Purpose The paper examines the increase in annual income of the new middle-class (The NMC) of Delhi-NCR and its impact on their investment habits, consumption habits and lifestyle. The paper aims to look into the transformation of the new middle-class into the NMC in emerging economies and its potential to the companies and investors. Design/methodology/approach This study draws insight from 558 new middle-class consumers in Delhi-NCR. ANOVA, post hoc tests , and hierarchical multiple linear regression model are applied to test the proposed hypotheses. Findings The NMC living in India's megacities imitates the lifestyle of their counterparts living in the West. To maintain their status and present themselves different from those living in middle or lower-middle-class categories, they spend audaciously, even though the income is low. When they enter the new middle class, their consumption, saving and lifestyle diversify positively. Research limitations/implications This study has limitations. First, the authors do not apply any behavioral theory or marketing model such as the theory of reasoned action (TRA), Engel-kollat-Blackwell (EKB) model or theory of normative model of target markets. Second, the research is limited to the NMC of only one emerging economy, i.e., India. Third, the research sample is limited to only one megacity of India, i.e., Delhi. Finally, this research used only one factor, i.e., AI, to study the consumption pattern. Practical implications The results suggest that considering the buying habits and lifestyle of Indian the NMC, consumers would prove helpful to the companies in product decision-making. Furthermore, understanding change in investment habits across different income levels would be advantageous to financial institutions, investment planners and marketers while designing their products to attract investment. Originality/value The research holds significance from the point of view of understanding Indian consumers encompassing the the NMC and predicting their implications on consumer goods-producing industries, which shall, in turn, facilitate producers and government in formulating policies and strategies.

Purpose This paper aims to provide evidence that online well-designed educational tasks can provide more relevant and richer active learning environment for business English learners. The benefits of online tasks, as an education tool, became more apparent and gained more importance during the events related to the Covid-19 pandemic. The task design is based on task-based interactions and in a sequence of tasks with the support of an online learning management system (LMS). The findings suggest that online task-based learning (and would-be blended learning in the future) enables meaningful and authentic activities promoting interactions and communicative competences to prepare for learners of business English to enter the workplace. Design/methodology/approach The overarching aim of the study is to explore how task-design-utilizing online LMS could contribute to enhancing the learning process and to the development of the learner's communicative competences. The study included two aspects, namely: (1) the design of online tasks and (2) pilot evaluation. The task design involved tasks that required interactions between the learners. The pilot evaluation relied on data collection via questionnaires. Findings Two aspects relating to the findings: (1) a description of the teaching initiatives which was designed to see how blended learning and online tasks can enhance learning and develop the skills of the learners: with questioning techniques targeting communication skills, simulated workplace situations and timely feedback and peer influence; (2) the findings of the pilot study evaluation to see the actual implementation of online tasks. The students' responses corroborate the teachers' comments. The findings of this research showed that LMS tasks, which were designed for this study, helped the learners to enhance their competence in business English. Such competences included communicative skills needed for learners to enter the workplace such as interpersonal skills, presentation skills and negotiation skills in contexts. These findings lead to significant recommendations regarding the way forward for developing active blended learning. Research limitations/implications Firstly, teachers need to be trained and involved in designing such online tasks and materials to be used in active blended learning. More training in language teaching methodologies should be investigated to adapt the transition from a traditional to a computer-assisted language learning teacher. This helps teachers to design and implement online simulated workplace tasks. Secondly, time for the use of online tasks should be allocated satisfactorily. This can be achieved by building online learning sessions into class schedule or developing active blended courses. The time for the use of online simulated tasks should be allocated satisfactorily with lab or simulation room, in which students would be shown how to access the online tasks designed on the university LMS and the way to practice with different kinds of tasks. Originality/value In this study context, the online tasks design can initiate at activity-level blending to support face-to-face (F2F) activities, for example, online activities to support tasks for the topic Make a request or Offer for help. This can be extended to course-level blending when more online activities are designed to use with F2F activities such as online comparing and contrasting tasks to develop skills in connections with the awareness of cultures. The findings of the research suggest to develop and to implement online tasks alongside with classroom learning and teaching to enable the objectives of business English programme at university for preparing learners to enter the workplace. The recent pandemic highlighted the need for effective methodologies for active blended learning. It is now required that professionals in higher education to collect evidence base to inform future practice of such methodologies. Further significant research efforts should be directed towards collecting such evidence of the effectiveness and improvements of such methods. The support of higher education management professionals in securing funding for such research will be essential.

Purpose –The purpose of this study is to examine the adoption of the active learning and teaching methods by university lecturers, taking into account the contribution of certain important factors, including trust, empowerment, thinking styles and emotional intelligence. In addition, this study further reveals the diverse nature of university lecturers with regards to their tendencies to adopt active teaching methods using the segmentation technique of marketing. Design/methodology/approach – A structured survey was implemented with university lecturers in Hanoi (Vietnam), obtaining a sample of 218 respondents from six universities. Descriptive analysis was carried out to identify the extent of the adoption of these methods. In addition, cluster analysis and analysis of variance were computed to extract and define the segments of university lecturers. Findings – The findings show that the lecturers, on average, had a tendency to apply active teaching methods. However, the extent of the application of these methods differed among four clusters: “conservatives,” “liberals,” “junior conservatives” and “junior liberals.” In addition, it was found that the degree to which active methods were applied may have been affected by the lecturers’ trust in and their empowerment of the students. The application of active methods may also have been influenced by various covert characteristics of the lecturers, including thinking styles (cognition-based) and emotional intelligence (affect-based). The lecturers’ overt characteristics, such as age, education and experience, may also have affected their application of active methods, while biological sex seems not to have been a significant factor. Originality/value – The results of this study expand the literature by explaining the diversity of university lecturers from the perspective of the active teaching and learning methods. They also provide implications for the management of education reform based on the varied implementation of the said methods that has already taken place.

Purpose – The current review aims to examine the growth trajectory, most influential documents, intellectual and conceptual structure of the literature regarding gender issues in family business research. Design/methodology/approach – The bibliometric analysis was performed using 224 documents from 1991 to 2020 extracted from the Web of Science database. Findings – The review finds that this field’s knowledge grew exponentially during the last three decades, mainly after 2003 and the last several years. Based on the co-citation analysis, three major research lines are identified: “Women’s challenges and opportunities in the family business”, “Gender diversity in the family business corporate board”, and “Gender and family SMEs management.” The temporal co-word analysis reveals that “Gender diversity in the family business corporate board” is the latest research line. Originality/value – By reviewing prominent cited references and documents that cited them, the authors provide the landscapes and research gaps of three major research lines for further development.