Purpose Data science industry is a multidisciplinary field that deals with a large amount of data and derives useful information for taking routine and strategic business decisions. The purpose of this article is to examine the relationship between pricing models, engagement models, and firm performance (FP). This study also aims at uncovering the most effective pricing model and engagement model for improving FP. Design/methodology/approach Indian data scientists were the respondents of the study. A total of 213 responses were carefully chosen. The data were analyzed using structural equations on Statistical Package for Social Sciences-Analysis of Moment Structures (SPSS-AMOS) version 25 software. Findings The findings of the study suggested the positive and significant impact of pricing models and engagement models on FP. Value-based pricing strategies have the maximum impact on FP. On the other hand, managed services have a higher influence on FP. Originality/value By developing a multi-faceted framework, this study is a novel contribution to the field of business strategy, especially for the data science industry.

Introduction In the exquisite tapestry of hospitality, luxury hotels have always concentrated on the comfort of the customer. However, the shifting shades of time unfolded the art of managing customers' emotions to strengthen hotel-customer relationships. Methods This trend has resulted in luxury hotels focusing on customers' value co-creation behaviour by weaving the emotions of the customers into a collaborative service symphony and ensuring that customers self-identify themselves with the luxury hotel and its other customers as a tribe. There are scant studies on the contribution of customer value co-creation behaviour towards luxury hotels; therefore, this study aimed to examine the emotional psychology of customers and their behaviour by evaluating a model curated between emotional brand attachment, brand tribalism, and customer value co-creation behaviour. Data for the study were collected by facilitating structured questionnaires to 399 Indian customers of luxury hotels. The proposed model was empirically examined by the structural equation modelling technique. Results The results confirmed that emotional brand attachment and brand tribalism positively affect customer value co-creation behaviour. Emotional brand attachment also positively affects brand tribalism in customers of luxury hotels. The findings offer a fresh perspective for marketers, researchers, and academicians by validating that emotions play a vital role in promoting brand tribalism and inducing value co-creation behaviour in the customers of luxury hotels. Additionally, the study validates that brand tribalism affects value co-creation behaviour. Conclusion This study is unique as it provides a holistic view of factors that are crucial for luxury hotels in the competitive landscape to promote a collaborative spirit of the customers, progress on relational management, and understand the emotional psychology of the customer.

The circular economy (CE) concept has attracted significant research and practical momentum. Nevertheless, knowledge about its relationships to consumption and disposal from consumers' standpoint is still fragmented. Most CE consumer-centric research ends with a consumer's intention to purchase. As a result, this study intends to fill several research gaps by presenting a framework that goes beyond purchase intention and, consequently, incorporates both actual purchase behaviour and circular disposal, as well as their predictors. We gathered survey data from 489 Indian consumers and the proposed research claims were tested by adopting a structural equation modelling approach. The findings demonstrate that pricing advantage and product quality negatively impact perceived risk and positively impact perceived value. The main results confirm that the perception towards marketing mix plays a significant role in generating positive purchase intention. Furthermore, the indirect influence of the perception towards marketing mix on actual purchase behaviour is stronger than the direct influence. Both actual purchase behaviour and disposal convenience positively impact circular disposal behaviour. Meanwhile, the higher disposal costs discourage customers from circular disposal. This research has important implications for researchers and managers seeking to understand how to foster the circularity rate among consumers.

This study examined how service quality by institutes of hospitality management (IHM) in India affected hotel recruiters’ behavioral intentions of returning to campus for sustained recruitment activities. It further examined the underlying mechanisms of service value perceived by hotel recruiters, affected by the sacrifice made by hotel recruiters, as well as the satisfaction of hotel recruiters with IHM service quality and their behavioral intentions. A sample of 132 hotel recruiters from four international and domestic hotel organizations in India participated in a survey. Outcomes of structural equation modeling revealed that service quality, service value, and satisfaction were all predictors of behavioral intentions of the hotel recruiters. Sacrifice of hotel recruiters positively influenced their service value; service value perceived by hotel recruiters and their satisfaction were positively impacted by service quality; satisfaction and service value were the significant underlying mechanisms between service quality and behavioral intentions; and the relationship between service value and satisfaction was insignificant. These findings emphasize that IHMs improve performance by developing effective administrative policies and procedures that enhance the hiring intentions of hotel recruiters and in turn can elevate the reputation of the institutions with closely aligned academia-industry collaborations to achieve the sustainable development goals related to quality education.

In evaluating the service quality of hospitality education, few studies have considered the perspectives of faculty. This study measured how service quality, service value, sacrifice, and satisfaction affected faculty's behavioral intentions. A survey was conducted with a sample of 134 faculty members from top institutes of hotel management in India. Results showed that service quality had a significant positive indirect impact and total impact on the behavioral intentions of the faculty in institutes of hotel management; that satisfaction had a significant positive direct impact on behavioral intentions, as well as a significant mediating impact on the relationship between service quality and behavioral intentions; and that service value had a significant mediating impact on the relationship between service quality and behavioral intentions. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Circular consumption and disposal practices by consumers are increasingly viewed as more than just a current necessity. Nonetheless, the impacts of the marketing mix perception on perceived value, purchase intention, and circular purchase behavior and the impact of perceived risk on purchase intention and circular purchase behavior remain underexplored separately for circular and non-circular consumers. Similarly, few empirical studies have examined factors that affect circular disposal. Therefore, this study seeks to bridge these research voids and proposes a conceptual model with ten related research hypotheses. We collected data from 558 circular and 595 non-circular consumers in India. The structural equation modeling approach was employed to assess the strength of the proposed hypotheses separately for both consumer groups. The results confirm the positive impact of the marketing mix perception on purchase intention and self-reported purchase behavior for both consumer groups. Notably, the positive impact of the marketing mix perception on self-reported purchase behavior was found significant only for circular consumers. Moreover, the impact of purchase intention on self-reported purchase behavior was found insignificant for non-circular consumers. The results support the negative impact of perceived risks on both consumer groups' perceived value and purchase intentions. Lastly, the results reveal that circular disposal is positively impacted by self-reported purchase behavior and disposal convenience, and negatively impacted by disposal costs. However, the extent of these impacts varies significantly between circular and non-circular consumers. These results have important managerial implications for aligning non-circular consumers' perceptions, purchase intentions, and purchase and disposal behaviors toward circular products with those of circular consumers.

Purpose Earlier, the consumption of products was based mainly on their utilitarian benefits, but at present, the love for nature has driven consumers towards products not harming the environment and society. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the influence of consumers' attitudes towards organic personal care products on brand love, brand trust, altruism and sustainable consumption behaviour. Furthermore, the study further examines the impact of sustainable consumption behaviour on continuous purchase intention using health consciousness as a moderator. Finally, the study validates Behavioural Reasoning Theory and the emotional affinity towards nature to understand the proposed claims. Design/methodology/approach The data were collected from 364 respondents from India. Only those respondents were included in the survey who had prior experience of using organic personal care products. This study used the structural equation modelling approach to test the conceptual model. Findings Results of the study confirmed the positive influence of consumer attitude on brand love, brand trust and altruism. Brand love and altruism had a significant impact on sustainable consumption behaviour. Health consciousness also emerged as a moderating variable between sustainable consumption behaviour and continuous intention. Interestingly, the brand trust had no impact on sustainable consumption behaviour. Furthermore, sustainable consumption behaviour had a significant impact on continuous intention. Originality/value The study is helpful to organic product companies, practitioners, academicians, environment protection agencies and market regulatory authorities as it gives fresh insight into the new collective relationship of consumer attitude with brand love, brand trust, altruism and sustainable consumption behaviour in case of organic personal care products.

Purpose The aim of the paper is to measure the service quality, satisfaction, service value and behavioral intentions of Gen Z in leading global Quick Service Restaurants (QSRs) in India by integrating QUICKSERV into an established model of consumer behavior. Design/methodology/approach A cross-sectional study design was used for the hypothesis testing. Service quality perceptions with satisfaction, service value and behavioral intentions were measured using structural equation modeling. Findings The outcomes suggest a direct effect of the service quality of QSRs on the satisfaction, service value and behavioral intentions of Gen Z customers. Satisfaction further influenced customers' behavioral intentions. However, customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions were not directly influenced by service value. Finally, the association between service quality and behavioral intentions was mediated by satisfaction. Practical implications Managers should encourage a pleasant attitude, good grooming and friendliness in QSR employees as Gen Z highly values these aspects. At the same time, QSRs should focus to elevate the service value of Gen Z customers by lowering their sacrifice perceptions and fostering initiatives. Originality/value Although many studies have considered millennials along with Gen Z to analyze the relationship between service quality and behavioral intentions in different service settings, few researchers have considered the impact of Gen Z consumer features in service quality research separately. The findings of the study will help both practitioners of different QSR brands and facilitators in hospitality academia to better understand the nuances and uniqueness of Gen Z consumer behavior in the QSRs.

The purpose of this study is to examine the intricated relationships among hedonic pleasure, cyber dating, live-in relationships, and societal acceptance among professionals working in information technology sector in India. Data were collected from 269 millennials working in the IT sector of India via a survey questionnaire. Structure equation modeling was implied to analyze the collected data. According to the findings of the study, hedonic pleasure has a direct and significant effect on social acceptance, live-in relationships, and online dating of millennial employees. The indirect relationship demonstrates that cyber dating and live-in relationships can fully mediate hedonic pleasure and social acceptance. Employers, academicians, parents, and other stakeholders will benefit from the findings of this study in acknowledging the personal lifestyles of millennial employees towards social acceptance.

Payment delays are endemic in construction projects across the world. Research has shown that payment delays are leading causes of time and cost overruns, disputes, and bankruptcy. Payment delays also have significant economic consequences for companies, jobs, and growth. While adequate research has been conducted in India on causes of delays in construction projects, there has been almost nil research on why payments delays occur and what are the most feasible solutions for reducing payment delays. This research analyses responses of comprehensive questionnaire survey based on literature review and in consultation with industry experts and academia in India and abroad. The survey was administered to select group of approximately equal numbers of major categories of stakeholders directly involved in construction projects. Statistical analysis of the results eventually reflected major implementable points in terms of capacity building, dispute resolution mechanisms, and contract formulation for achieving major impacts in reducing payment delays.

This paper explores the need of measuring the service quality in hospitality education and proposes the association between service quality, perceived value, satisfaction and behavioural intentions from the perspective of key stakeholders. Expert views were solicited from academicians and industry recruiters. The available literature was also referred and past placement records of IHMs were analysed to support the study. The findings suggest that in a competitive scenario, besides service quality in hospitality education, there is a need to simultaneously measure value and satisfaction leading to behavioural intentions. Accordingly, a framework is conceptualised for the stakeholders by adopting the research model (Cronin et al., 2000). The outcome in the form of behavioural intentions of stakeholders would then provide the direction to IHMs to better utilise their resources towards facilitating improved service quality, enhanced satisfaction or superior value.

The present age is witnessing a rise in materialism and its sub-traits such as possessiveness, nongenerosity and envy. Combined with a marked increase in habitual shopping, this trend has resulted in some degree of shopping addiction. There are scant studies on contribution of materialistic tendencies of consumers towards shopping addiction; therefore, this study aimed to examine the effect of the sub-traits of materialism (possessiveness, nongenerosity and envy) on shopping addiction. The role of hedonic shopping motives and self-efficacy as mediators was also investigated. Data for the study were derived by administering a structured questionnaire to 423 young female consumers from the northwest region of India. The structural equation modelling technique was used to empirically evaluate the proposed model. The results confirmed that the personality traits pertaining to materialism have a significant impact on hedonic shopping motives and self-efficacy, potentially triggering shopping addiction in young female consumers. The findings offer fresh insights for academicians, researchers and market practitioners into the impact of the materialistic attitudes of young female consumers on their buying habits. This study is unique as it provides an unprecedented holistic view of factors predicting the materialistic behaviour of young female consumers in fast-growing, emerging markets and its impact on their consumption behaviour.

Purpose The study aims to explore the themes responsible for employee orientation and further their role in building strong customer relationships in telecom and organized retail outlets in emerging markets. Design/methodology/approach Employing the qualitative approach, a total of 31 in-depth interviews with customer relationship management (CRM) officers of telecom and organized outlets were carried out. Data were analysed using NVIVO-12 plus and ATLAS tools. Findings The analysis extracted 13 unique themes namely training and development, communication skills, convincing skills, interpersonal skills, knowledge management, grievance handling, organisation's culture development, service climate, adaptive behaviour, customer retention skills, customer profiling, trust and commitment, and suitability of employees. The results claimed that these themes can assist in building strong customer relationships. However, the extent of the significance of themes may vary for telecom and organized retail outlets. Research limitations/implications The findings have vital implications for frontline employees to drive customer value as they directly involve with customers. Findings further suggest that hiring of employees according to their location and catchment area of outlets are utmost important. Originality/value Employee orientation is an indispensable determinant in building a sustainable relationship with customers through uniqueness and consistency in meeting customers' expectations. This is a first attempt to explore the various unique themes responsible for employee orientation and the imperative role of such themes in maintaining long-lasting customer relationships.

This all-inclusive comprehensive research paper talks about the attitude and inclination of customers towards ‘voice assistants’ which has been a sensation in the information technology, automated response and robotics in past one decade. The paper critically examines and discusses about the aspects such as theory of consumption values (TCV); history, current market and penetration of voice assistants in India. Data was gathered by North Indian respondents using voice assistants. The sample comprised of 332 respondents and data was analyzed using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). The results confirmed the significant positive impact of all the values in building positive attitude. Convenience value and emotional value emerged as strongest predictors of customer attitude followed by device quality and epistemic value. Moving ahead attitude also had strong impact on customer satisfaction. Using TCV theoretical framework, this research is an initial end-eavor to analyze the enablers of voice assistants which will not only help in their adoption but also provide deep insights to the developers also.

The presence of customers and the interactions within customers has a very integral role in determining the service experience. Within a service setting the social behaviour of customers affects the overall experience. The impact of customer’s presence and interactions among customers belonging to different backgrounds has a very little understanding impacting service experiences which further effect future interactions and visits. The physical environment has been researched by many researchers and individually there has been a lot of research on its major elements which are ambient conditions, spatial layout and functionality as well as sign, symbol and artifacts. There has been a very little understanding of the impact of social aspect of the servicescape created by customers on the service environment also known as servicescape. The article focuses on finding out the perspective of customers and what they perceive in a service environment in the context of beauty salons.

Web usage mining plays a very important role in finding a new patterns and recognition from the web server log file. It is the subcategory of web mining that is used to mine data over the web. In this paper, the authors classified the server log file, identified new patterns of data, and analyzed the data over the tree-based classification algorithms. Authors accessed the tree algorithms (treeJ48, RandomTree, RandomForest, and REPTree) to classify the weblog data and analyzed the results. This paper summarizes the results and compared the tree-based algorithms classification data and check which algorithm gives a better result.

Amongst various e-learning platforms, massive open online courses (MOOCs) have attracted a greater percentage of working professionals across the globe, including India - which is considered as the fastest growing markets worldwide. In spite of the large practitioner-driven market for MOOCs and its existence for such a long time, a majority of the studies focus on MOOCs from a purely academic standpoint. Additionally, India-centric studies are very few. This study seeks to contribute to the existing body of research by exploring the motives and perceived effectiveness of MOOCs amongst the working professionals of Indian IT sector. The results of the study indicate that job enrichment and competition are the important motives for working professionals to pursue MOOCs because these motives work as a skill building platform for them. Furthermore, organisational recognition and learning discipline have emerged as the most important factors that lead to overall MOOCs perceived effectiveness.

Purpose The purpose of this study aims to explore the dimensions assessing the servicescape of beauty salons and provides suggestions to improve the salon's servicescape. Design/methodology/approach A mixed-method design is used in the sequence of thematic analysis through focus group technique followed by exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were used to assess the beauty salon's servicescape. Findings The exploration of factors in beauty salons is determined with three dimensions: the substantive staging of servicescape, the communicative staging of servicescape and the social staging of servicescape. These dimensions are mentioned in the order of importance perceived by the customers. The substantive staging of servicescape was identified with five factors: ambient conditions, facility aesthetics, artifacts, provisions and spatial layout. Communicative staging of servicescape explored four factors: employee duties, employee commitment, employee–customer interactions and employee image. Social staging derived two factors: customer characteristics, customer-to-customer interactions. Research limitations/implications The findings enrich the previous literature with the addition of new factors while assessing servicescape in beauty salons and the development of new items through qualitative research in the domain of servicescape. Practical implications The study offers the managers to understand the importance of various factors affecting the servicescape in beauty salons. The salon managers can beautify the service environment through the implementation of the factors identified, thus resulting in enhancing the experience of customers at the salons. Originality/value Considering no research has been conducted on beauty salons scale development, this study serves as the first empirical research effort.

Though hospitality education relies strongly on experiential learning, the COVID-19 pandemic has compelled all the higher educational institutions including the institute of hotel managements (IHMs) to restrict on-campus learning. As the only possible solution to deliver uninterrupted knowledge and skills to the students under these adverse circumstances, the management of these IHMs has quickly retorted to virtual classrooms. Many virtual platforms such as Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Cisco Webex, etc. emerged as the elixir for the institutions with customized features to fulfil the learning needs of the students. This necessitates the need to not only examine and compare the perceptions of these platforms based on virtual classroom service quality, perceived ease of use, and perceived usefulness but also to understand the impact of these perceptions on the future scope in terms of satisfaction and behavioral intentions of the hospitality students in IHMs.