THE IMPACT OF BRAND TRUST AND BRAND RELATIONSHIP QUALITY ON BRAND LOYALTY IN THE CONTEXT OF EMERGING MARKET LIKE PAKISTAN

Purpose: The concept of brand loyalty is of critical importance to the business as it plays a dominant role in providing competitive advantages for the companies and brands in devising their marketing strategies. With the advent of modern digital platforms of consumer interaction with the brands, the focus of marketing is shifting towards relationships from the traditional approach of marketing mix. So, the emphasis is made by researchers on the determinants and approaches of building relationships between consumer and brand that eventually foster brand loyalty. Methodology: Sample size for this study was 160 with a respondent response rate of 94.3 %. Survey method through questionnaire was adopted to collect data for this study. Constructs were adopted from relevant and established literature. It had 5 items related to demographic based on nominal scale. Additionally, it had 42 items related to the prime objectives of the study. It was based on 7 points grading scale. After preliminary analysis including normality, validity and reliability, an analysis of multiple regression was carried out to test the desired hypothesis. Findings: The study found that brand trust was the strongest predictor of consumers’ brand loyalty towards a particular preferred brand, followed by brand relationship quality, perceived quality and brand identification. The study has taken a narrow perspective with limited number of variables. Further studies would incorporate higher number of variables. Additionally, other studies could incorporate the mediating and moderating roles of independent variables and demographic & other factors. Conclusion: The firm should focus to enhance the trust related to brand among customers to stabilize the consumers’ brand loyalty

True prevalence of twin HDV-HBV infection in Pakistan: a molecular approach

Hepatitis Delta Virus (HDV) infects only patients that are already infected by hepatitis B virus (HBV) because this is sub satellite virus which depends on and propagate only in the presence of HBV. HDV causes co-infection or super infection with sever complication as compared to only HBV infection. No study on molecular level on HDV is available from this region; therefore, the aim of this study was to found out the molecular epidemiology of HDV (as a co-infection with HBV) in different geographical regions of Pakistan

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

Impact of organisational culture on project performance with mediating role of knowledge creation process

The present study aims to investigate the impact of organisational culture through consistency and effectiveness culture on project performance directly and indirectly with mediation of socialisation and externalisation in knowledge creation process. In order to investigate the model of study, the data was collected from software development houses (IT sector) in Pakistan. 136 responses were collected and analysed with PLS-SEM to test the hypotheses studied. The results support the positive impact of consistency and effectiveness culture on project-based performance of software development houses and externalisation in knowledge creation process significantly mediates the relationship between organisational culture aspects consistency and effectiveness with project-based performance. This study contributes to organisational knowledge creation theory, assisting process of performance as it is affected by adopting cultural aspects which is underpinned by the knowledge creation process by providing appropriate evidence to the model

LINKING ABUSIVE SUPERVISION TO TURNOVER INTENTIONS: THE ROLE OF A PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTRACT BREACH AND POTENTIAL ADVANCEMENT: Dr. Muhammad Wasim Akram, Shaza Mahar, Sheraz Munawar, Bushra Mahar

This paper proposes pathways through which abusive supervisor behavior influences employee outcomes. Specifically, we propose that abusive supervision influence turnover intentions. Further, abusive supervision will indirectly influence employee outcomes through breach of psychological contract and advancement potential. A total of 100 responses were gathered for the analysis of study. The analysis was done through filling up questionnaires from the respondents Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS) was implemented to get the results. The results find that Psychological Contract Breach, Advancement potential mediates and moderates between abusive supervision and turnover intention respectively

The impact of knowledge management's practices on supply chain performance of the dairy sector in Central Punjab: a mediating role of decentralization

In this study an attempt has been made to solve a problematic phenomenon regarding how a decentralised environment mediates the effect on supply chain performance (SCP)–by taking various dimensions of knowledge management (KM)–specifically in the dairy sector of Lahore, Pakistan. This study also explores the relationship between KM practices and SCP in the presence of a general system theory; the theory claims that every system is has sub-parts, and every sub-part is surrounded by other sub-parts. Decentralisation has a mediating role which influences the relationship between KM practices and SCP in the dairy sector of Pakistan. A self-administered questionnaire was developed, and data were collected through a random sampling of 355 supply chain members of different dairy organisations in central Punjab. The data was analysed by AMOS software and through structure equation modelling (SEM). The underlying study reveals that the hypothesis is accepted, that decentralisation mediates the relationship between KM practices and SCP at a 1% level of significance; it also reveals that KM practices (with the exceptions of knowledge creation and knowledge sharing) have a direct relationship with SCP. Meanwhile, statistical analysis also indicates that KM practices (with the exception of knowledge creation) have a significant positive relationship with decentralisation at the 1% significance level

ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION PROCESS REACTION: A STUDY OF TELECOM SECTOR EMPLOYEES OF ISLAMABAD: Shaza Mahar, Dr. Muhammad Wasim Akram, Dr. Zeshan Anwar, Dr. Muhammad Shahid Nawaz

The present study scrutinizes the relationship among organizational context (job resource adequacy, co-worker relationship and organizational communication) and performance evaluation process reaction through moderation of procedural justice in the telecom sector of Islamabad, Pakistan. The cross-sectional survey is conducted through adaptation of structured questionnaire as a primary source of data collection. A structured questionnaire was floated among 192 employees working in telecom sector. The study expands on applicable research in this region and stretches out the research in the Pakistani context. To test the hypotheses, multivariate analysis, descriptive statistics, correlation, factor analysis and linear regression is used to analyze the impact, Structured Equation Modeling (SEM) is used to identify multiple relationship effects. The structural model was assessed by using Smart PLS 2.0. The study reveals that reactions to performance evaluation process are positively and significant associated with the independent variables, job resource adequacy, organizational communication and co-worker relationship

Energy Consumption in Agriculture Sector, Environmental Cleanliness and Economic Growth: An Empirical Evidence of South Asian Countries

This study plays its role in the literature by investigating the impact of energy consumption on agriculture sector, and environmental cleanliness on Gross Domestic Product, in five South Asian countries from the period of 1990 to 2015. Energy is now becoming a challenge for the South Asian countries especially country like Pakistan. Developing countries are in a race to gather more and more resource for the production of energy. The main objective of research is to examine the short-run and long-run relationship between economic growth and energy consumption on agriculture sector of economy in South Asian countries. Granger causality test and Error correction model is employed to get the results. The empirical results showed the presence of co-integration among the variables and it indicates gross domestic product has a positive relationship with energy consumption in agriculture sector and environmental cleanliness. Granger causality results showed that unidirectional causality is present between gross domestic product and agricultural sector while no causality is present among environment cleanliness. &nbsp