Rapid rise in social media users has spawned a new form of advertising for businesses called social media advertising. Advertisers have long faced one of the most important challenges: low consumer acceptability of commercials. It is vital to identify the most salient elements of social media advertisements that influence how consumers see them. The purpose of this study is to determine the factors that influence how social media advertisements are perceived and their effect on customer purchase intent. We performed a survey and utilized exploratory factor analysis to determine which characteristics significantly influenced how people perceived social media advertisements. Structural Equation Modelling was used to investigate the effect of customer characteristics on purchase intention. The findings indicate that creative characteristics, attention-grabbing details, emotional appeal, and celebrity endorsement all had an effect on how social media advertising was evaluated. The study discovered that elements such as attention-grabbing details, celebrity endorsement, and emotional appeal have a considerable impact on customer purchase intention. A sufficient emphasis on the aforementioned traits would aid in the development of effective social media marketing and increase consumer buying intent.

The ever-growing environmental concerns caused due to fossil fuel depletion and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has paved way for consumers to consider Electric Vehicles (EV) as a rapidly emerging operational alternative to vehicles that run on fossil fuels like petrol, diesel and CNG. The paper aims to identify the possible factors in consumers’ intention of Electric Vehicle adoption. A quantitative approach is adopted and the data is collected from 172 respondents from Bengaluru through an online survey method using snowball sampling method. A robust statistical method, such as exploratory factor analysis is conducted using IBM SPSS 23 to identify the factors. The study identified factors such as Financial Barriers, Vehicle Performance Barriers, Lack of charging infrastructure, Environmental Conservation, Societal Influence, Social Awareness of Electric Vehicles as influencers towards electric vehicle adoption. The outcome of the study helps the policymakers to modify the current policy with respect to electric vehicle in the emerging nations.

Although there has been an increase in publications in the field of financial literacy in recent years, the articles related to financial literacy in connection to MSMEs/SMEs are limited. Hence, the purpose of this article is to analyze the trend in publication (for long-term, medium-term, and short-term) and literature review of key empirical studies to understand the definition, dimensions, and common variables that are influenced by financial literacy of MSME/SME owner/manager/CFO, etc. The descriptive bibliometric analysis reveals that overall business, management, and accounting is the leading subject area (in all three timelines) in which the articles are published, and the focus seems to be shifting to economics, econometrics, and finance in the short term with increase in percentage contribution in top 3 subject area list. The findings of our literature review reveal four aspects i.e., (i) The common dimensions of financial literacy were knowledge, awareness, and skill; (ii) There is no standardized scale for measuring the financial literacy of owner-managers of MSMEs; and (iii) Financial literacy is a common and significant antecedent to access to finance and enterprise performance. Financial literacy and access to finance are the challenges faced by MSMEs, these findings are of significance to both MSMEs and policymakers. Training and development programs to create awareness on policies related to MSMEs, sources of finance, and knowledge on basic financial aspects will not only improve the access to finance but also will improve the financial health and performance of MSMEs which are backbone of many developing economies. Further, academicians/researchers can work can developing a suitable scale measuring FL of owner-managers of MSMEs.

Digital economy is becoming a reality. Business all over the world is moving towards digital platform and so is the payment option. Mobile application is becoming one of the easiest and fastest options for making payments and is predicted to have a very large potential in the days to come. This study focuses on the customer adoption of mobile payment application. The study reveals that the factors like usefulness, pervasiveness, ease of use, offers and cash back and service assume a vital role in encouraging adoption of mobile payment applications. Results show customers have greater preference towards mobile payment applications over the mobile web browsers, which is a clear sign of awareness among the customers. The study also showed that teenagers are more aggressive in embracing mobile payment application than the older age groups. Compared to other modes of payments, mobile payment with 14.5% preference among customers is low and there is a need for aggressive promotions and marketing campaigns. The study throws light into the customer adoption factors which can act as guidelines for improving customer adoption and awareness of mobile payment applications.

This paper argues that enhancing the water conservation behavior of the urban population would provide an alternative solution by demand curtailment and behavior change, rather than traditional methods of increasing water supply. A structured, evidence-based approach to identify relevant research studies has been instrumental in this research. The paper provides a systematic review of 35 papers, narrowed down from 3089 papers, which have converged towards an integrated approach to water conservation behavior. The significant factors of water conservation behavior were classified under four broad themes: psychological, situational, demographic, and contextual. The review showed that the situational and contextual variables were understudied among these factors. Further, this study identifies research gaps in the models of water conservation behavior and highlights the need for future work. The issue of sustainability of water through a cogent argument based upon behavioral studies in water conservation has been carried out.