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Purpose This research focuses on common misconceptions about the factors driving women to purchase footwear impulsively. Its primary objective is to explore how emotional and social triggers specifically influence women's purchasing decisions, contrasting with the traditionally rational consumer models. Design/methodology/approach An online questionnaire was administered to a sample of women, yielding 199 useable responses. Findings The findings reveal the key determinants of women's impulsive retail footwear purchases, which include self-regulation, hedonic motivations and the influence of the retail store environment. This research challenges the prevailing assumption that women's passion for shopping is driven solely by inherent characteristics and suggests that external factors substantially shape their impulsive buying behaviour. In summary, the stereotypical portrayal of women as compulsive retail footwear shoppers may result more from external stimuli and environmental factors rather than an intrinsic trait. Originality/value This study improves the existing knowledge of women’s impulsive buying behaviour by unveiling the determinants of women's impulsive footwear purchases and assessing whether prevailing stereotypes hold true.

This article sets a theoretical foundation to transformative mixed methods research that is rooted in the critical theory of Habermas and Honneth. This addresses Habermas’s knowledge-constitutive interests and communicative action for redressing societal pathologies, and Honneth’s work on (mis)recognition, (dis)respect, and social justice. In doing so, the article argues for broadening the scope and embrace of mixed methods research, to go beyond being empirical research only or largely, and to include theorisation, critical theoretical discourse and its analysis, and ideology critique, as legitimate methods for (transformative) mixed methods research. The article makes a case for these methods as constituting important research methods in themselves in the portfolio of mixed methods research, moving the boundaries of mixed methods research beyond solely empirical studies, and providing emancipatory lenses and consciousness-raising in recognising that transformation takes many forms.

The philosophy of Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy, fundamental to Waldorf education, provides an alternative view on education to that in the non-western world. The article illustrates a rhizomatic, informal diffusion of ‘alternative education’ in contrast to ‘policy borrowing’ in education, reporting how Waldorf education and Anthroposophy are regarded and operated in an East Asian context. An initial exploratory study of this provides insider perspectives of ‘knowledgeable’ practitioners in Waldorf early childhood centres in East Asia, regarding their understanding and practices of Anthroposophy and its three key concepts: the Four Temperaments; the Seven-Year [development] cycle; and the Twelve Senses. Participants identified key features of Waldorf education: holistic development of the child; nature relatedness; modelling and imitation; and contextualisation and localisation. Many features of Waldorf education ran counter to significant values and practices in schooling in the local culture. The paper indicates how to reconcile these, and makes recommendations for further research.

This research focuses on common misconceptions about the factors driving women to purchase footwear impulsively. Its primary objective is to explore how emotional and social triggers specifically influence women's purchasing decisions, contrasting with the traditionally rational consumer models.,An online questionnaire was administered to a sample of women, yielding 199 useable responses.,The findings reveal the key determinants of women's impulsive retail footwear purchases, which include self-regulation, hedonic motivations and the influence of the retail store environment. This research challenges the prevailing assumption that women's passion for shopping is driven solely by inherent characteristics and suggests that external factors substantially shape their impulsive buying behaviour. In summary, the stereotypical portrayal of women as compulsive retail footwear shoppers may result more from external stimuli and environmental factors rather than an intrinsic trait.,This study improves the existing knowledge of women’s impulsive buying behaviour by unveiling the determinants of women's impulsive footwear purchases and assessing whether prevailing stereotypes hold true.

Purpose The aim of this study is to explore the role and impact of action research in the adoption of circular economy strategies by a fashion retail brand. This exploration is motivated by the need to address the underutilization of action research in management studies, despite its potential to foster a deep understanding of organizational processes and to drive positive transformations. The study seeks to illustrate how action research can contribute to the practical implementation of sustainability initiatives, specifically within the context of new environmental legislation and growing demands for sustainable practices in retailing. Design/methodology/approach This research employs an action research methodology, particularly suited to the retail field, where understanding and influencing organizational processes are key. Through a detailed case study of a fashion retail brand, the study illustrates how action research facilitates the adoption of circular economy strategies. Findings The findings of this study underscore the effectiveness of action research in implementing circular economy strategies within the fashion retail industry. Specifically, it highlights how this approach has led to the successful reduction of waste and reintegration of products into their lifecycle. Originality/value The originality of this study lies in its thorough application of action research to measure and refine the outcomes of circular economy strategies in retailing. This novel approach provides substantial insights into the potential of the circular economy to drive practical innovations in business practices within retail.

The fifth Sustainable Development Goal of the United Nations targets achieving gender equality by 2030, but recent progress has been sluggish. Gender inequalities in the labor markets may have been exacerbated by the Covid-19 recession. This paper aims to investigate the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on gender inequalities in the labor markets by...

This research unveils to predict consumer ad preferences by detecting seven basic emotions, attention and engagement triggered by advertising through the analysis of two specific physiological monitoring tools, electrodermal activity (EDA), and Facial Expression Analysis (FEA), applied to video advertising, offering a twofold contribution of significant value. First, to identify the most relevant physiological features for consumer preference prediction. We integrated a statistical module encompassing inferential and exploratory analysis tools, which identified emotions such as Joy, Disgust, and Surprise, enabling the statistical differentiation of preferences concerning various advertisements. Second, we present an artificial intelligence (AI) system founded on machine learning techniques, encompassing k-Nearest Neighbors, Support Vector Machine, and Random Forest (RF). Our findings show that the RF technique emerged as the top performer, boasting an 81% Accuracy, 84% Precision, 79% Recall, and an F1-score of 81% in predicting consumer preferences. In addition, our research proposes an eXplainable AI module based on feature importance, which discerned Attention, Engagement, Joy, and Disgust as the four most pivotal features influencing consumer ad preference prediction. The results indicate that computerized intelligent systems based on EDA and FEA data can be used to predict consumer ad preferences based on videos and effectively used as supporting tools for marketing specialists.

The aim of this study is to examine the online learning experiences of university students with Special Educational Needs (SEN), and how their experiences might differ from their typically developing peers. Fifty typically developing students (mean age = 22; 29 females) and 31 students with SEN (mean age = 22; 15 females) from a local

The purpose of this study was to explore the correlation between empathy, love maintenance behaviors, relationship satisfaction in a convenience sample of young adult lovers in Macau. Participants were N = 183 (84 males, 99 females) recruited from the social media platform (e.g. Instagram, WeChat, Facebook). Firstly, young adult lovers who tended to have high relationship satisfaction and empathy are tended to use positive love maintenance behaviors but less likely to use negative love maintenance behaviors. Besides, there were differences found by gender in empathy (affective empathy & total empathy), some dimensions of positive love maintenance behaviors (openness & advice), and negative love maintenance behaviors (causing jealousy, destructive conflict & negative love maintenance behaviors in general). Lastly, the findings in this study supported the hypotheses that love maintenance behaviors mediated the relationship between relationship satisfaction and empathy among young adult lovers in Macau. It was revealed that there was higher satisfaction in younger adult lovers in younger group (18-24 years) compared to older groups (32-40 years). For empathy, it correlated positively with relationship satisfaction and most positive love maintenance behaviors, but also with certain negative love maintenance behaviors. Positive love maintenance behaviors mediate the relationship between relationship satisfaction and empathy, highlighting their critical role in maintaining healthy relationships

The cosmological constant is normally introduced as an additional term entering the Einstein–Hilbert (EH) action. In this letter, we demonstrate that, instead, it appears naturally from the standard EH action as an invariant term emerging from spacetime symmetries. We then demonstrate that the same constraint emerging from this invariant suppresses the short wavelength modes and it favors the long wavelength ones. In this way, inside the proposed formulation, the observed value for the vacuum energy density is obtained naturally from the zero-point quantum fluctuations.