implications for the investors, policymakers and firm managers.

Organizational Justice Theory and Media Professional Performance during COVID-19

Sudden outbreak of COVID-19 has been emerged as threat to employee performance and so for the media employees. It has shown quite challenging effect on aworker's in-role and extra-role performance. Theprimary objectiveto write this paper is to determine the correlation between media workers perceptions of organizational performance and its success. Impact of organizational justice as a moderator is addressed. We selected a convenience sample of 222 media professionals. Responses were gathered using closed-ended questionnaires. The solutions were evaluated using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling. The result indicates that the Perceived organizational support has a meaningful role on media workers morale during COVID-19 times. Likewise, corporate fairness plays a key role in establishing a link among perceived organizational support and employee performance. Corporatesthat wanted their employees to succeed must ensure that organizational assistance and fairness are maintained in all organizational operations. Corporation backing and perceived support help to build employee trust and encourage them to work hard. Organizational support in the workplace has a greater effect on achievement. The study examined the non-linear relationship between employee and job performance among media professionals within the context of COVID-19. Corporate expect an increasing reliance on corporate resources to overcome difficulties during these times.

Toxic leadership and collective organizational engagement: Does employee voice mediate the effect?

Drawing upon the theory of planned behavior, this study aims to observe the role of employee voice in abating the impact of toxic leadership on collective organizational engagement. The performance of the firm is highly dependent on employee engagement and leadership plays a vital role in engaging employees towards collective goals. This study used the snowball sampling technique to collect data from the Pakistan service sector. A self-reported questionnaire was used to collect data from the said sector, the sample size was 223 employees working in telecommunication, banks, and insurance companies. Thus, literature proposes that the phenomenon of toxic leadership exists at every workplace and has negative effects on the organization. Previously toxic leadership has been studied only as a predictor of negative outcomes only. Therefore current study argues that even though toxic leadership decreases the collective organizational engagement, however, this relationship can be transformed via employee proactive voice behavior. Results obtained through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) show that although leaders’ toxicity disengages employees at the workplace they look engaged. Structural relation of toxic leadership with employee voice has proved significant which indicates that employee raises voice against the leader’s bad behavior; it keeps them engaged as they perceive organization cares their voice. Thus, this study recommends that employee voice behavior should be promoted at the organization to neutralize the toxic leadership effect on collective organizational engagement. Present study where advances the literature on toxic leadership has practical implications for the managers as well. As toxic leadership overshadows the effects of positive leadership thus to avoid the negative effects of toxic leadership; top management should promote collective engagement through employee voice behavior to accomplish firm performance. Presently this study attempts to enrich the literature by empirically testing the proposed relationship and also provided future insights on toxic leadership to the researchers.

Impact of Entrepreneurial Motivation on Women Entrepreneurial Performance through Entrepreneurial Efficacy: Moderated by Resilience

Aim of the Study: The paper arguments to investigate how ladies business visionaries in Pakistan are overseeing their businesses and gathered courage to work within the setting of Covid-19. The paper hunt for to elucidate how women through their motivation and entrepreneurship self-efficacy are maintaining their entrepreneurial performance due to their resilience. Research Approach/ Methodology: This paper receives the positivist approach utilizing PROCESS by Hayes in SPSS. Information was collected from ladies entrepreneurs working in twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Findings – Findings of the current study have revealed that Pakistan being a collectivist culture serves as a source for women to seek support from their social relations from within their own families but there are a lot of problems on the flip side due to their family responsibilities and stereotypes associated with role of women in the family. The findings further uncovered the role of resilience of the women entrepreneurs that is needed to adapt especially in times of crises to accomplish their entrepreneurial expeditions. Originality – This research paper subsidizes to a very less addressed area which is a second glass ceiling in the world of entrepreneurship. It sheds light to make women visible in developing society in context of the new normal during ongoing pandemic. The paper also explains how the gender role stereotypes act as a hurdle in path of a women entrepreneurs and the role of family support if present in curbing the effect of such hurdles.

The Dynamic Effects of Terrorism on Tourism: A Bound Testing Co-integration Approach

Tourism industry is considered a key driver promoting socioeconomic development in under development economy, but there are several factors which hindering this development. The terror incidence in swat valley have severely affected tourism industry of the area. Terrorism is a growing hazard across the globe with severs socio-economic consequences. Pakistan is also playing it’s was against terrorism that it has affected its various economic activities including tourism. During the first decade of the ongoing century, northern mountainous area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which was famous for tourism, was badly affected by incidences of terror2. The objective of this research work is to estimate the impact of terror incidents on domestic tourism in Pakistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Swat Valley (TA –domestic visitors’ arrivals).The current research is an effort to evaluate the short-term and long-term association between events of terror and domestic visitation. Primary data was collected using stratified random sampling techniques and interview method and secondary data was taken from various sources to evaluate the model. Auto Regressive Distributive Lag (ARDL) model is used to evaluate the data. The ARDL bound test confirms the co-integration between terror incidents and tourism. Additionally, the examined findings undoubtedly ensure the negative short-term and long-term impact of events of terror on domestic tourism in the study area.

Public Demand for Improved Urban Water Supply Services in Multan

Governments in developing countries face financial constraints to ensure supply of clean drinking water. They may benefit from increasing water charges for those who are be willing to pay little extra in lieu of their demand for improvement in water quality and service. To check the plausibility of this proposal, we investigated drinking water supply and quality, and welloff consumers demand for improved service delivery in Shah-Rukun-e-alam and Mumtazabad towns in Multan city of Pakistan. Qualitative data obtained through a questionnaire survey was analyzed using descriptive and regression techniques. Qualitative information obtained through semi structured interviews was helpful in designing survey questionnaire and to elaborate quantitative results. Results reveal that the respondents accord high importance to the provision of safe drinking water than to other daily household needs. The demand for improvement in water supply parameters exceeds the demand for improvements in water quality parameters, with the reliable supply being the most demanded improvement. Majority realize the government’s budget constraints in improving service delivery. Most respondents would pay PKR 100 in addition to what they are paying now. Their willingness to pay (WTP) this amount correlates with their awareness on water and health nexus, and depends household income, number of children under 14 years age and awareness of actual water quality tested through laboratory. Besides recommending raise of water charges by PKR 100 per month per household in both towns, the service quality improvement may consider interventions such as mobile water testing laboratory and awareness campaigns motivate citizens to pay for safe drinking water.

Quality of Service as a Predictor of Customer Satisfaction in Healthcare Sector

This study examines role of quality of service as a predictor of customer satisfaction in private hospitals. Using a sample of customers of selected private hospitals in Karachi, this study used reliability statistics, Pearson correlation analysis, and OLS regression techniques to analyse the data. The results show that private hospitals are trying to deliver healthcare service that is at par with the expected standards set by their customers. The findings of this study will help management of these hospitals to develop and implement appropriate and effective strategies that would be helpful in delivering quality healthcare services to the patients.

Global Competitiveness and Potential for Higher Exports

The objective of this research is to examine the possibility of higher export level for the countries which have a higher level of competitiveness. The study has taken the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) as a proxy for the level of Competitiveness and the countries are divided into high and low export countries on the basis of export volume. Furthermore, the study also analyzes the relative efficacy of different components’ of competitiveness index. The estimated results based on the binary probability distribution model showed a positive relationship between higher export level probability and level of Competitiveness. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that the economies having higher levels of competitiveness would have greater possibilities of generating higher exports. GCI is considered as most acceptable index for measuring competitiveness level of a country in the globalized economic system. However, realization of importance through empirical investigation is almost negligible, particularly for the developing countries. The results suggest that developing countries should concentrate on enhancing competitiveness level to achieve the goal of higher exports. The result further suggested that the sub-index “basic requirement” is more important for the enhancement of exports and countries should concentrate on improving the pillars of basic requirements for enhancing competitiveness.

Correlation of Macroeconomic Variables with Twin Deficit in Pakistan

The macroeconomic term Twin deficit is intensive of the study, which refers to a situation when in an economy both current account and the budget deficits are running at the correspondent time period. The core objective of the paper to investigate the relationship among the twin deficit hypothesis and major macroeconomic variables (Gross domestic product, Foreign Direct Investment, money supply, and interest rate). The results of the study founded through the secondary time series quarterly data from 1992-2018 of Pakistan’s economy. In the study to examine the stationary of data, applied Augmented Dickey-Fuller test and then used Vector Error Correction and Johansen co-integration Model to examine the short and long-term relationship among observed variables. The core finding of the study was that in short period along with long-run period Pakistan faced twin deficit situation due to positive association of current account deficit and Budget deficit. The outcomes of the study also indicate that GDP and FDI have positively long-run association while money supply and rate of interest have negatively long-run association with twin deficit. These results of the study are very helpful for the decision making and implementation of fiscal, monetary and export policies in Pakistan.