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In response to the emerging environmental pressure (highly dynamic, complex and competitive for qualified employees), higher learning institutions are transforming their structures and management systems. As a result, many universities are rethinking their reward strategies to better align them with the new realities in order to improve teaching staff motivation and retention. This study was conducted to identify academic staff reward related problems and to examine the effectiveness of both financial and nonfinancial reward systems at Jimma University, Ethiopia. A descriptive survey with both quantitative and qualitative methods was carried out with 150 instructors out of the total academic staff of 806 from eight faculties. Self administered questionnaires were distributed to the academic staff and some qualitative data obtained from interviews with human resource plan and program officers and human resources personnel were used. The result of the study indicates that inefficient administration, lack of recognition and appreciation, absence of participation in decision-making, unsatisfactory financial rewards, and poor performance evaluation were ranked as major ones. However, job security, opportunity for further education and promotion were ranked less. The solutions suggested focused on rewarding seniority, reducing staff discrimination, improvement of performance evaluation and the reward system, and improving the skill and ability of administrators and developing participative management.

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This review study envisioned to address the basic objective that is to investigate determinants of online consumer behavior. A conventional review strategy was used to address the objective raised above, i.e., systematic strategy, and also, the obtained data were analyzed via content analysis. In addition to the above, the study also employed descriptive research design to present the obtained result descriptively. According to the generated findings, purchase intention is the most studied area, which is followed by adoption, and conversely, continuance or repurchase stage of online consumer behavior is the most underresearched area. Perceived usefulness, perceived risk, attitude, perceived ease of use, trust, social influence, subjective norms, perceived enjoyment, security, perceived behavioral control, web design quality, privacy and security concerns, demographic factors (e.g., age, gender, occupation, education, and income), perceived value, service quality, perceived satisfaction, psychological factors (e.g., relative advantage), facilitating conditions, and consumers’ experience are the most influential factors significantly affecting online consumer behavior at large. Therefore, it is advised that industries those are experienced or newcomers in the market to work on the identified factors determining the online consumer behavior, to sustain and achieve success in this dynamic world.

Branding is among the activities that seek new ways to balance competition in the business environment to sustain organizational competitive advantage. Hence, this study aims to identify how the concept has been considered in the literature and its evolution in the marketing literature. To achieve the objectives of the systematic study review was conducted from 2010 to 2021 years and identified 98 articles. The collected data were documented in Microsoft Word and retained in Mendeley referencing software. The study revealed that brand and product management lacks conceptual clarity, which influences their measurement and subsequently their management. The review also demonstrates as economic, identity, consumer-based, personality, relational, community, cultural, and sensory approaches, respectively, are the respective evolutions of the concepts.