The paper discusses how social media, including Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, play a key role in forming consumers’ attitudes towards offline shopping and their purchasing behavior in physical stores. Influencer endorsements, user-generated content, and targeted ads have become social media marketing strategies that brands have been using to raise visibility and get more foot traffic to their brick-and-mortar locations. The study explores the psychological triggers that lead consumers to engage with social media (FOMO, social proof, online reviews) to act on time-sensitive offers and visit physical stores. Social commerce and AR technologies are also highlighted as a transformative trend that improves the consumer's in-store shopping experience and facilitates virtual preview and integrated buying options. Beyond enhancing online engagement, these innovations help close the digital and offline purchase gap by leading consumers to make purchases in offline channels. The paper concludes that effective social media marketing and innovative technologies are important for offline retailers to survive in the changing retail landscape. For retailers, the integration of AR and social commerce enables future trends that create custom, interactive experiences that drive both online and offline sales.

This conceptual paper analyzes the use of dynamic pricing in soccer competitions in the United States, emphasizing the role of business analytics in enabling data-driven ticket pricing methods. Based on economic, marketing, and sports management perspectives, we identify a gap in the literature about dynamic pricing in soccer events, which have traditionally depended on static pricing models. Our research examines how dynamic ticket pricing might enhance income and attendance for soccer competitions while ensuring fairness for fans. Our research reveals that dynamic pricing enables organizers to maximize revenue from high-demand matches by increasing ticket prices to align with real-time market value and to enhance attendance for low-demand matches by strategically reducing prices and providing discounts. These modifications are facilitated by business analytics, encompassing demand forecasts and price optimization algorithms, which guarantee that current data informs pricing decisions on consumer willingness to pay. Our analysis emphasizes that dynamic pricing in sports functions not merely as a mechanism for price augmentation but may also augment consumer value and accessibility, as demonstrated by its capacity to lower ticket prices when warranted. Drawing on existing literature, the paper provides a theoretical framework and practical recommendations, highlighting areas for future empirical research. We offer practical insights into the implementation of dynamic pricing in soccer, emphasizing the significance of analytical models, effective stakeholder engagement, and policy considerations to balance revenue objectives with fan experience. These findings enhance sports management literature by applying dynamic pricing theory to U.S. soccer and providing a framework for utilizing business analytics in the optimization of sports revenue.

Driven by the Green Revolution, the use of pesticides in Brazil has increased dramatically, transforming the rural complex into an agro-industrial complex, generating large-scale production of monocultures and strengthening agribusiness production chains. Despite the economic benefits, the intense use of pesticides leads to concerns, including a lack of training, technical difficulties and environmental and social vulnerabilities. The study focuses on analyzing the impact of these pesticides on production in the state of Paraná by comparing the census years between 2006 and 2017 and investigates the spatial dynamics of agricultural production using the Moran's I test. The results highlight the influence of neighboring communities on agricultural production values and highlight regional interdependence. The model underlines the importance of sustainable regional planning and highlights spatial lag as a key factor in promoting regional cooperation. Hence, expenditure was positive both in the local effect and for the effect caused in the neighborhoods. Still, the pesticide use variable itself became ambiguous for analyzing production due to its problems.

It has been reported that workplace violence occurs every other day, and this is quite a misnomer. It ranges from ordinary verbal abuse to getting physical among employees. All forms of workplace bullying should be shunned and completely rebuffed towards creating a more enabling and healthier working environment for employees, as this is the only way to actual growth and productivity of an organization. A reasoning for this study is to acquaint managers with what workplace bullying is all about so that they can take full responsibility for their employees in a way to clamp down on the hazard and provide a better working environment for their employees. Organizations should take conscious efforts by looking into some of the practices and cultures that are operational in their workplace and annul some of them that are promoting workplace bullying. This qualitative study aimed to copiously probe into the phenomenon of workplace bullying, in a way to adequately study the style and pattern, via the use of 1050 questionnaire responses from employees in Cyprus. Results revealed that bullying is more rampant in the workplace, between the superiors/ managers and their junior workers. Junior workers are subjected to different forms of ill-treatment from the superiors like hurling abuses at them, making them work overtime, out of which job intimidation takes the lead. Female workers are more vulnerable to workplace bullying than their male counterparts -but it's noteworthy to say that the bully can either be a male or female- the question of who bullies is not determined by gender. Employee responses may not however, reflect reality due to the nature of the study and the subtlety of the issue. Further studies can focus in which segments of the industry workplace bullying occurs more frequently, as well as in legislative matters.

This study reviewed a number of empirical pieces of literature on cost-benefit analysis origin, advancements in its methods, and their applicability. This study applied semi-systematic review by relying on previous publications (20 publications were fully reviewed) in line with this study topic. The collected data was analyzed with the application of narrative synthesis. There are mixed ideas on the origin of cost benefit analysis. This study concludes that cost benefit analysis was first practiced in China in the 11th Century at the palace construction site. It then spread to the Bavarian Army. The French engineers embraced this technique in the execution of public works in 1708 before the American National Resource Committee incorporated it. Moreover, cost benefit analysis was authoritatively documented in the United States of America in the green book by a sub-committee on benefits and costs where principles and procedures for determining costs and benefits were clarified for reference. Other countries hence embraced Cost benefit analysis after its documentation in the United States. Advances in cost benefit analysis include; willingness to pay which exhibits the definite intention of clients in regard to how they value what they intend to purchase. That is, it expresses the degree the clients are ready to consume a particular product. On the other hand, conjoint analysis aids in determining willingness to pay, such that it offers a client an array of characteristics of a product which enables the client to settle on the most preferred product feature. It is shown that designing a conjoint technique is complex. Conjoint is tested at the individual level and the model utilized in collecting data is uniformly applicable assuming that all respondents have a similar modeled preference that does not match the real-life situation. Accordingly, information on product attributes could alternatively be obtained via a questionnaire or interview schedule in determining customers� preferences and not necessarily through the use of conjoint. This review criticizes conjoint analysis as Cost Benefit Analysis method on the basis of its complexity and thus other data collection methods are offered like questionnaires and interview schedules. The study also confirms that advances in cost benefit analysis can be applied in all sectors of the economy since they have been empirically tested. It contributes to the comprehension of the origin of cost-benefit analysis, the advancement in cost-benefit methods, and critique on the methods of cost benefit analysis.

The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between liquidity and deposit insurance of Deposit-taking Microfinance Institutions (DTMFIs) in Low-Income Sub-Saharan Africa (LISSA). Several DTMFIs in the region defaulted in meeting withdrawals on deposits and collapsed with depositors’ funds. The failure of DTMFIs to be liquid has dire consequences such as contagion risk due to the sudden and unexpected deposit runs and oblivion of depositors’ funds, which further condemn the small savers into extreme poverty levels. Panel data from the Microfinance Information Exchange for the years 2006 to 2017 of 64 DTMFIs sampled across 18 LISSA countries was utilised. The estimated random effects results showed that explicit deposit insurance is positive and significantly related to liquidity. Additionally, the capital adequacy ratio and the Basel implementation dummy are positive and significant determinants of liquidity. The study concluded that designing and implementing explicit deposit insurance schemes mitigates liquidity risk in depository microfinance and maintaining adequate capital adequacy levels and implementation of Basel recommendations improves the liquidity positions of the LISSA DTMFIs. The study recommended formulation of deposit insurance policies that embrace microfinance deposits of all types and adherence to the Basel capital adequacy standards complements deposit protection in hedging liquidity risk.

For the success of any business, there is a need for continuous improvement of the competitive advantage. The ever-changing economic environment is a big challenge for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) especially those that don’t possess strategic plans. In the recent turbulent times caused by globalization, SMEs are facing challenges and this has seen a number of them collapsing. The purpose of this study was to examine the nexus between capacity-building strategic renewal and performance of youth-owned agro-processing SMEs in selected counties in Kenya which variables of the study were investment training, management skills training, and bookkeeping training. The study was anchored on transformation learning theory and the research design adopted was a descriptive cross-sectional survey. The study targeted youthowned agro-processing SMEs registered by the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the four County Governments namely, Nyeri, Kirinyanga, Murang’a, and Nyandarua. The sampling frame was 287 and the population under study was 287 youth-owned agro-processing SMEs. The study gathered primary data using a semi-structured questionnaire with predetermined questions and highly standardized techniques of recording. The findings of the study were presented by the use of descriptive and inferential statistics. From the findings, the overall model of the study was R2 = 0.498, meaning that capacity-building strategies explained 49.8% of the variation in performance. The study coefficients was 0.834, tis 19.141, which was >2, and a p-value of 0.000 which implied that there was a statistically significant influence of capacity-building strategies on the performance of youth-owned agro-processing SMEs. In conclusion, it was noted that capacity-building influences the performance of the youth-owned agro-processing SMEs in selected counties in Kenya. This study recommends that there is a need for SMEs to further establish capacity-building strategies.

The US-China Trade war followed by the global pandemic has reincarnated the diplomatic relations between countries. India-China relations have remained on a roller coaster ride with expectations for the unexpected future. India and China share a cooperative geo-political platform of BRICS and much needs to be assessed with India holding the chairmanship in 2021. The article touches upon the BRICS issues from the perspective of India-China relations as well as the expectations from the current regime. An attempt to decipher India’s stand on key issues such as pandemic cooperation, anti-terrorism, multilateral system reform et cetera is encapsulated in the article.

Globalization in a broader sense and economic globalization in a more restricted sense has been under strain for some years now. During this time, rising anti-globalization sentiments, the U.S.-China trade war, and the Covid-19 pandemic hit the world. The spread of the pandemic quickly from country to country with a span of only a few months has been facilitated by globalization itself (in terms of greater mobility of people through improved travel, tourism, and other forms of people movement). This article focuses on the current trend in globalization as it is being severely strained and tested by several events such as the rising nationalism, U.S.-China Trade war, Covid-19 pandemic, and several other stressors which are discussed in the paper. The paper concludes with the optimistic note that the Covid-19 pandemic may be controlled with the arrival of the vaccine, the world economy will recover, and the current strains on globalization lifted so that the progress to globalization will soon return to a somewhat normal path.

Despite the indescribable adversity of COVID-19, which raised deaths in most regions, the pandemic came with a number of good lessons that affect certain value metrics (healthcare, education, productive capacity, and price control mechanisms). In this study, we examined the role played by COVID-19 pandemic cases and deaths in selected regions and the need for policy recommendations. Using a mixed research approach, reported laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths between 12 and 17 March 2020 were obtained across six regions – Western Pacific, Europe, South East Asia, Eastern Mediterranean, America and Africa. Qualitative results showed that the COVID-19 pandemic predominantly affected Western Pacific and European regions. Besides, an analysis of variance revealed an insignificant difference in reported laboratory-confirmed cases and deaths of COVID-19 across the regions during the studied period. These results are, in part, attributable to the homogeneity in the strategies adopted to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic in these regions. Thus, there is a need to strengthen certain valuable metrics, particularly in the healthcare sector by means of upgrading medical equipment (for nations in lack) and recruiting more qualified healthcare workers in view of future events of any pandemic.