Abdul Bashiru Jibril

Social media marketing has vastly benefitted businesses, including the development of brand identity via solid communication channels. Innovative marketing tools have proven effective among service and non-service-based businesses. This study examines the impact of social media on customer buying decisions via brand personality attributes among telecom products (e.g., mobile phones, sim cards, and data subscriptions) in Ghana. A positivist research paradigm with a non-probability sampling were deployed to achieve study goals. A structured questionnaire was designed to collect the data from subscribers of the telecom giants (MTN, Vodafone, and Airtel-Tigo) in the capital of Ghana through a non-probability sampling technique (snowball/referral method). Both self-administered and online survey (link) were deployed with strict adherence to Covid-19 protocols. A valid data set of 414 (representing 82% of response rate) from 507 responses was received for data processing. PLS-SEM was applied to analyze the study hypothesis. The study identified five main brand personality attributes (i.e., brand sincerity, brand excitement, brand competence, brand sophistication, and brand ruggedness) as mediators of the proposed framework. The study found that brand sincerity, brand excitement, and brand competence played a significant mediation effect on the relationship between social media usage and customer buying decisions, whereas brand sophistication and brand ruggedness did not. The findings suggest that brand management plays an interconnected role in customer decision-making in which brand practitioners should take a keynote regarding their strategic marketing decisions. Finally, the paper recommends that future research consider a mixed approach to offer an in-depth analysis.

Acknowledgment
This study is supported by Tomas Bata University in Zlin through IGA/FAME /2022/010 Influencer marketing and intercultural differences across generations and IGA/FAME/2021/005-Significant factors in the sustainability of economic growth with a focus on the SME segment. We are grateful to the Editor-in-Chief and the anonymous reviewers for their comments in shaping this manuscript.

The discussion on firms’ sustainability performance has resulted in business organizations becoming more conscious of sustainability issues and implementing strategies to ensure sustainable value propositions. The purpose of this study is to explore strategies that firms could use to develop sustainable value propositions. Through an extensive literature review, the study proposed a conceptual framework and further developed hypotheses suggesting that the strategies such as stakeholder involvement, flexible decision-making, and social and environmental values could influence sustainable value propositions. The hypotheses were tested through quantitative research analysis using data collected from owners/managers in 143 SMEs in the coastal areas of Ghana. The data supported almost all the hypotheses, namely H1, H2, and H5-H8 with T-values and P-values of > 1.96 and < 0.05, respectively. This finding indicates that all three core antecedents of sustainable value propositions contributed 78 percent of variations in the model. However, contrary to expectations, the result also showed that shareholder orientation and employee orientation with T-values and P-values of ˂ 1.96 and ˃ 0.05, respectively, did not support sustainable value propositions resulting in rejecting H3 and H4. Despite this outcome, the study concludes that all three strategies are relevant and valuable to firms in developing sustainable value propositions.

Acknowledgment
This paper was supported by IGA/FaME/2021/004: SME Innovation Performance, Firm Sustainability performance and Influence of Pandemic on Entrepreneurial wellbeing.

This study examined the influence of work-life balance, work stress, employee engagement, and working environment on employee wellbeing in the banking sector of Pakistan. Due to complex human resource policies in Pakistan, employee wellbeing is neglected in several banking institutions; this study addresses a research gap in this way. Drawing upon job demands-resources theory, the study employed a quantitative methodology through a survey of 360 employees from private and public banks in Pakistan. The results from PLS-SEM (Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling) demonstrate that employee engagement and work stress are significantly related to employee wellbeing, while working environment has a significant interactive effect between employee engagement and employee wellbeing. Theoretically, the study contributes to broadening the existing literature on human resource management. Practically, this study provides guidelines to human resource practitioners, managers, and policymakers on devising strategies for their employee wellbeing in going forward.

Acknowledgment
This work was supported by the Internal Grant Agency of Tomas Bata University in Zlin under the Projects No. FaME TBU No. IGA/FaME/2020/010 and IGA/FaME/2019/008. The authors would like to extend their appreciation to Prof. Boris Popesko (Vice-Dean for Research and Business Liaison) at the Faculty of Management and Economics for facilitating the financial readiness of this project.

This study contributes to the literature by offering insights over the relationship between job satisfaction and work stress with employees’ motivation among travel agencies in India. The paper aims to determine the impact of job satisfaction and work stress on employees’ motivation level with a specific focus on the moderating impact of employees’ expertise and marital status in the context of travel agencies in Southern India. A survey was conducted over employees of travel agencies in Southern India by adopting scales from the extant studies, and data were analyzed using structural equation modeling through Smart PLS. The outcome of the study reveals that job satisfaction has a strong significant effect on employees’ motivation, unlike work stress and employees’ expertise has a partial significant moderating effect on the relationship between work stress and motivation. The study stressed much about the combined effects of the mediators. The present study has tested the new composite scale to measure the overall motivational level, unlike the previous studies. The survey was conducted between November 2019 and December 2019 and entails 164 respondents, the majority of the subjects are millennials between 18 and 35 years, with 43.3% having master’s degree, all were found to be pre-qualified for the investigation.

Innovative marketing has given rise to practitioners’ and scholars’ attention in the 21st-century market. Given this, social media marketing has become the order of the day when accessing modern tools for marketing communication. However, the adoption of this innovation comes with its associated challenges, particularly, from a developing country perspective. Against this background, this study sought to examine the inhibitors characterized in the application of social media channels as an innovative tool for advertising and communication among SMEs (small and medium enterprises) in Ghana. For study results to be achieved, a quantitative research approach with a questionnaire of 650 was distributed among managerial staff of the fashion industry in the central part of Ghana of which 512 respondents were duly received and correctly filled for data processing and analysis. Results from the partial least square structural equation method (PLS-SEM), showed that despite the importance of innovation, lack of managerial skills/marketing expertise, perceived cost, regular systems/links upgrade, and financial constraints are significant inhibiting factors affecting the application of social media as advertising and communication tools among SMEs in developing economy. Interestingly, the findings further showed that ’company’s size’ as well as ’availability of social media channel/tool’ significantly control for the outcome variable (internet/social media) as a marketing communication tool.

Acknowledgment
This work is supported by Tomas Bata University in Zlin through; IGA/FaME/2019/002: The role of the institutional environment in fostering entrepreneurship, and further supported by IGA/FaME/2020/002 and IGA/FaME/2019/008. The authors are thankful to Prof. Jaroslav Belás, Prof. Boris Popesko, and Prof. Miloslava Chovancová for their guidance towards developing this manuscript.

Researchers have long pondered on the online banking transaction adoption. Some of these studies focus primarily on the motivating factors that affect customers’ intention to adopt/accept these services (technologies). However, research into the constraining factors, in particular socio-economic factors, barely exist in the literature, especially in the context of sub-Saharan Africa. Against this background, the paper seeks to fill in this gap by: (1) assessing the socio-economic factors impeding the engagement of e-banking transactions among retail bank customers in Ghana, and (2) examining the moderating effect of ‘customer experience of Internet’ on the identified factors that inhibit the engagement in online banking in Ghana. The paper used a quantitative research approach to obtain data from two leading Ghanaian banks. Out of the 450 questionnaires distributed, 393 were valid for analysis. Data were analyzed with the aid of PLS-SEM (partial least squares and structural equation modeling). Findings revealed that perceived knowledge gap and the price of digital devices were directly important to the intention to disembark on e-banking transactions among Ghanaian bank customers. Whilst customer experience (frequent use of the Internet), as a moderator variable, has a significant effect on the interaction between perceived knowledge gap and the intent to disembark on e-banking transactions; and finance charges and the intent to disembark on e-banking transactions. Study implications and directions for future research are discussed in the paper.

Acknowledgment
This work was supported by the Internal Grant Agency of Tomas Bata University under the Projects no. IGA/FaME/2019/008 and IGA/FaME/2020/002. The authors would like to extend their appreciation to Prof. Boris Popesko (Vice-dean for Research and Business Liaison) at the Faculty of Management and Economics for facilitating the financial readiness of this project.