Building Brand Loyalty Based Brand Characteristic on Middle Eastern Culinary Msme Products

This research aims to determine the effect of brand characteristic variables, including brand reputation, brand predictability, and brand competence, on brand loyalty among MSME consumers of the Kak Fiet brand. The research sample was drawn using a non-probability sampling method called purposive sampling. One hundred twenty-seven respondents participated in this research. The data used in this research were primary data collected through questionnaires. Data analysis included validity and reliability tests, classical assumption tests, path coefficient tests, the goodness of fit tests, and hypothesis testing using the SmartPLS program. The results show that 1) brand reputation has a significant effect on brand loyalty; 2) brand predictability has no significant effect on brand loyalty; and 3) brand competence has a significant effect on brand loyalty. It demonstrates that the hypotheses that brand reputation has a significant effect on brand loyalty and that brand competence has a significant effect on brand loyalty are confirmed. In contrast, the hypothesis that brand predictability has a significant effect on brand loyalty is not proven. This means that not all brand characteristic elements have a significant effect on brand loyalty on Kak Fiet MSME products.

Smart Card Implementation Project in Vietnamese Campuses

This paper is aimed at analysing determinants of the behavioural intention of smart card adoption in the university campuses. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model is applied, with primary data are collected from in-depth interviews and survey questionnaires with students and lecturers at the National Economics University in Vietnam. The key findings are: in an open-minded and developing environment such as National Economics University, the smart card implementation in campus is most influenced by Effortless Conditions- a new determinant combining from Effort Expectancy and Facilitation Conditions. The other factors are respectively Performance Expectancy, Perceived Risk, and Trust. By determining these factors, the Boards of the university will have an overall look on the demand and preferences of the university students, teachers, and staffs towards smart card, hence, start the smart card project and develop as one of the smart campuses in Vietnam.

The Antecedents of the Consumers' Mobile Learning Intention during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Purpose Covid-19, which affects the whole world, has caused serious changes in many aspects such as lifestyle, habits and purchasing behaviour. New digital consumers and companies that emerged during the epidemic; they realized that mobile devices, especially mobile phones, have become a solution to many real-world problems such as learning and education anytime and anywhere. This study aims to determine the factors affecting the users' mobile learning (m-learning) usage intention during the Covid-19 pandemic process. Design/methodology/approach – This study contributed to the confirmation of the extended TAM model for a mobile device. The sample of the questionnaire is 460 students from different universities in Turkey. These data obtained were analyzed with the Structural Equation Model (SEM) and LISREL program was used for data analysis. Findings – This study proffers a model that the antecedents of the users' mobile learning intention during the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the results of the study, it was concluded that the factor affecting the users' mobile learning (m-learning) intention to use the most is perceived ease of use, the least effective factor is intrinsic leisure motivation, and the future anxiety factor has a meaningless effect. Originality/value – A holistic view of the antecedents of the users' mobile learning intention during the Covid-19 pandemic would be of important use to practitioners and academics alike. This study is different from previous studies; It is thought that it will contribute to the literature by addressing the effects of internal leisure motivation, future anxiety, behavioural spread and system-service quality dimensions on m-learning. For the researchers, this study took an important step towards explaining the m-learning relationship with students' intrinsic leisure motivation, future anxiety, behavioural spread, and system-service quality learning perspectives. Keywords Mobile learning, Mobile CRM, Technology Acceptance Model

Determinant of Residential Property Price Index in Five Asian Emerging Market Countries: A Demand and Supply Approach

This study aims to analyze the factors influencing the Residential Property Price Index (RPPI) from the demand and supply sides in five Asian emerging market countries. The data used are semi-annual data from the first semester of 2009 until the second semester of 2019 because this study aims to denote the impact of RPPI toward the demand and supply indicators after the global crisis in 2008. The dependent variable of this study is the RPPI, while the independent variables include the number of workers, real interest rate, economic growth, and the Real Effective Exchange Rate (REER). The Fixed Effects Model (FEM) is thus the applied method to process the data. In the end, the results indicate that all independent variables are significant toward the RPPI. The number of workers, real interest rate, and REER negatively affect the RPPI, while economic growth positively affects the RPPI.

Critical Analysis of Governance, Economic Freedom, and Human Capital Implications on Sustainable Economic Growth: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

In the recent time, the attention of scholars have shifted towards deeper understanding of factors that drives the achievement of sustainable economic growth, but yet factors such as governance, economic freedom, and human capital have not been exhaustively investigated, especially within the context of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Thus, this study investigates the implications of governance, economic freedom, and human capital on the sustainability of economic growth in the SSA, usingpanel data that spanned between 1996 and 2018, and employed a Pooled Mean Group (PMG) estimator for the analysis. This study found governance, economic, and human capital to have a positive and significant causal relationship with economic growth in the long-run, while only economic freedom was found to have a negative and significant causal relationship with economic growth in the short-run. In addition, this study found that in case of disequilibrium, the model has a convergent speed of adjustment of about 10.8%. The study implications were discussed in the study.

Analyzing the Antecedents (I.E., Service Price and Service Quality) and Consequences (I.E., Repurchase Intention and Customer Loyalty) Of Customer Satisfaction in Transportation Industry of Ghana: The Mediated Model.

Background: Transportation is a service that Government across the world recognize as being an important facet in the advancement of environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable communities. However, the public transport usage is still much lower than automobile in most of the regions around the globe, and therefore,, novel strategies requires to be updated to promote the usage public transportation. Purpose: This research aims to explore the antecedents and consequences of customer/passenger’s satisfaction in the context of transportation industry in Ghana. In addition, to investigate the mediating role of customer satisfaction between service quality and customer loyalty. Design/methodology/approach: The study randomly selected respondents and data was collected through sharing online survey form generated using Google form. The study used partial least square structural equation modeling for the path analysis of 423 passengers of bus transport. Findings: The research findings of the study includes the direct positive and significant effect of service price and service quality on customer satisfaction and customer satisfaction on repurchase intention and customer loyalty. In addition, customer satisfaction partially mediate the relationship between service quality and customer loyalty. Conclusion: This research has implications for practitioners and scholars interested in exploring importance of service quality and customer satisfaction in the context of transportation. It builds an empirical, hypothesized model, which has 38.5% explanatory power.

Demography and electrical energy in the economy of large Cameroonian cities

This article shows that Cameroon remains the second hydroelectric potential of Africa after the Democratic Republic of Congo. Started in the 1950s and developed in 2001 by the national policy, strategy and action plan for energy efficiency in the electricity sector in Cameroon with the construction of hydroelectric dams and thermal power plants, the result of this policy Slow is the persistence of difficulties in supplying electrical energy, which leads to continuous load shedding on the one hand, and the limits linked to supplies in a context of increasing urbanization (2.5%) on the other. Although the correlation between population growth and energy consumption remains present for economic growth in cities, the rate of GDP is 5.77% and remains constant among other things, from the energy crisis in all cities of the country.

Selected Macroeconomic Variables and Agricultural Sector in Nigeria

The study investigated effect of selected macroeconomic variables on agricultural sector output in Nigeria from 1987 - 2019. Annual Agricultural Output (AAO) represented the dependent variable for the study while gross domestic product, interest rate, money supply, and exchange rate represented the explanatory variables. Ex-post factor research design was employed for the study. Augmented Dickey Fuller Unit Roots test and Ordinary Least Square (OLS) Regression techniques were used to analyze data collected. The empirical investigation showed that gross domestic product as well as money supply has a positive and significant effect on agricultural output, while interest rate and exchange rate exerted a negative and insignificant effect on agricultural output. From the study, selected macroeconomic variables have positive effect on agricultural output in Nigeria and this has tremendously contributed to the country's growth and development. The study recommends amongst other; that government should accelerate the rate of economic growth by investing heavily on the agricultural sector so as to boost domestic production and enhance exportation in order to stabilize exchange rate while curbing inflation; give incentives to banks extending agricultural loans by lowering the lending rate on agricultural loans to ease access to funds for agricultural investment.

The Occurrence of Conflicts and the Social Divide Do They Affect the Economic Growth of Sub-Saharan African Fragile Countries?

The article is an empirical analysis of the relationship between social divide, the occurrence of conflict and economic growth. By examining the impact of the social divide and conflict on the economic growth of six countries in sub-Saharan Africa as well as the effects of predicted variables conflict and economic growth on the social divide, we use ARDL models from the econometric perspective to study the link between conflicts and growth then the Generalized Moments Method (GMM) to solve the endogeneity problem of our main variables and, this from dynamic panel data relating to the period 1980- 2008. The results reveal that conflict destroys economic growth and conversely, economic growth creates new social divides that increase the opportunity for conflict and depress activity. The intensity of the conflicts in these countries seems to be able to project fragile economies more quickly on trajectories which lead them less towards their level of long-term equilibrium growth. Indeed, conflict assessment should be a central concern of development economists for the sake of economic recovery. Finally, the poor performance in terms of growth cannot be blamed on the conflicts whose exacerbation is the cause, but must lead decision-makers to reflect on the structural causes.

COVID-19 and the Rise of Crime in Developing Countries

It is not news that the world was on a stand still for about a year, and now, we operate in a new normal. A good number of research has been carried out on this topic. Where there has been a discord is how the pandemic affected more things than just the economy of states and the health sector. In many countries of the world, as a result of the virus and the lockdown that followed in the international community, there was a big rise in crime rates and domestic violence in states. This article explores the rise of crime in Nigeria and how this affected the country even in a pandemic. This research adopts the use of case study method to see the rise in crime and how it happened in a pandemic.