Purpose of this paper: This paper aims to explore the evolution of human-centric marketing through the rise of virtual influencers. It investigates how these digital personas reshape consumer engagement, brand authenticity, and emotional connections in the marketing landscape. Design/methodology/approach The study adopts a qualitative approach, analysing case studies of successful virtual influencer campaigns, consumer trust dynamics, and ethical concerns surrounding their use. It reviews relevant literature and industry examples to understand the impact of virtual influencers on human-centric marketing. Findings: Virtual influencers have revolutionised digital marketing by providing brands with controlled, consistent personas that can evoke strong emotional responses. They offer a unique opportunity for personalisation and engagement, but they also challenge traditional notions of authenticity and trust. Transparency and ethical considerations are crucial in the effective use of virtual influencers. Research limitations/implications: This study focuses primarily on virtual influencers within the marketing sector, and further research is needed to explore their long-term impact on broader societal and cultural aspects. The implications for data privacy and consumer protection remain an area requiring more attention. Practical implications: Brands can use virtual influencers to humanise their identities, create personalised experiences, and engage with consumers on a deeper emotional level. However, clear communication and transparency are essential to maintaining consumer trust and avoiding ethical pitfalls. Social implications: The rise of virtual influencers may alter consumer expectations, pushing for more inclusive, personalised, and transparent marketing strategies. It raises questions about the authenticity of digital connections in an increasingly virtual world. Value of this paper: This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of virtual influencers within the context of human-centric marketing, offering insights into the evolving role of AI-driven personas in shaping consumer- brand relationships.

In recent times, increasing health mindfulness and concern for sustainability have significantly told the food choices of youthful consumers. Among these choices, organic snack foods have gained fancy, largely due to the presence of organic markers that communicate quality, safety and nutritive value. This study examines the impact of organic snack food markers on the buying notable deed of youthful consumers, with a special focus on how marker information shapes their comprehensions and purchase opinions. The exploration explores the position of mindfulness and understanding youthful consumers have about organic snack markers, including constituents, instruments, nutritive information and quality claims. It also investigates the crucial factors that motivate them to choose organic snacks over conventional about one’s preference, similar as perceived health benefits, environmental enterprises, brand trust, price considerations and social influence. A structured questionnaire was used to collect primary data from youthful repliers and statistical tools similar as chance analysis, chi-square test, ANOVA and correlation were applied to assay the data. The findings reveal that food manufacutres play a meaningful part in impacting purchasing opinion, numerous youthful consumers associate the term “organic” with better quality and bettered health benefits. Still, the study also indicates that factors similar as price perceptivity, trust in instrument and clarity of marker information affect the extent to which markers impact buying intentions. Overall, the exploration highlights the significance of transparent, accurate and easy to understand organic labelling in shaping youthful consumers’ food choices. The study provides precious perceptivity for marketers, food manufacturers and policymakers to design further effective labelling strategies that support informed decision- timber and promote healthier consumption patterns among the young generation.

This paper has made an attempt to analyze the socio-economic factors of sample respondent employees of Public Sector and Private Sector Banks in Tirupati district, A.P and to examine the level of job satisfaction of sample respondent employees of Public Sector and Private Sector Banks in Tirupati district, A.P. The primary data has been collected from the respondent employees of Public and Private Sector Banks in Tirupati district for the year 2025-26. For the purpose of primary data collection, total sample was 400 employees, 200 each from Public Sector and Private Sector Banks were selected randomly. The primary data was conducted through structured questionnaire and some personal interview. Tools for measuring data mean, percentages and Chi-square test have been used. This paper reveals that majority of the sample respondents of Public Sector Banks (72.50 per cent) belong to male category whereas in the Private Sector Banks majority of the 127 sample respondents (63.50 per cent) belong to male category. However, the least number 55 sample respondents (27.50 per cent) belong to female category in Public Sector Banks whereas in the Private Sector Banks 73 sample respondents (36.50 per cent) belonging to female category. It is suggested that the Public Sector and Private Sector banks have to take step to improve recreational facility and communication system to make an employee most satisfied and Public Sector and Private Sector banks have to make some changes in its present training system, refresher course and performance appraisal system of it. It is concluded that the job satisfaction plays an important role on the employees working as well as in the progress of banking sector. Banking sector essentially provides job to a large number of individuals and thus it is necessary to measure satisfaction level of employees working at bank.

This paper proposes the hypothesis of exploring the influences of online reviews and rating on purchase decisions mediated by customer trust amongst 100 online shoppers in Bengaluru. The study investigates the associations between review features (positive valence, verified star rating, detailed multimedia content, negative feedback) and trust development, which is then related to trust causing purchase behavior using a structured questionnaire with items on the Likert scale. The regression analysis indicated that the model was highly significant (F (4,95) = 285.29, p < .001, R 2 = .892) indicating that it explains 89.2 percent of customer trust. Answers with detailed reviews and photos/videos proved to be the most powerful predictor (0.521 p <.001) then confirmed star ratings (0.358 p <.001). Trust was reduced considerably by negative reviews (= -.306, p <.001). The interrelationship between trust indicators was found to be strong as correlated (r =.910 -.932, p =.001). The descriptive data show that 67% of the participants regularly read 6-10 reviews before buying on the Amazon platform mostly in the electronics category. Buyer confidence heavily impacted the purchase decision and 80 percent of the respondents concurred that trusted reviews boosted their chances of making a purchase as well as lessening concerns about unfamiliar sellers. The research bridges a critical research gap in the urban Indian environments and validates online reviews as key trust-building processes that lead to e-commerce conversion. Multimedia review systems should be verified in the platforms to ensure customer confidence.

Brand loyalty plays an important role in influencing consumer buying behaviour particularly in rural area where consumers are exposed to a variety of brands but marketing is very less compare to urban area. This study helps us to understand the effect of brand loyalty on the purchasing decisions of consumers in rural area of Karwar. By using a sample of 100 respondents and the study uses statistical techniques such as t-tests, chi- square analysis, and correlation analysis to assess the impact of brand trust, emotional attachment, and loyalty on consumer behaviour. The results help to understand the brand loyalty has a significantly effect on consumer purchasing patterns, with urban consumers demonstrating higher brand commitment than their rural counterparts. Furthermore, perceived brand trust has a positive correlation with consumer buying behaviour and emotional attachment to a brand. That significantly influences purchase decisions. These results point to the necessity of developing a more personalized branding strategy for rural areas to suit the different tastes of rural consumers. The paper makes a significant contribution to the literature on marketing in rural areas by shedding light on the consumer behaviour in such an environment. In addition the paper underlines the importance of developing brand loyalty in marketing efforts directed at the rural customers.

This paper is an analysis of the long-term performance of 377 Indian IPOs issued between 2005 and 2015. The key objective of the study is to find out whether the performance of IPOs in India is better or worse compared to the market in general with time and what the key factors are that affect the performance of the IPOs in the long term. The results indicate that IPOs perform well in India immediately after listing, but their returns in the long term are worse. An average IPO made excess returns of approximately 22 percent at the time of the listing. Nevertheless, approximately 37 percent of the initial IPOs had negative returns, which implies that not every IPO offers listing returns. In the case of the long-run performance, it was found that IPOs had poor performance as compared to the general market. The 36-month post-listing buy and hold abnormal returns (BHAR) was -57.33, showing that IPOs performed significantly below average. Among 377 IPOs analysed, only 38 companies (approximately 10 percent) managed to perform better than the benchmark index of the market in the three-year term. Several key variables that determine the performance of IPOs in the long run are also given by the study in the context of India. These are the nature of issuer (government ownership or privately owned company), the reputation of the lead manager, amount of shareholding by the promoters, and the size of issue.

This study investigates how consumers connect everyday digital wallet use with perceived environmental value and online transaction behaviour in an emerging Indian city. The work responds to a gap in digital payment research, where e-wallet adoption is commonly examined through convenience, security and usefulness, but less often through the consumer’s sustainability lens. Data were collected from 458 digital-wallet users in Tiruchirappalli District, Tamil Nadu, India, through a structured questionnaire. The analysis combines percentage analysis, univariate testing, cross-tabulation, correspondence analysis, correlation and multiple regression. Additional effect-size, confidence-interval and aggregate-path diagnostics are reported to interpret the practical strength of the relationships rather than relying only on p-values. Environmental concern was meaningfully above the neutral point, with 57.9 per cent of respondents reporting very or extremely high concern. Occupation and income significantly influenced environmental concern, whereas age was not significant in the univariate model. Consumer perspectives on digital wallets were positively associated with perceived environmental impact and online transaction behaviour. Perceived environmental impact also positively predicted online transaction behaviour and showed a stronger standardized effect than consumer perspective in the regression model. An exploratory aggregate-path assessment further indicated a partial indirect link from consumer perspective to online transaction behaviour through perceived environmental impact. The study extends green digital finance research by treating perceived environmental value as part of consumer-level digital wallet evaluation. It offers evidence from a non-metropolitan Indian context, where digital payments are expanding rapidly but sustainability-oriented fintech research remains comparatively limited.