This paper examines and measures the quality of services provided by private hospitals in Malaysia. Empirical research is used to determine patients’ expectations and perceptions of the quality of service, and a comprehensive scale adapted from SERVQUAL is empirically evaluated for its usefulness in the Malaysian hospital environment. Results based on testing the mean differences between expectations and perception indicate that patients’ perceived value of the services exceed expectations for all the variables measured. A comparative analysis with similar studies in other regions is reported, and the implications are discussed.

Purpose: This paper seeks to examine the factors and barriers that contribute to successful knowledge sharing among the university teaching staff.Design/methodology/approach: Based on an extensive review of literature, measures of knowledge sharing are identified. These include such factors as nature of knowledge, working culture, staff attitudes, motivation to share and opportunities to share. A model is developed for the study and hypotheses are formulated. Primary data were collected through a survey from a sample of teaching staff from both public and private universities in Malaysia.Findings: Based on empirical research, the study shows some contrasting findings. As for the sample drawn from teaching staff belonging to public universities, there is a significant relationship between knowledge sharing and the independent factors mentioned earlier. Results from the sample from staff teaching in private universities do not show such relationships.Research limitations/implications: The sample size itself and the generalisation of results to teaching staff from higher education institutions in Malaysia constitute a major limitation.Practical implications: The findings of the study provide useful insights to management of higher education institutions in providing facilities to enhance knowledge sharing among teaching staff.Originality/value: The study makes a valuable contribution, given that there is a dearth of empirical studies of this nature focusing on the South East Asian region.

Growing usage of social media has provided marketers a better space to engage with customers. However, research examining effects of social media marketing from the perspective of branding, has been relatively unexplored. Further, few researches on international branding have investigated the influence of brand’s localness/non-localness on consumer-brand relationships. The purpose of this paper is to increase an understanding of the antecedents of social media marketing and their effects on purchase intention, as well as the moderating influence of local and nonlocal brands on these relationships. Data were collected online from 343 social media users in Saudi Arabia. The research model was empirically tested using structural equation modeling. The findings support most of the proposed direct and moderating effects. Brand trust, brand community, brand awareness and interaction were found to influence purchase intention. Brand origin had a moderating effect in the relationships between brand trust and interaction with purchase intention. The proposed framework contributes to social media marketing and branding research by integrating the contingent effect of brand localness and non-localness. Detailed discussion of the theoretical and practical implications concludes the paper.