The adoption of conversational assistants in the banking industry: is the perceived risk a moderator?

The world has noticed tremendous growth in information technology, particularly the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence. Nowadays, a lot of people rely on conversational assistants (CAs) and other intelligent virtual objects to check account balances, communicate more quickly, make payments, and manage their financial assets with banks or other financial institutions. This study scrutinizes how consumers espouse and utilize conversational assistants in banking amenities. To provide empirical evidence and generalize sample results in a larger context, a quantitative research approach has been utilized. A structured questionnaire was prepared, which generates 181 participants. The questionnaire was selected for its suitability in systematically capturing consumers' perceptions and intentions. According to the findings of partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), perceived ease of use (PEOU), perceived enjoyment (PE), and perceived trust (PT) have significant impacts on users' intentions to use conversational assistants, however, perceived usefulness (PU) does not have any significant effects. Furthermore, the relationship between PEOU and intention is significantly and negatively moderated by perceived risk (PR). By enabling stakeholders to create strategies that improve customer experience and unleash the full potential of conversational assistants in banking services, these findings help to better understand consumer behavior.

Understanding the Man Box: the link between gender socialization and domestic violence in Jordan.

The "Man Box" refers to a rigid set of expectations, perceptions, and behaviors that are considered "manly" and/or a "real man's" behavior, imposed on men by the society, such as superiority, cruelty, emotional suppression, lack of physical intimacy with other men, and expectations of socially aggressive and/or dominant behavior. Gender-based types of aggression and violence are central in the production of dominant heterosexual masculinities and male superiority that impose the dominating and violating behavior on men, and make these behaviors acceptable and naturalized. Therefore, adherence to the Man Box is one of the causes of violence against women, and to the creation and reinforcement of social environments conducive to domestic violence. This study shows how Jordanian males internalize and agree with "Man Box" beliefs and how these meanings affect their lives and behavioral patterns. Perceptions of Jordanian women on these issues were also included in the data collected through a survey distributed to 1,029 participants (525 men and 504 women) who live in Amman, Jordan. The results show that Man Box beliefs still prevail in Jordanian culture, promoted by parents, partners, and acquaintances. A total of 49.9% of the respondents show agreement with Man Box ideas. Jordanian men believe that society imposes rigid masculine gender roles, views on heterosexuality and homophobia, and expectations of aggression and control. Their personal attitudes, however, rejected the dictates of solving their own personal problems without help and fighting back when they were threatened. Most Jordanian women reported personal agreement with Man Box ideals for men, particularly in the areas of self-sufficiency, acting tough, and control, all of which can prevent men from breaking out of the Man Box. Our results also show that life inside the Man Box can impede men's formation of emotionally connected friendships and encourage them to show transgressive emotional behaviors. Furthermore, some men were more probable to violate the Man Box rules, such as being likely to talk to friends about something deeply emotional and feeling comfortable crying in front of them, or continuing to rely primarily on their mothers and romantic partners for emotional support. Additionally, inside the Man Box, men are more likely to experience physical and online bullying and perpetrate verbal and physical bullying; however, they are also more likely to attempt to intervene to stop violence.

Crisis perception and consumption pattern during COVID-19: do demographic factors make differences?

BACKGROUND: Consumption patterns of people around the world have been tremendously affected due to the COVID-19 outbreak since December 2019. Previous studies validated the influence of both internal and external factors on consumer behaviour. However, due to the lack of empirical research, this study explored the influence of external factor such as COVID-19 on consumer purchase behaviour, economic and financial situation. In addition, the study investigated how crisis perception and consumption pattern vary due to demographic variables. METHODS: A convenience sampling technique was used and a total of 340 responses were collected from three countries, e.g., Bangladesh (n = 129), India (n = 122), and Pakistan (n = 89) using a structured questionnaire. The respondents rated the items, collected from relevant past studies, on a 5 point Likert scale ranging from highly disagree to highly agree. RESULTS: Exploratory factor analysis summarized all the measurement items into seven main factors from which two factors were removed due to low reliability. Except for the individual's financial situation, the overall mean values of the remaining factors were above 3.50 indicating a higher level of crisis perception and greater change in consumption patterns. Multivariate analysis of variance indicated that the factor scores were significantly different across countries, gender, education and income groups. In addition, Indian consumers were highly concerned and affected by COVID-19 followed by Pakistani and Bangladeshi consumers. In only one factor (e.g., an individual's financial situation), country and age had a significant interaction effect. Finally, the factors had significant difference among three categories of consumers (e.g., low, medium and high crisis perception). It indicates that consumers with higher crisis perception reported more behavioural changes due to COVID-19. CONCLUSIONS: Therefore, more COVID-19 crisis perception leads to significant changes in consumption pattern and the financial situation of the consumers. This study will enable academicians, marketers and decision-makers to understand different facets of consumer behaviour in three contagious countries namely Bangladesh, India and Pakistan in South Asia.

How digital marketing evolved over time: A bibliometric analysis on scopus database.

Nowadays, a large number of customers are spending their time on social and digital media for a variety of purposes ranging from information searching to the final purchase of products. Responding to this shift, marketers are spending a significant part of the advertising budget on digital marketing. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to review articles on digital marketing to identify top themes, determine the current status of research in digital marketing and indicate how influential works have shaped it. This research has reviewed 925 papers published between 2000 and 2019 in Scopus by applying bibliometrics analysis. These results show that on average 2.18 authors have contributed to every single paper on digital marketing and the collaboration index is 2.71. The top contributing countries in the digital marketing field are USA, India and UK. The study also identifies three dominant clusters in digital marketing research, e.g., 1) strategic planning with digital marketing 2) mobile marketing with apps development and 3) dealing with demographic profiles of customers.