Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the status of the research on women’s financial planning for retirement. This paper provides a brief review of the work carried out so far along with a conceptual framework of factors influencing women’s retirement financial planning. In addition, it lists significant gaps and recommends avenues for future research. Design/methodology/approach: The review is based on 151 articles appearing in various peer-reviewed journals published during 1980–2017. The study establishes its prominence by studying the publication activities based on the year of publication and region, citation analysis, research designs, data analysis techniques and findings from the selected articles. Findings: Most of the literature on women’s financial planning for retirement indicates a lack of financial management amongst women and their susceptibility to poverty in postretirement years. The majority of the research works in this field have taken place in developed economies. Empirical research with regression-based models for analysis is the most popular research design. This review also highlights the significant determinants of women’s retirement financial planning as identified through literature. These include socio-demographic factors, psychological constructs, financial literacy, economic and circumstantial forces. Originality/value: This paper covers the research works done in this area in the past 38 years. To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to provide a systematic and comprehensive compilation of the knowledge in this subject. It further synthesizes the findings of various studies on factors influencing women’s retirement financial planning and gives recommendations for future studies.
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to consolidate the state of research in mobile commerce (m-commerce) technology adoption from 2008 to 2017. This study not only reviews the evolution of m-commerce literature but also highlights the significant contribution of authors and their productive collaborations in the development of this area. Design/methodology/approach: A total of 184 peer-reviewed articles focusing on m-commerce adoption were obtained after applying search criteria on Scopus database. After using inclusion and exclusion criteria to achieve the objective of this study, 86 journals were shortlisted. The study further discusses the dispersion of various m-commerce applications being explored in m-commerce literature. In addition, dominating technology adoption theories and the most used keywords have also been identified and discussed in this study. Findings: This study indicates that technology acceptance model and unified theory of acceptance and use of technology are the most exploited technology adoption theories. Moreover, the dominating constructs in literature are perceived usefulness, ease of use social influence/social norm on behavior intention, attitude intention followed by performance expectancy, facilitating condition and effort expectancy influence on intention. Originality/value: This study presents a detailed association rule mining and community analysis to show the association among constructs such as usefulness, ease of ease, social influence and intention as dominant group in this area. The study also identifies lesser explored constructs and indicates possible future research to validate and strengthen their understanding further.
Purpose: This exploratory study aims to investigate the financing issues faced by Indian small and medium enterprise (SME) owners. It also classifies the financing constraints into four financing gaps, namely, demand, knowledge, supply and benevolence.Design/methodology/approach: The study uses the convergent interviewing technique to highlight the key issues being faced by SME owners in financing. Forty-four owners from different industries and having dispersed demographics have been interviewed in the study.Findings: The findings reveal the real-time issues being faced by SME owners. SMEs faced both demand- and supply-side constraints. The most common financing challenges are high cost of credit, complex procedures of lending institutions, information asymmetry, creditworthiness and self-abstaining from external financial resources. Issues pertaining to lack of knowledge and awareness about the financial products and services are also being noticed by the researchers.Research limitations/implications: This study identifies the major financing concerns of SMEs and thereby provides a directional approach to the policymakers in the area of SME financing.Originality/value: The study offers a better and data-based understanding of financing issues being faced by the SME owners. The usage of convergent interviewing allows the researchers to highlight the common issues raised by the SME owners.
29 July 2020 in Benchmarking: An International Journal
Purpose: Visual merchandising has a direct impact on shopping experience, making it pertinent for the retailers to ensure that their store environment has an effective design. This study blends fuzzy numbers and Analytical Hierarchy Process to create a fuzzy evaluation model prioritizing the relative weights of visual merchandising dimensions of online fashion apparel store. This study will help the fashion retailers in creating more engaging and informative online stores leading to subsequent increase in online retail sales.Design/methodology/approach: Visual merchandising dimensions and sub dimensions used by retailers for online stores were identified through review of literature and discussion with experts. Twenty experts were interviewed and their responses captured. The responses were analyzed using Fuzzy AHP technique resulting in prioritizing the dimensions according to the weight. For testing the stability of the results, sensitivity analysis was conducted.Findings: Four key dimensions and sixteen sub dimensions were extracted. Weights were calculated using FAHP. “Pictorial Presentation” has the highest weight followed closely by “Product Information” dimension. Amongst the sub-dimensions “Number of Product Images” scored highest followed by “Product Presentation mode”. “Alterable Background” scored the least weight.Originality/value: Previous studies have identified Online Visual Merchandising dimensions and have also studied the impact of some of these dimensions on consumer buying behavior, but the relative significance has not been determined yet. This study fills the gap.
Technology is advancing at a very rapid pace, and it helps the user in predicting things, taking the right decisions, making life less difficult and eventually increasing the profitability of their business. Due to the increasing global population, changing climatic conditions, and other natural factors predominating in nature, agriculture practice is becoming less predictable and as a result, farmers’ confidence is being lost, poverty and food insecurity are rising, and other issues are becoming more prevalent. In addition, it affects the sustainability of the food supply chain. So, there is a critical need for agriculture to adopt Industry 4.0 technologies. Here, we want to select a suitable technology acceptance model which comprehensively and robustly defines all the aspects of technology adoption factors in agriculture. From the different adoption theories, we choose one theory that fits our criteria very accurately; for this, we use a hybrid MCDM approach. We utilised fuzzy AHP and fuzzy VIKOR to make the selection logically and systematically correct. Three experts are employed in the study. Fuzzy AHP helps to find the weightage of criteria used by the fuzzy VIKOR technique in ranking the theories. The results showed that the UTAUT ranking comes number one after applying all the suitable criteria and alternatives, and it is the most accurate theory for analysing the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies in agriculture. This article offers readers a methodical approach for choosing a technology adoption paradigm. The hypothesis that best fits a person’s criteria can be determined by comparing them to potential alternatives.