Financial Metrics in Business

Impact of online advertising on consumer buying behavior in Saudi Arabia: The moderating role of brand image

Hassan Ammar Ali Abdullah — 2024-12-27

Online advertising plays a crucial role in shaping consumer buying behavior by influencing awareness, preferences, and purchase decisions. Building on the theory of planned behavior (TPB), this research examined the direct influence of online advertising dimensions of informativeness, credibility, creativity, entertainment, interaction, and integration on consumer buying behavior in Saudi Arabia, emphasizing the moderating impact of brand image. Using a quantitative research method, convenience sampling technique, and a survey questionnaire, 200 valid samples were collected and analyzed to fulfill the research objectives. The structural equation modeling findings showed that informativeness, credibility, creativity, and interaction had a significant influence on consumers buying behavior, while entertainment and integration had no significant impact. The moderating analysis indicated that brand image only strengthens the impact of informativeness, credibility, and interaction on consumer buying behavior. The findings of this research validate the importance of online advertising in influencing consumers' buying behaviors and urge online stores or e-commerce platforms to consider the informativeness, credibility, and interaction dimensions of their online advertising.

Post-ACA health insurance decisions: A survey on risk attitudes and consumer confidence

Florent Nkouaga — 2024-09-18

Objective: This study investigates the reluctance of individuals in the United States to get health insurance, specifically examining the psychological and sociodemographic aspects that contribute to this reluctance within the Affordable Care Act (ACA) framework. The research objective is to ascertain the behavioral factors contributing to insurance hesitation and offer valuable perspectives for decreasing the number of individuals without health insurance and enhancing health security.
Methodology: The study uses data from the 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances to analyze the impact of specific variables such as risk tolerance, consumer confidence, income, education, age, and marital status on health insurance coverage choices. We also address issues related to cost, perceived health requirements, previous experiences, and misunderstandings about eligibility.
Conclusion: The study demonstrates that higher customer confidence, frequently associated with financial stability, decreases reluctance to obtain insurance. By contrast, individuals with more risk tolerance exhibit more hesitancy, opting to depend on internal resilience. Furthermore, substantial demographic disparities indicate the presence of several obstacles in acquiring comprehensive coverage.
Implications and Recommendations: The results underscore the necessity of tailored policy interventions that address the unique requirements of different demographic groups. It is crucial to consider both psychological and sociodemographic aspects to promote insurance adoption and ensure universal health security. The present study makes a valuable contribution to the current body of literature by offering a comprehensive examination of health insurance hesitation following the Affordable Care Act (ACA) implementation.

The Chinese economic policy in African markets: An essay based on evidence and perspectives

Francesco Scalamonti — 2024-08-09

This paper is an essay that aims to understand China's economic policy in the African markets. As a result, changes in international trade and foreign direct investments (FDIs) from the beginning of the new millennium and to the end of the last decade have been highlighted. The data have shown a clear intensification of Chinese trade and FDIs in African markets in 2017 compared to 2002. This international expansionism is a result of the economic policy adopted by China to gradually push firms to approach foreign markets. Therefore, it has been a consequence of the leading and supporting role of international trade played by Chinese governance.

Comparative effects of self-evaluated and test-based financial literacy on choosing life insurance policies in a multi-racial context

Florent Nkouaga — 2024-06-11

This study investigates the relationship between financial literacy and the choice of life insurance policies in the multi-racial context of the United States. Both subjective and objective measures of financial literacy are considered important factors in shaping consumer behavior in the life insurance market. Methods: Logistic regression analyses were conducted using data from the 2022 Survey of Consumer Finance to explore how financial literacy is related to the ownership of different types of life insurance, including term insurance, cash value insurance, and a combination of both. The analysis controlled for demographic variables such as age, race, and marital status. Results: The results show that subjective financial literacy significantly influences the ownership of all types of life insurance, while objective financial literacy only affects ownership of term insurance. Demographic factors, such as belonging to Generation X, or being married, also have a positive impact on life insurance ownership. Higher levels of education and income are associated with a higher likelihood of owning life insurance, while unemployment has a negative impact. Conclusion: The findings highlight the central role of subjective financial literacy in motivating individuals to purchase life insurance. Confidence in one's financial knowledge appears to be more influential than actual knowledge when making insurance decisions. Therefore, financial education programs should aim to improve both financial knowledge and confidence to encourage wider adoption of life insurance, ensuring greater financial security for diverse populations.

Dovetailing the human resource management with the cloud computing in the era of industry 4.0: A review

Dipanker Sharma — 2024-01-17

The Current review evaluates the human side of Industrial Revolution which is blending the physical, biological, and digital worlds, erasing the borders between technology and human. The Current article examines the potential benefits of Cloud Computing (CC) in the area of HR, and their significant advantages in various HRM processes and highlights the development and trends in the industrial revolution. The 44 articles were retrieved from free search engines like Google scholar, Proquest, Research Gate and Google from (2010-2022). The articles selected through this process were carefully analyzed to synthesize existing knowledge. The findings emphasized that cloud based HRMS offers distinctive advantages to enhance efficiency and cost-effectiveness. The review surfaces that innovative programs have disrupted traditional HR management practices by transitioning the company's segregated in-house HRMS to the cloud. The organizations; implementing and practicing such technologies have gained competitive edge over their rivals. Additionally, cloud computing facilitates efficient resource utilization, seamless scalability, elimination of hardware and software maintenance requirements, and reliable data recovery capabilities. The study suggests strategies on how HR must create a digital workplace that can innovate, collaborate, and tackle business issues.

Research on the impact of artificial intelligence on the employment environment of labors in China

Nannan Shan — 2023-11-29

Purpose: The development of artificial intelligence technology can undoubtedly trigger profound changes in the labor market. Empirical analysis of the impact of artificial intelligence on the employment environment and its mechanism can propose effective paths to optimize the employment environment, which can effectively promote the improvement of the employment environment for Chinese labors and the stability of the employment situation. Based on the limitations of the development of artificial intelligence technology in China, this study focuses on studying its impact on the employment environment in the short term, and the long-term effects on the employment environment in China will become the author's future focus and research direction.
Methodology: This study uses quantitative research methods, based on Panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2009 to 2019, and uses program computer software Stata 17.0 for data processing and empirical analysis.
Conclusion: AI technology has a significant positive role in promoting the employment environment, and the new Information infrastructure represented by the Internet is conducive to promoting the positive moderating of AI on the employment environment. Through further research, it was found that the employment environment improvement effect of AI technology has regional differences, with a greater impact on the employment environment in the eastern region than in the western region, while the impact on the central region is not significant.

Adapting entrepreneurial orientation for business performance of medium-sized business in South-West Nigeria

Olugbenga Ayo Ojubanire — 2023-06-19

Entrepreneurial orientation as a concept has gained the attention of scholars over the last decade. It also became interesting to find out its relationship with business performance in South-West Nigeria. This study set out to find out any measure of influence that entrepreneurship as well as entrepreneurial orientation may assert on the performance of medium size businesses, with South-West Nigeria as the sample location. The results showed that pro-activeness (β = 0.145), competitive aggressiveness (β = 0.231), risk-taking (β = 0.087), and autonomy (β = 0.119) all had positive regression coefficients while innovativeness (β = -0.028) had a negative regression coefficient.

Factors undermining quality of medical-care services delivered by a physician in today's medical-care market country-wise: Statistical analysis

Akim M. Rahman — 2023-06-09

The study aims to decide factors that are affecting a physician’s quality of medical-services in today’s medical-care market country-wise such as Bangladesh. It further describes the relationship among the factors and then decides its influence affecting the physician’s quality of medical-care services. Here primary data was collected from patients and patient-attendants in different private and government hospitals found in Dhaka City. This data statistics are used in this study for quantitative research approaches to conduct the goals. The dependent variable “quality of medical-services (PQMCS)” is regressed on six explanatory variables: a) pharmaceutical products promotional impact b) lengthy prescription c) unnecessary test requirements d) spending less time e) poor communication with patients and f) requirements for longer staying in hospital (private hospitals cases) etc. These characteristics were gathered from survey-opinions of patients and patient-attendants. These data statistics are used to decide the validity of the model. All multiple regression assumption tests were found to be valid. According to regression analysis, it was found that each of the explanatory variables have a substantial negative impact on a physician’s quality of medical-services in the medical-care market. The analysis from one-way ANOVA reveals that patients and patient-attendants have similar feelings of the six independent variables that undermine a physician’s quality of medical-services on duty. Results from this study can be used by policymakers as well as leaderships of hospitals (government and private) for policy-design and for administrative approaches addressing today’s problem of medical-care market in Bangladesh. Since most physicians are employed either in government or in private sector or in both sectors, it is obvious that enforcing effective management systems can be instrumental curtailing the magnitudes of the problem soon. Obviously, in this case both government & private hospitals must work together for the interest of Bangladeshi-society, which can ensure quality & sustainable medical-care market soon in Bangladesh. The findings of this study can be a synopsis of medical-care services in today’s business-driven world country-wise where undertaking further study on policy-design can be instrumental.

How does industrial agglomeration affect firm performance of Chinese high and new technology industry?

Qianfei Shu — 2023-05-05

Many researches have discussed the relationship between industrial agglomeration and firm performance. However, the relationship between policy-directed industrial agglomeration in the context of Chinese high and new technology (HNT) industry remains unclear. This study aims to investigate the correlation between industrial agglomeration and China's HNT firm performance by using the two-stage least squares (2SLS) and the system generalized methods of moments (GMM) approaches on account of the panel data of HNT industries in China during 2004-2015. The estimation results revealed that industrial agglomeration has a positive impact on HNT firm performance, including productivity and sales growth. To be specific, by taking advantage of agglomeration effect, foreign-owned firms have demonstrated excellent performance in both labor productivity and sales growth. In contrast, private-owned firms have not performed well in terms of productivity, but have shown sound performance in term of sales growth. Unfortunately, state-owned firms do not benefit from the industrial agglomeration. Moreover, large firms perform better in respect of labor productivity, while small firms experience higher sales growth.

Recent advances in internal control: Soft control overcoming the limits of hard control

Peter Yao Lartey — 2023-03-29

Uncertainties and risks continue to pose a threat to governance and internal control, impeding public sector modernization and essential service delivery. Attempts to develop alternative strategies to meet desired results in highly bureaucratic institutional environments such as the public sector are intensifying because ideas and principles matter. This study advances informal "soft control" as a substitute for formal "hard control" in four dimensions: (a) creates a clear difference between "soft" and "hard" control; (b) designs key determinants of informal "soft" control; (c) limitations of formal "hard" control; and (d) a conceptual framework and hypotheses to support future empirical research and “operationalization” of the proposed constructs. Critical observations imply that the increasing cases of corporate malpractice and consequential non-alignments with best practises in recent times are sufficient evidence to suggest that formal control is incapable of mitigating financial crimes, irregularities, and preventing complex accounting scandals classified as white-collar fraud. The causes of these control failures are attributed to overreliance on "hard control" which primarily works with sanctions and the neglect of informal control mechanisms "soft controls". This condition has limited the ability of auditors to uncover systematic failures of controls that are process-specific, resulting in a partial and incomplete evaluation of internal controls. The study assumed a theoretical approach due to the lack of existing empirical research on “soft control”. However, this observations form a solid theoretical foundation for further discussions. We argue that "tone at the top," informal social control, organisational culture, ethical values, empowerment, and employee competence are effective substitutes for and complements to formal "hard" controls in preventing another Enron.