Extrinsic and intrinsic motives: panic buying and impulsive buying during a pandemic

Purpose: The present study operationalizes and tests the impact of extrinsic (store environment, promotional activities) and intrinsic (hedonism, materialism) variables on impulsive buying during the COVID-19 period. It also considers the dual-factor approach (panic and impulsive buying tendency) using the "Stimulus-Organism-Response” approach and "Dual-Factor Theory”. Design/methodology/approach: Purposive sampling was used to obtain data from 362 responses from retail shoppers and analyzed by path analysis. The moderation of novel constructs (scarcity and COVID-19 pandemic) examines the backdrop of retail impulse shopping. Findings: The store environment has a detrimental effect on panic and impulsive buying. Promotional activities have a beneficial effect on impulsive buying tendency. Similarly, hedonism and materialism have a substantial positive effect on panic and impulsive buying tendencies. Between stimulus (intrinsic and extrinsic) and response variables, organism factors (panic and impulsive buying inclinations) influenced positively (impulsive buying);in terms of moderation, scarcity and the COVID-19 pandemic exhibit substantial moderation between organism and response. Originality/value: The results contribute substantially to the existing domain of customers' panic and impulsive purchasing behavior for the scarcity of essential items during the COVID-19 epidemic. Research in this field is limited, varied and inconclusive. New insights were obtained as this research blends the "Stimulus-Organism-Response” and Dual factor theories. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.

ThermoTrak: Smartphone based real-time fever screening: Demo abstract

In this paper, we present "ThermoTrak", a smartphone accessory based, real-time and accurate temperature measurement mechanism, which can be used to screen for fever, which is a manifestation of infectious diseases including the symptoms caused by SARS-CoV-2. Our system accurately identifies face and forehead region from a safe distance of one meter, calculates accurate temperature of forehead with accuracy of ±0.5° C on a linear scale. An AI based algorithm is employed for the purpose of accurately detecting the Region of interest (ROI) (Face & point near center of Forehead) and calculate the absolute temperature within 300 milliseconds. © 2020 ACM.