The Lahore Journal
of Business

The Lahore Journal
of Business

Lahore Journal of Business

(HEC recognized journal in “Y” category)

The Lahore Journal of Business is aimed at providing a specialized forum for dissemination of qualitative and quantitative research in various areas of business administration. The LJB invites researchers, policy makers and analysts to submit original theoretical and empirical papers that explore and contribute to the understanding of various areas in the business domain. The Journal aims at bringing together state-of-art research findings, particularly from emerging markets, in various business disciplines including (but not limited to) accounting, banking, management, marketing, finance, investments, human resource management and organizational behavior.

Volume 9, Issue 2, Articles

The Lahore Journal of Business, Volume 9, Issue 2, Oct - Mar 2021

Fouzia Hadi Ali, Javeria Barkaat, Majid Ali and Muhammad Aamir
The Lahore Journal of Business, Volume 9, Issue 2, Oct – Mar 2021, pages , 1-17 https://doi.org/10.35536/ljb.2021.v9.i2.a1

By using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL), and the Emerging Market Z-Score Model, we have examined the performance and factor of riskiness of Pakistan’s asset management companies, for the years pertaining to 2013-2018. Moreover, we also tested the stability of the ARDL model. The findings reveal that microeconomic and macroeconomic factors have a long-run impact on the performance of asset management companies (AMCs). Besides this, the Emerging Market Z-Score Model also categorizes the asset management industry in the safe zone, which indicates that the industry has no probability of default. This study was delimited to Pre-COVID data available for asset management companies that were taken into consideration. We can arguably conclude that the Post-COVID performance, and riskiness of AMCs might have inconsistent outcomes with our study. This study’s findings may encourage, and aid investors, fund managers, and market makers to revisit their long-term investment patterns, keeping in mind the post-COVID short term volatility dynamics of the industry, which was the primary limitation of this study.

Shehla Qaiser, Muhammad Adnan Bashir, Muhammad Yasir and Syed Muhammad Fahim
The Lahore Journal of Business, Volume 9, Issue 2, Oct-Mar 2021, pages, 19-40 https://doi.org/10.35536/ljb.2021.v9.i2.a2

Online customer brand engagement (OCBE) has become an important relationship marketing construct within the realm of academics, as well as with practitioners. The emanating literature on OCBE offers diverse definitions, but those that are often presented without a mutual agreement. The extant literature based on this particular discipline primarily focused on the aspect of relationship marketing, with respect to retaining customers. But with the addition of customer engagement, it was not only confined towards maintaining customer retention, but also ventured into the subject of attracting new customers. This paper aims to validate a nomological set of theoretical relationships that include OCBE, brand involvement (BI), and emotional brand engagement (EBA). It provides a new outcome, EBA that has also been suggested in the previous studies. Also, it is noteworthy that this study has undertaken before brand usage intent that is used as a valid outcome. This study is exploratory in nature, and is limited to a base of customers who are engaged with a brand, by simply liking it on Facebook. In this regard, a survey of 302 respondents provided data, by resorting to purposive sampling between the age groups of 18 – 55 years. Brand involvement is an antecedent of OCBE, and emotional brand attachment (EBA) was the outcome that was achieved. A further validation of this outcome was done through the mediation analysis, which concluded that only the affective dimension of OCBE had a mediating effect on the EBA. The affective dimension of OCBE has the most effect on the outcome variable EBA, as compared to the cognitive processing and activation dimensions of OCBE. This study concluded that marketers could perhaps devise social media strategies, in order to engage customers through emotions, and as a result help increase customer retention and loyalty.

Aamir Shahzad, Tahir Mahmood and Mehwish Shahzad
The Lahore Journal of Business, Volume 9, Issue 2, Oct-Mar 2021, pages, 41-78 https://doi.org/10.35536/ljb.2021.v9.i2.a3

The main aim of this paper is to investigate the efficiency, change in productivity, and the sources of efficiency in the commercial banking sector of Pakistan and India. For this purpose, the performance analysis has been referred to, so as to verify the core-essence of the technical gains in efficiency, the role of managerial practices adopted, and the utilization of resources by the banking sectors in these two jointly bordered countries of South Asia. The time span that has been referred to for this study, spans from 2013 to 2017. Therefore, the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), equipped with its two basic models, which serve the input orientation and Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI) have been used, in order to submit the findings of this study. As compared to the situation in Pakistan, during the time span that has been taken into consideration for the purpose of this study, the Indian banking sector has been able to maintain higher scores, in the three levels of efficiency measures that have been observed. Moreover, the returns to scale analysis suggests that the banks operate at Constant Returns to Scale (CRS), or Increasing Return to Scale (IRS), thus making a positive contribution towards the average efficiency gains. Whereas, the banks that have been functioning at Decreasing Returns to Scale (DRS) happen to cause a decline in the efficiency measures. As far as productivity is concerned, both the countries have shown a positive improvement in the Total Factor Productivity (TFP), over the years. In a gist, the three levels of efficiency, and their sources of inefficiencies, make up the extract of the study. These findings should ideally be focused upon by the managers, practitioners, and policymakers, particularly while designing their operational strategies.

Naveed R. Khan, Zain Ul Abedin and Arsalan Mujahid Ghouri
The Lahore Journal of Business, Volume 9, Issue 2, Oct-Mar 2021, pages, 79-108 https://doi.org/10.35536/ljb.2021.v9.i2.a4

This study investigates the impact of market orientation on brand loyalty, primarily through variables pertaining to the purchase intention and brand image. In order to achieve this aim, this study have resorted to testing the relationships between customer-defined market orientation and purchase intention, and the brand image, leading to brand loyalty. In this regard, the study is quantitative in nature, and uses the cross-sectional design. For this purpose, the primary data were collected from gold jewelry customers (n = 413) from Karachi, Pakistan. Three key findings emerged from the structural model testing. The first finding revealed that the customer, competitor and interventional orientation are positively associated with the purchase intention, brand image and loyalty of gold jewelry customers. Secondly, in simple mediation, the purchase intentions and brand image tend to fully mediate the impact of customer orientation, and competitor orientation on the brand loyalty of gold jewelry customers, while partially mediating the association between the interfunctional coordination and brand loyalty. The third finding revealed that, in parallel to the mediation effect, the impact of customer, competitor and interfunctional orientation on brand loyalty is fully mediated by the purchase intention and brand image. This research is useful for gold jewelry businesses and business owners, since on a comparative level, less research has been conducted in the domestic industry of Pakistan.

Haadiah Yasir, and Syeda Anna Amjad
The Lahore Journal of Business, Volume 9, Issue 2, Oct-Mar 2021, pages, 109-140 https://doi.org/10.35536/ljb.2021.v9.i2.a5

The purpose of this paper is to empirically apply the concept of Carroll’s CSR pyramid, on the buying decisions and behaviors of consumers, particularly when selecting a detergent/washing powder in Pakistan. Here, the packaging origin of the detergents’ brand has been used as the moderating variable. In addition to this, the stakeholder theory has been applied where consumers are primarily expected to be well informed of their buying choices. The study essentially comprises of a household, dropoff cross-sectional survey that has been taken by men or women who do groceries. In this regard, four elite areas of Lahore, Pakistan (DHA, Cantonment, Gulberg, and Model Town) were selected, with the assumption that the residents of these areas might be interested in a CSR initiative, taken by their preferred detergent brands. Also, the participants were selected through the convenience sampling technique, and were given 24 hours to fill the survey, at a time of their convenience. Then, the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) technique was run on the 280 usable questionnaires that had been acquired. Theresults depicted that the buyers of detergent brandsin Pakistan are mostly attracted towards the three levels of the CSR pyramid; the economic level, the ethical level, and the philanthropic level. Moreover, findings also revealed that the packaging origin of the respective detergent brands significantly moderate the relationship between all levels of the CSR pyramid, as well as the consumer buying behavior of detergent brands, except on the legal and economic levels. This research provides insights into the other, locally packaged detergent (and household) brands, which are currently indulging, and are also interested in carrying out CSR activities. These insights may help organizations to reflect upon how, by using different levels of CSR initiatives efficiently, detergent brands can achieve more sales, with their buyers selecting their particular brand over other competing global brands.