In the present scenario of high unemployment; Multilevel Marketing (MLM) generates employment for people who have no permanent source of earning. MLM system has emerged as one of the prime alternatives in the current marketing system. India has become a very popular destination of doing MLM business with high potential of growth. MLM system provides lucrative compensation that works as motivation for people to join this business. Motivation for executives of any firm plays a major role in its success. It also leads commitment of employees towards work and responsibilities. An attempt has been made to identify the motivational variables that have the highest level of contribution for joining the MLM system. Most of the MLMcompanies focus on compensation plan or reward system but apart from that a number of variables have been found which motivate the distributors to engage in MLM business. Further, the distributors play a vital role in the growth of the business. In this study, we also propose a motivational model to help MLM companies formulate better strategies in making a large network of people for growth of business.

This study intends to evaluate the impacts of implementing online marketing strategies on Iranian ecotourism industry. The study had eight hypotheses which were designed based on economic, sociological, and cultural aspects of Iranian ecotourism industry. The results indicate that the expansion of online marketing increased the number of foreign tourists who visited Iran’s natural tourist attractions, while it had no significant impact on the number of domestic tourists who visited these tourist attractions. The results also indicated that online marketing did not increase the amount of investment in Iranian ecotourism industry. Additionally, online ecotourism marketing did not have a significant influence on the total number of travels to Iran’s historical tourist attractions. Respondents believe implementing online marketing strategies in Iranian ecotourism industry helps Iran expand its cultural tourism in rural areas and it expands its hospitality industry; they also believe that online marketing helps to create more jobs in Iranian ecotourism industry and to improve working conditions in this industry.

This paper presents an empirical investigation to determine important factors influencing on customer satisfaction in after-sales service network of automotive industry. The study designs two questionnaires, one for measuring the quality of after-sales services and the other for measuring customers’ satisfaction. The study selects a sample of 265 randomly selected customers out of 850 people who received the services from an automotive firm in Iran. Cronbach alpha has calculated as 0.82, which is well above the minimum desirable level. Using Spearman correlation the study has detected a positive and meaningful relationship between services and customer satisfaction (r=0.48, Sig. =0.01), a positive relationship between being responsiveness and customer satisfaction (r=0.51, Sig. =0.01) and finally a positive relationship between speed of operation customer satisfaction (r=0.45, Sig. = 0.01). Moreover, there was a positive and meaningful relationship between cost of services and customer satisfaction (r=0.68, Sig. = 0.01) and a positive relationship between quality of services of after-sales services and customer satisfaction (r = 0.61, Sig. =0.01).

The purpose of this study is to provide criteria for selecting operations managers at the ‘service encounter’ for mobile telecommunication companies, and develop a system for this multi-criteria decision-making scheme based on the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). There are three main criteria for evaluating the capability of service-encounter operation managers: (1) the ability to design service process; (2) the ability to operate service process; (3) the ability to conduct improvement. The AHP operation manager selection tool was developed based on the complex problems at the service encounter. It was created as a decision support system which was used to recruit and evaluate operations managers’ capability for the purpose of career advancement.

The purpose of this study is to examine the role of knowledge management practices in enhancing performance of universities, specifically in the context of Pakistan. A convenient sample of 450 employees from the universities all over the Pakistan was taken for the study. Exploratory factor analysis was performed to identify the elements of knowledge management and linear regression analysis was performed to test the hypotheses presented in the study. This study measures the moderating role of technology in the knowledge management framework. Furthermore, it relied on R & D, employee commitment and industry linkages to construct universities’ performance. The results revealed that knowledge management process and knowledge management infrastructure (HR and culture) are significant predictors of the performance of universities. It was also found that technology moderates the relationship of knowledge management dimensions and universities’ performance. The study highlighted that with proper attention towards knowledge management infrastructure, knowledge management processes and technology, universities can outperform their competitors.

This paper shows that the Taguchi method of optimization can be easily used in optimizing the visual display unit (VDU) parameters for maximizing the readability on the laptop. Researchers use five factors, each at three levels which are font size, font style, line spacing, viewing distance and screen inclination angle with reading time in seconds (for reading about 300 words) as the response variable. Other parameters like text/background color combination (black/white), table height, illumination etc. were kept constant. Experiments were conducted by varying different parameters on the basis of L27 orthogonal array design. Results show that there is a 15.3% decrease in mean reading time when working at optimal condition. Results also show that factor A is the most important factor which is font size followed by factor C (line spacing), factor E (screen inclination angle), factor D (viewing distance) and factor B (the font style) which is the least important factor.

Efficiency plays essential role for improving the performance of banking industry. In this paper, we present an empirical investigation to study the effect of efficiency on abnormal return. The proposed study collects the necessary information from official statements as well as historical data over the period 2009-2013 reported on Tehran Stock Exchange to examine the relationship between efficiency and abnormal return. Using regression analysis, the study has determined a meaningful, positive but weak relationship between abnormal return and efficiency. However, the study does not find any meaningful relationship between bank size and abnormal return.

In a brief review of the literature on stocks’ pricing, the study shows that information vis-à-vis noise serves critical roles in the equilibrium process. It is dynamic in nature and there are different infiltrating aspects from the standard finance to behavioral finance points of views. The aspects of market efficiency, fundamental risk, noise traders’ risk, and implementation costs make the stock markets noisy and thereby, limit the arbitrage opportunity of informed traders. Investors’ psychological bases viz., belief and preferences contribute more in the equilibrium process. Beliefs include representativeness, conservativeness, and anchoring, availability biases, optimism and wishful thinking, overconfidence, and herd behavior tendency on the part of the investors. On the preferences, investors are influenced by disposition effect, prospects based on reference points, mental accounting, ambiguity aversion, and self control.The study explores the empirical literature also and reviews the six puzzles in the standard finance. Finally, the work identifies a few research gaps to be addressed in the literature.

This paper presents an empirical investigation to measure the effect of managerial ability on earning quality on selected firms listed on Tehran Stock Exchange over the period 2007-2013. The proposed study uses data envelopment analysis to measure the relative efficiency of selected firms where Sales is considered as output and Cost of goods (COGS), Selling, General and Administrative Expenses (SG & A), Net Property Plant and Equipment (PPE), Net operating Leases (OpsLease), Research & Development (R & D), Purchased Good will (Goodwill) and Other intangible assets (OtherIntan) are considered as inputs. Earning quality in this survey consists of three parts of quality of accruals, earnings and earnings forecast persistence. The results of our survey have indicated that managerial ability influences positively on earning quality.

One of the most important factors on attracting foreign investors to invest on Tehran Stock Exchange is to have transparent accounting rules and regulations. When there are some consistency between national accounting standards and international accounting standards, we may, at least, expect foreign investors to have better understanding on financial statements. In 2006, there were some changes on Iranian national accounting standards in an attempt to make them closer to international accounting standards. In this study, we select the information of 153 firms five years before and after this regulation and study the effect of convergence from national accounting standards to international accounting standards on foreign direct investment. Using some statistical tests, the study has determined that there was no meaningful relationship between foreign direct investment before and after change on accounting standards. In addition, there was no difference on the information quality before and after change on accounting standards. However, there was some meaningful relationship between the information quality and foreign direct investment.