MeLisa R. Creamer, Teresa W. Wang, Stephen D. Babb
et al.
Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the United States (1). The prevalence of adult cigarette smoking has declined in recent years to 14.0% in 2017 (2). However, an array of new tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, has entered the U.S. market (3). To assess recent national estimates of tobacco product use among U.S. adults aged ≥18 years, CDC, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Cancer Institute analyzed data from the 2018 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). In 2018, an estimated 49.1 million U.S. adults (19.7%) reported currently using any tobacco product, including cigarettes (13.7%), cigars (3.9%), e-cigarettes (3.2%), smokeless tobacco (2.4%), and pipes* (1.0%). Most tobacco product users (83.8%) reported using combustible products (cigarettes, cigars, or pipes), and 18.8% reported using two or more tobacco products. The prevalence of any current tobacco product use was higher in males; adults aged ≤65 years; non-Hispanic American Indian/Alaska Natives; those with a General Educational Development certificate (GED); those with an annual household income <$35,000; lesbian, gay, or bisexual adults; uninsured adults; those with a disability or limitation; and those with serious psychological distress. The prevalence of e-cigarette and smokeless tobacco use increased during 2017-2018. During 2009-2018, there were significant increases in all three cigarette cessation indicators (quit attempts, recent cessation, and quit ratio). Implementing comprehensive population-based interventions in coordination with regulation of the manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of all tobacco products can reduce tobacco-related disease and death in the United States (1,4).
This paper explores the multifaceted nature of risk in financial decision-making by integrating traditional finance models with insights from behavioural finance. It assesses the application of models such as the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC), and Risk-Adjusted Discount Rates in real-world scenarios, examining how their effectiveness is influenced by psychological biases such as overconfidence, loss aversion, and herd behaviour. The study illustrates the impact of psychological and emotional factors on individual investor actions and corporate long-term capital investment decisions through a practical application example. The findings advocate for a comprehensive approach that combines computational tools with behaviorally informed human judgment, aiming to enhance risk analysis and improve financial returns for investors and managers.
Marketing. Distribution of products, Office management
This article examines the development of mortgage lending in Kazakhstan, focusing on its dynamics and its relationship with key macroeconomic indicators. Special attention is given to the role of government programs and the integration of ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) principles to promote sustainability in the sector. While ESG standards are widely adopted in international financial systems, this study analyzes Kazakhstan’s unique economic and institutional context. Additionally, Uzbekistan is considered a country where certain effective financial and regulatory tools applied in Kazakhstan could potentially be adapted to local conditions.
The analysis compares selected mortgage lending indicators between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and employs correlation and regression modeling to evaluate how macroeconomic variables such as GDP, interest rates, and the share of overdue loans impact mortgage lending volumes. Drawing on data from The Global Economy (2023), the study explores how mortgage programs in developed countries affect the ratio of banking sector assets to GDP, providing a global benchmark.
A detailed analysis of mortgage trends from 2007 to 2023 reveals important patterns and correlations between macroeconomic factors and mortgage loan dynamics in both countries. Time series and correlation methods allowed the authors to establish statistically significant relationships, particularly in the case of Kazakhstan. As a result, a forecasting model was developed, incorporating GDP growth, lending interest rates, and the level of non-performing loans as independent variables.
The article also discusses the integration of ESG standards into Kazakhstan’s mortgage finance system, highlighting their potential to foster green construction and sustainable housing development. These initiatives support broader sustainable development objectives and could be relevant for Uzbekistan as well. The authors argue that implementing green financial instruments such as green mortgages and funding programs for energy-efficient housing can reduce environmental harm and improve housing affordability in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and other emerging economies.
Key words: mortgage lending, sustainable development goals (SDGs), ESG standards, GDP, socio-economic development, Kazakhstan.
Economics as a science, Marketing. Distribution of products
Integrating sustainability into supply chain management is both a challenge and a strategic necessity. This review aims to bridge the gap in the literature by examining how Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies can advance sustainable supply chain management (SSCM). By systematically analyzing 231 studies, this paper identifies major technological barriers, including eco-efficiency deficits, data privacy concerns, and compatibility issues, that hinder SSCM adoption. It systematically explores six key I4.0 technologies—Blockchain, Big Data Analytics, IoT, Additive Manufacturing, Cyber-Physical Systems, and Cloud Computing—demonstrating their capabilities to overcome these challenges and achieve sustainable outcomes. Furthermore, this review highlights critical research gaps and proposes a detailed roadmap for future exploration, emphasizing the development of integration frameworks, advanced data management, and the exploration of emerging technologies like AI and augmented reality. By offering a strategic framework on I4.0′s potential to drive sustainable practices, this study provides actionable insights for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers to leverage I4.0 technologies for sustainable innovation.
Systems engineering, Marketing. Distribution of products
As markets have digitized, the number of tradable products has skyrocketed. Algorithmically constructed portfolios of these assets now dominate public and private markets, resulting in a combinatorial explosion of tradable assets. In this paper, we provide a simple means to compute market clearing prices for semi-fungible assets which have a partial ordering between them. Such assets are increasingly found in traditional markets (bonds, commodities, ETFs), private markets (private credit, compute markets), and in decentralized finance. We formulate the market clearing problem as an optimization problem over a directed acyclic graph that represents participant preferences. Subsequently, we use convex duality to efficiently estimate market clearing prices, which correspond to particular dual variables. We then describe dominant strategy incentive compatible payment and allocation rules for clearing these markets. We conclude with examples of how this framework can construct prices for a variety of algorithmically constructed, semi-fungible portfolios of practical importance.
Haoran Liu, Amir Tahmasbi, Ehtesham Sam Haque
et al.
Offsite marketing is essential in e-commerce, enabling businesses to reach customers through external platforms and drive traffic to retail websites. However, most current offsite marketing content is overly generic, template-based, and poorly aligned with landing pages, limiting its effectiveness. To address these limitations, we propose MarketingFM, a retrieval-augmented system that integrates multiple data sources to generate keyword-specific ad copy with minimal human intervention. We validate MarketingFM via offline human and automated evaluations and large-scale online A/B tests. In one experiment, keyword-focused ad copy outperformed templates, achieving up to 9% higher CTR, 12% more impressions, and 0.38% lower CPC, demonstrating gains in ad ranking and cost efficiency. Despite these gains, human review of generated ads remains costly. To address this, we propose AutoEval-Main, an automated evaluation system that combines rule-based metrics with LLM-as-a-Judge techniques to ensure alignment with marketing principles. In experiments with large-scale human annotations, AutoEval-Main achieved 89.57% agreement with human reviewers. Building on this, we propose AutoEval-Update, a cost-efficient LLM-human collaborative framework to dynamically refine evaluation prompts and adapt to shifting criteria with minimal human input. By selectively sampling representative ads for human review and using a critic LLM to generate alignment reports, AutoEval-Update improves evaluation consistency while reducing manual effort. Experiments show the critic LLM suggests meaningful refinements, improving LLM-human agreement. Nonetheless, human oversight remains essential for setting thresholds and validating refinements before deployment.
Mohammad Karvand, Mahdi Mahmodzadeh, Hossein Hakimpour
et al.
Abstract
The purpose of this research is to model the experience of customers of Iran Telecommunications Company from commercial sales in line with their sustainability. According to its purpose, the research method is applicable, qualitative in terms of the approach, and descriptive-exploratory in terms of the way of analyzing the data, with the phenomenology method. The statistical population of the research consists of 17 special customers of commercial telecommunications services with more experience of using these services, selected by the purposeful sampling method. A semi-structured interview was used to collect information. Data analysis was done using the theme analysis approach manually and coding. The results showed that the categories and components that make up the customer experience in line with their sustainability consist of 9 categories and 26 elements including: operational prerequisites of customer experience management (strategic prerequisites, human prerequisites, and technical prerequisites), measurement and analysis of customer experience (collecting and recording customer experiences, analyzing customer experiences, interpreting customer experiences, and monitoring customer experience performance), service delivery experience (network quality, service delivery quality, and emotional effect), value co-creation (customer participation in value creation, service personalization, and customer relationship management), profitability (customer share, customer loyalty, and customer satisfaction), marketing mix (price, place, product, and promotion), brand image (brand reputation and social responsibility), supportive activities (complaint management and after-sales service), and barriers to brand switching (the nature of the company and switching costs).
Extended Abstract
Introduction
By passing the economy of raw materials, goods and services, and entering the new era, which is the economy of experience; the success of businesses is not only dependent on providing services and products, but also on the creation of experience. Nowadays, instead of services and products, memorable experiences are sold, and creating excellent customer experience is the main goal of organizations in various industries, especially customer-oriented industries. Professionals have accepted the limitations of traditional marketing approaches based on components such as price, product and quality, and believe in the importance of customer experience in achieving competitive advantage and creating customer loyalty (Hwang & Seo, 2016). In other words, we have entered the new era of the customer, an era where the authority in production and distribution or information expertise is no longer a competitive advantage and has turned into a commodity, but the choice of customers is the main differentiator, and organizations should focus on customer experience management (Plessis & Vries, 2016). Customer experience is a term that explains the collective interaction of a customer with a service provider and also helps determine the durability of that customer's relationship with the service provider (Bhatti et al, 2016). In today's competitive environment, negligence in customer service or service quality can lead to customer loss, which is not cost-effective to acquire new customers, and developing preventive strategies to retain customers is very important (Kaur & Sharma, 2015). Customer retention can be considered a part of marketing strategy. By keeping current customers, businesses can reduce customer churn and the costs associated with attracting new customers, which contributes to long-term profitability and sustainable competitive advantage. Therefore, customer retention is not just a reactive strategy, but a strategic approach that can directly affect the company's market share and profit (Zhang et al, 2024). In recent decades, many companies have considered customer retention as an important principle in their management and marketing decisions, and organizations have realized that keeping current customers is cheaper than attracting new customers (Taghavifard et al, 2017). Therefore, the main problem that this research seeks to answer is: how is the modeling of the experience of customers of the Iranian Telecommunication Company from commercial sales in line with their sustainability?
Theoretical Framework
Customer experience
Customer experience has become a central topic in marketing research as businesses increasingly realize that their success depends largely on providing positive shopping experiences to their customers (Chen & Yang, 2021).
Customer retention
Consumer sustainability means expanding the ways and means of consumer sustainability by satisfying them and meeting their needs. In this view, consumer retention is considered as a consequence of the strategy that shows the positive side of their quality, service, performance, and efficiency. Different authors have presented different views on consumer persistence (Sharma et al, 2018).
Naalchi Kashi (2024) investigated the mediating role of customer commitment on the relationship between experience and customer engagement behaviors, and investigated the relationship between customer experience components on commitment and customer engagement behaviors. Data analysis showed that there is a significant relationship between customer experience and customer engagement behaviors with the mediating role of customer commitment. There is a positive and significant relationship between customer experience components (cognitive, emotional, physical/sensory, and social) with customer commitment. Additionally, there is a positive relationship between customer commitment and customer engagement behaviors. There is a significant relationship between customer experience components (cognitive, emotional, physical/sensory, and social) with customer engagement behaviors (acceptance, cooperation, feedback, helping others, and positive word of mouth). Therefore, by focusing on providing positive customer experiences that foster commitment, organizations can drive engagement behaviors and cultivate a loyal customer base.
Sugiatoa et al, (2023) conducted a research titled the effects of customer relationship management, service quality and relational marketing on customer retention: the mediating role of bank customer retention in Indonesia. The results showed that customer satisfaction, customer relationship management, service quality and marketing relationships affect customer retention. Also, customer relationship management, service quality and marketing relationships affect customer retention through customer satisfaction. A review of empirical research conducted in relation to the research topic shows that the examination of customer experiences that lead to customer retention has been neglected.
Research methodology
The research method is applicable in terms of its purpose, qualitative in terms of the approach, and descriptive-exploratory in terms of the way of analyzing the data, with the phenomenology method. The statistical population of the research consists of 17 special customers of commercial telecommunications services with more experience of using these services, selected by the purposeful sampling method. A semi-structured interview was used to collect information.
Research findings
Data analysis was done using the theme analysis approach manually and coding. The results showed that the categories and components that make up the customer experience in line with their sustainability consist of 9 categories and 26 elements including: operational prerequisites of customer experience management (strategic prerequisites, human prerequisites, and technical prerequisites), measurement and analysis of customer experience (collecting and recording customer experiences, analyzing customer experiences, interpreting customer experiences, and monitoring customer experience performance), service delivery experience (network quality, service delivery quality, and emotional effect), value co-creation (customer participation in value creation, service personalization, and customer relationship management), profitability (customer share, customer loyalty, and customer satisfaction), marketing mix (price, place, product, and promotion), brand image (brand reputation and social responsibility), supportive activities (complaint management and after-sales service), and barriers to brand switching (the nature of the company and switching costs).
Conclusion
The current research was conducted with the aim of modeling the experience of customers of Iran Telecommunication Company from commercial sales in line with their sustainability. The results of this research is aligned with the results of Naalchi Kashi (2024), Sugiatoa et al, (2023), Rousta et al, (2023), Zare & Mokhtari (2021), Nasehi far et al, (2021), Banik & Sinha (2020), Mohaimani et al, (2018), Sharma et al, (2018), and Dassanayake & Herath (2017). Dassanayake & Herath (2017) showed that network quality, customer experience, and perceived price have a significant impact on customer retention.
According to the results of the research, the following suggestions are presented:
-Eliminating the mentality of change by emphasizing the value of time.
-Giving valuable benefits as a barrier to change.
-brand identity.
-Updating the service as much as possible and getting closer to the ideal operator in the mind of the customer.
-Emotional work on the customer's mind and personalization in his mind
In recent years, there has been a significant focus on advancing the next generation of power systems. Despite these efforts, persistent challenges revolve around addressing the operational impact of uncertainty on predicted data, especially concerning economic dispatch and optimal power flow. To tackle these challenges, we introduce a stochastic day-ahead scheduling approach for a community. This method involves iterative improvements in economic dispatch and optimal power flow, aiming to minimize operational costs by incorporating quantile forecasting. Then, we present a real-time market and payment problem to handle optimization in real-time decision-making and payment calculation. We assess the effectiveness of our proposed method against benchmark results and conduct a test using data from 50 real households to demonstrate its practicality. Furthermore, we compare our method with existing studies in the field across two different seasons of the year. In the summer season, our method decreases optimality gap by 60% compared to the baseline, and in the winter season, it reduces optimality gap by 67%. Moreover, our proposed method mitigates the congestion of distribution network by 16.7\% within a day caused by uncertain energy, which is a crucial aspect for implementing energy markets in the real world.
Within the thriving mobile app ecosystem ecosystem, a subset of apps provides illicit services such as gambling and pornography to pursue economic gains, collectively referred to as "underground economy apps". While previous studies have examined these apps' characteristics and identification methods, investigations into their distribution via platforms beyond app markets (like Telegram) remain scarce, which has emerged as a crucial channel for underground activities and cybercrime due to the robust encryption and user anonymity. This study provides the first comprehensive exploration of the underground mobile app ecosystem on Telegram. Overcoming the complexities of the Telegram environment, we build a novel dataset and analyze the prevalence, promotional strategies, and characteristics of these apps. Our findings reveal the significant prevalence of these apps on Telegram, with the total sum of subscription user numbers across channels promoting these apps equivalent to 1% of Telegram's user base. We find these apps primarily cater to gambling and pornography services. We uncover sophisticated promotional strategies involving complex networks of apps, websites, users, and channels, and identify significant gaps in Telegram's content moderation capabilities. Our analysis also exposes the misuse of iOS features for app distribution and the prevalence of malicious behaviors in these apps. This research not only enhances our understanding of the underground app ecosystem but also provides valuable insights for developing effective regulatory measures and protecting users from potential risks associated with these covert operations. Our findings provide implications for platform regulators, app market operators, law enforcement agencies, and cybersecurity professionals in combating the proliferation of underground apps on encrypted messaging platforms.
Xiya Lin, Samuel Ribeiro-Navarrete, Xiaohui Chen
et al.
As the production model transforms from industrial manufacturing to a knowledge-based economy, management innovation becomes a strong driving force for economic growth and social development. This study examines academic findings on management innovation using the latest bibliometric methods and visualization tools based on papers published in top management journals in the Web of Science database from 2008 to 2022. (1) There are three main research hotspots. Through citation orientation, the research hotspots are business model innovation and environmental innovation; through outcome orientation, the research hotspot is knowledge innovation; and through intermediary orientation, the research hotspot is open innovation. (2) Regarding the distribution of major research institutions, seven institutions in the United States focus on innovation research and have a high impact. Six institutions in the United Kingdom focus on innovation research. Meanwhile, nine and three related institutions in Europe and Asia focus on innovation research, respectively. (3) Distribution of innovation articles in journals, Research Policy , Technovation , Journal of Product Innovation Management , and Industrial Marketing Management , contains the largest number of innovation research articles. Furthermore, this study examines new hot topics with time change and digital innovation. This paper provides the latest overview of innovation research in management and discusses the evolution and development of this field.
تعتبر المعلومة الإستراتيجية اليوم كمورد أساس ي من طرف المؤسسات المتطورة في مواجهة العولمة والتسارع التكنولوجي، الذي خلق منافسة حادة في السوق. كما أن نظام اليقظة الإستراتيجية لا يسمح فقط باستغلال الفرص وتجنب التهديدات، وإنما يسعى إلى تحليل حركة الفعاليات الاقتصادية وتأمين الحماية لها وتحقيق مصالحها، ومنه يمكن القول بأن اليقظة الإستراتيجية لها دور كبير على اتخاذ القرارات خاصة فيما يتعلق بالاستراتيجي منها
Today, strategic information is considered an essential resource by advanced institutions in the face of globalization and technological acceleration, which has created severe competition in the market. The strategic vigilance system not only allows to exploit opportunities and avoid threats, but seeks to analyze the movement of economic activities, secure protection for them and achieve their interests, and from it can be said that strategic vigilance has a major role in making decisions, especially with regard to strategic ones.
Commercial geography. Economic geography, Marketing. Distribution of products
Purpose: The purpose of the present study is to establish a model for the risk assessments of tourists and to determine whether destination image has a mediating effect in the relationship between perceived risk, behavioural intentions, and satisfaction.
Methods: The study has a quantitative research design in which data were collected through questionnaires. To ensure the construct validity of the proposed model, first, confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses were performed, and then the structural equation modelling technique was used. Amos 22 and SPSS 22.0 programs were used for the analysis of the data.
Results: As a result of research analysis, it has been found that cognitive image had a partial mediating role between the behavioural intentions and satisfaction the tourists (between perceived risk and satisfaction) whereas affective image had no mediating impact between the tourists’ perceived risks, behavioural intentions, and satisfaction. Implications:This study has some theoretical and practical contributions. Considering that the halal tourism literature is a very new concept, it is thought that a model proposal for the field will contribute to the deepening and development of the literature on the one hand and will provide important concrete data to hotel managers and destination policy makers on the other hand.
Management. Industrial management, Marketing. Distribution of products
Masarah Paquet-Clouston, Serge-Olivier Paquette, Sebastián García
et al.
Many activities related to cybercrime operations do not require much secrecy, such as developing websites or translating texts. This research provides indications that many users of a popular public internet marketing forum have connections to cybercrime. It does so by investigating the involvement in cybercrime of a population of users interested in internet marketing, both at a micro and macro scale. The research starts with a case study of three users confirmed to be involved in cybercrime and their use of the public forum where users share information about online advertising. It provides a first glimpse that some business with cybercrime connection is being conducted in the clear. The study then pans out to investigate the forum population's ties with cybercrime by finding crossover users, who are users from the public forum who also comment on cybercrime forums. The cybercrime forums on which they discuss are analyzed and crossover users' strength of participation is reported. Also, to assess if they represent a sub-group of the forum population, their posting behavior on the public forum is compared with that of non-crossover users. This blend of analyses shows that (i) a minimum of 7.2% of the public forum population are crossover users that have ties with cybercrime forums; (ii) their participation in cybercrime forums is limited; and (iii) their posting behavior is relatively indistinguishable from that of non-crossover users. This is the first study to formally quantify how users of an internet marketing public forum, a space for informal exchanges, have ties to cybercrime activities. We conclude that crossover users are a substantial part of the population in the public forum, and, even though they have thus far been overlooked, their aggregated effect in the ecosystem must be considered.
Jakob Stubenrauch, Christian Keup, Anno C. Kurth
et al.
We analytically determine the number and distribution of fixed points in a canonical model of a chaotic neural network. This distribution reveals that fixed points and dynamics are confined to separate shells in phase space. Furthermore, the distribution enables us to determine the eigenvalue spectra of the Jacobian at the fixed points. Despite the radial separation of fixed points and dynamics, we find that nearby fixed points act as partially attracting landmarks for the dynamics.
Cristian Torres‐León, R. Rojas, J. Contreras-Esquivel
et al.
Abstract Background The mango (Mangifera indica L.) is an important tropical fruit with worldwide acceptance, extensive marketing, vast production, wide distribution, and benefits to human health. Mango wastes, such as the seed kernel and peel, have high functional and nutritional potential. Scope and approach In this paper, we describe the composition of the mango seed kernel, which is analysed from a critical point of view regarding the proper use of this waste product and the possibility of monetizing it for nutritional and environmental purposes. The nucleus contains important bioactive compounds that have high antioxidant activity, lipids that have acceptable physical and chemical characteristics (free of trans fatty acids), and a high protein content. Key findings and conclusions Food powders (prepared with a reduction of antinutritional factors) can be obtained from seeds, and these powders can include premium-grade fats or extracts with high functional power. Research should continue to identify the profiles of the phytochemicals available from different seed varieties, their bioavailability, and their health effects. Outreach strategies with the business sector should also be implemented to valorize the nutritional and functional potential of the seed kernel of the mango.
Decision markets are mechanisms for selecting one among a set of actions based on forecasts about their consequences. Decision markets that are based on scoring rules have been proven to offer incentive compatibility analogous to properly incentivised prediction markets. However, in contrast to prediction markets, it is unclear how to implement decision markets such that forecasting is done through the trading of securities. We here propose such a securities based implementation, and show that it offers the same expected payoff as the corresponding scoring rules based decision market. The distribution of realised payoffs, however, might differ. Our analysis expands the knowledge on forecasting based decision making and provides novel insights for intuitive and easy-to-use decision market implementations.
Abstract Product placement, an advertising technique that precisely promote their products in a non-traditional advertising model, normally through appearances in cinematic and television. Marketing strategy of glowing the product interest is product placement of branded in film and television (drama). Marketing in cinematic and television come to part of audience while watching movie, many movies show technique, strategy, and form of marketing inside the movie. Even though there is not the movie about marketing or management but there are an adventure, action, romantic, or even comedy. Those movies show marketing beneath the story. The purpose is to propose the understanding concept of product placement in marketing strategy that integrated into cinematic and television.
The development of distribution channels in the Republic of Crimea can enhance forming a regional market for organic products. In this regard, we proposed and tested a methodology for studying consumer loyalty to distribution channels. The research methodology includes various research procedures: marketing analysis with the use of a set of economic-mathematical and statistical analysis methods implemented in the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS); mapping with the use of geographical information system (GIS) technology to identify the regions’ geo-information profiles; strategic analysis of the perspective directions for developing the distribution channels depending on different marketing strategies. Quantitative calculation of loyalty indices allowed determining three groups of the distribution channels depending on their consumer appeal. Additionally, we noted the advantages and disadvantages of distribution channels. Marketing research of the target consumer of organic products has shown that the prevailing factors of the “environmental” choice are pricing policy, quality, sell-by dates, breadth of assortment, level of service, availability and comfort when purchasing products. Assessment of the density of distribution channels’ points of presence in the regions has revealed promising areas for the development of channels adapted to the regions’ specializations. The manufacturers of organic products and state authorities can use the elaborated system of assessing distribution channels and recommendations for selling organic products depending on the levels of their demand in the Republic of Crimea can be applied by organic products producers and State authorities, taking into account the real market size.