No abstract

Misapprehensions of culture and religion are used for the early marriages of women in Pakistan, which generates few significant challenges for women to pursue their higher education. The present study identifies such challenges for married women in higher education. These challenges are relevant to women’s post-marriage lifespan in rural Pakistan. Building upon Fredrickson’s (2001) and Hobfoll’s (2001) theories focused on post marriages issues, the study has developed open-ended questions for collecting in-depth information. Therefore, 43 in-depth interviews with married women were conducted and through qualitative data analysis using NVIVO software, the study has highlighted that early marriages of girls have become a cultural norm, and education priorities of the girls are insignificant for parents to decide the marriage date. Married women pursuing education at marriage do not get any support from husbands and in-laws as the patriarchal norms prohibit women from stepping out from home. In these circumstances, women may get subject to the victim of many unlawful practices, including intimate partner violence (IPV). Thus, the present study findings imply that married women's participation in higher education is negligible due to weak legislation on women’s rights and strong illegitimate tribal practices.

This study investigated the impacts of social media marketing (SMM) on young customers' restaurant purchase intentions. The conceptual model of the study is based on social media marketing on purchase variables such as entertainment (ENT), interaction (INT), and E-word of mouth by mediators such as brand trust (BT) and brand awareness (BA) on customer purchase intention (PI). This research design is quantitative and data is obtained by a non-probability sampling technique. The survey questionnaire is designed on a five-point Likert scale. The sample size was 187 and used structural equation modelling (SEM) was used for data analysis. In this respect, current study results are reliable with previous studies as entertainment and interaction influenced airline service purchase intention by mediating the effect of trust. The other mediating variable is brand awareness which is impacted by entertainment, interaction and e-word of mouth and has strong relationships, which are indicated by H1, H5, and H6. Similarly, brand awareness is a strong mediation effect between the e-word of mouth and purchase intention as depicted by H14, also the e-word of mouth has a strong influence on brand awareness as represented by H6. This is also consistent with earlier literature as describes brand awareness pushes the consumer intention to purchase. This study has highlighted how social media parameters impact Pakistani customers' choice to purchase restaurant foods and services and help to develop marketers’ understanding of the benefits social media enables and improves business operations to persuade potential and existing customers.