The purpose of the present paper is to provide an advanced overview of the practical applications of Banking 4.0 in Industry 4.0. This paper examines the technology trends in the Fourth Industrial Revolution and identifies the key indicators behind the creation of a strategic map for the fourth-generation banks and their readiness to enter Industry 4.0. This paper examines a systematic review of fully integrated Banking 4.0 and the application of the technologies of Industry 4.0 and illustrates a distinct pattern of integration of Banking 4.0 and Industry 4.0. One of the prominent features of this article is the performance of successful global banks in applying these technologies. The results showed that Banking 4.0 in Industry 4.0 is an integrative value creation system consisting of six design principles and 14 technology trends. The roadmap designed for banks to enter Industry 4.0 and how they work with industrial companies will be a key and important guide.

COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the economies around the world and the economic fallout from preventive measures such as lockdown is enormous. It has massive repercussions for the sharing economy as well. This research paper empirically analyses the impact of lockdown restrictions on five major sectors of the sharing economy such as ride-hailing, accommodation, freelance work, entertainment and delivery services. To evaluate this impact, we employed the difference-in-difference estimation technique using the Google trends data for selected countries. Daily search data of 2019 and 2020 is reindexed to examine the change in search patterns that occurred after lockdown. The empirical results show that transportation and accommodation sectors are negatively impacted by COVID-19 related lockdown while the other sectors of the sharing economy such as freelance work, streaming services and online deliveries are seeing a surge in searches. The findings of this study provide vital insights into the economic disruptions caused by COVID-19 related lockdown. We have highlighted the sectors that are booming during pandemic thus the sharing economy platforms and government shave opportunities to invest in these sectors to jump-start the economy. The recently unemployed gig workers can also be employed in these sectors to address the problem of unemployment.

Today, medical tourism is one of the fastest growing sectors of the tourism industry around the world. Medical tourism can contribute to the sustainable development and economic dynamism of countries. Therefore, in this study, we prioritize the world’s leading countries in medical tourism for Iranians. First, five main criteria and 20 sub-criteria were selected, which are the reasons for choosing a country as a medical tourism destination. In this paper a combined fuzzy SWARA-PROMETHEE approach was used to prioritize tourism destinations. The acronym PROMETHEE stands for Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluation method and represents an useful MCDA (Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis) tool. On the other hand, SWARA acronym means Step-wise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis. The criteria were weighted using the fuzzy SWARA approach. In the following, using the PROMETHEE approach, we prioritized eight countries as tourism destinations, then we identified criteria related to sustainability of medical tourism destinations and prioritized medical tourism destinations using these criteria as the contributions of this paper. The weights obtained for criteria “Abilities of skilled staff,” “Applied medical equipment,” “Marketing capability,” “Type of service provided,” and “Application of information and communications technology” were 0.176, 0.232, 0.108, 0.395, and 0.089, respectively. The results show that medical tourism destination priorities for Iranians are India (Phi = 0.1396), Malaysia (Phi = 0.1128), Panama (Phi = 0.0976), Mexico (Phi = 0.0790), Singapore (Phi = 0.0096), Taiwan (Phi = −0.0442), Brazil (Phi = −0.1747), and Costa Rica (Phi = −0.2196), respectively. Negative Phi values indicate below average performance of those countries and positive Phi values indicate above average performance of those criteria. The results indicate that countries with negative Phi values should be strengthened relative to the improvement of some criteria.

Customers can choose to buy products online without certain sensory experiences, such as touching, smelling or tasting. Consequently, product reviews are extremely important to implement online marketing strategies. While reviews can influence customers’ purchase decisions, how they affect the decisions of potential consumers in the case of a growing emerging economy such as India has hitherto not been studied. Positive and negative reviews affect the way customers understand and interpret product information. This study provides multiple methods to identify the relationship between reviews and customer decisions in the case of tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3 Indian cities. The outcomes in tier 1 cities (n = 1200) reveal that reviews have a positive effect on buying decisions. Our empirical findings suggest that online reviews affect consumer attitudes and can significantly influence e-commerce sales in India.

This research makes an attempt to understand various factors that influence the adoption of mobile applications. Within the context of the “Unified theory of acceptance and use of technology” (UTAUT) modified model, considering the upcoming demand and increase in demand for mobile-banking applications, the researcher tried to explore the theoretical concept between random people of various states in India. The primary data was collected by preparing a questionnaire and circulating it using Google Forms. The collected data was further coded into Smart PLS 4 to understand the model and structural equation with reference to mobile-banking technological adoption and factors that had a significant impact. The conclusions derived from the study is that social influence, “effort expectancy”, and “trust” factors had a very strong influence on the “purchase intention”, whereas “effort” and “risk” factors had a negligible impact on purchase intent. It was also found that the UTAUT model is appropriate for evaluating the technological adoption of mobile-banking applications. With the advent of many players in the market and their unique banking management applications on mobile platforms, consumers are moving towards different third-party app than their origin bank in which they hold account. This has forced banking institutions to up the pace in the competition, introducing a lot of new features. It is also important to understand that, as a customer, there are a lot of attributes that he would be looking into for adoption. This paper is an attempt to understand the advancements in various variables that consumers would look at in the area of mobile-banking applications.