The business world is a competitive place, and enterprises must cultivate sustainable relationships with their clients to gain customer loyalty. Concepts of relationship marketing (RM) are becoming vital in the service industry. Different RM strategies are used to attract customers, but some of these strategies do not achieve customer loyalty as easily as predicted due to customers’ changing behaviour patterns. This paper investigates the impact of RM strategies on customer loyalty through relationship qualities (customer satisfaction and trust) by concentrating on the high-end hairdressing sector in Auckland. Additionally, this research investigates the expectations of customers of high-end hair salons formed by RM strategies, which influence their satisfaction, trust, and customer loyalty to their service provider. The results indicate that brand image shows a significant relevance to trust, satisfaction, and customer loyalty claiming that brand image is an essential element of RM. Additionally, this investigations revels that, hair salons in Auckland are looking forward to ascertaining a sustainable relationship with their clients through a spectrum of strategies such as positive brand image, good service quality, reasonable price, and good value deals to earn optimistic relationship quality, which will ultimately escalate to customer loyalty. Findings of this research will be useful in supporting hair salons to gain a greater understanding of their customers by adopting effective RM strategies.

Population, as a fundamental element in urban development, often reflects a city's economic development pattern through its spatial distribution and dynamic changes. Studying population spatial distribution is pivotal for bolstering the economic activity capacity in urban agglomerations and guiding regional economic health. Using the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan urban agglomeration as a case study, this paper analyzes its overall spatial structure and the spatiotemporal evolution of population at the district and county levels. This analysis utilizes population density, population redistribution index, and population geographic concentration as key indices. Additionally, a spatial econometric model is constructed to assess the impact of economic, social, and environmental factors on population spatial patterns. Findings reveal several key points: (1) Furong District serves as the primary central area, boasting a population geographic concentration of 25.1% in 2021. Tianxin District, Kaifu District, Yuhua District, Shifeng District, Yuelu District, and Hetang District constitute the secondary central areas, while Yutang District, Tianyuan District, Lusong District, Yuhu District, Wangcheng District, and Changsha County form the tertiary level areas. (2) Population density within the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan urban agglomeration gradually decreases from Furong District outward. The first central area and sub-central areas experience increasing population density, highlighting a polarization trend in the population distribution. (3) The overall Moran's index for the spatial distribution of population in the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan urban agglomeration is significantly positive, indicating a strong spatial autocorrelation and a deepening spatial agglomeration of population distribution. (4) Per capita disposable income, financial expenditure, and education level positively influence the geographical concentration of population in the urban agglomeration, while GDP per capita, road area per capita, and environmental quality exert a negative impact. Notably, the most influential factors shaping population spatial distribution are GDP per capita, disposable income per capita, and air quality.

The dawn of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) era presents a plethora of new possibilities for analyzing regional economic development. The present article provides an in-depth exploration of the methods employed in this field, highlighting the immense opportunities that AI offers while also addressing potential challenges. The role of AI is crucial in complex data handling, enabling efficient analyses of intricate regional economic patterns. This capacity is paramount in shaping economic policies and strategies that are reflective of each region's unique needs and potential. The article firstly explores various AI methods used in economic analysis, including but not limited to machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing. It delves into the application of these methods in discerning development trends, predicting economic shifts, and identifying strategic economic drivers unique to various regions. Subsequently, the potential of AI to transform regional economic analysis is discussed, encompassing its capability to process large and complex datasets, its power to predict future trends based on past and present data, and its ability to aid in strategic decision-making. However, this new era of AI-driven economic analysis is not without challenges. The latter part of this article thus confronts the issues related to data privacy, ethical use of AI, and the necessity of interdisciplinary skills in AI and economics. This exploration contributes to a broader understanding of how AI is transforming the landscape of regional economic development analysis, illuminating both its present use and future implications. By understanding these dynamics, we can better harness the potential of AI to advance economic prosperity in various regions around the globe.

This paper explores how the medical expenditure risk affects the households’ portfolio choice across health status theoretically in a life cycle model and empirically using machine learning methods. Medical expenditure risk, as a background risk, has the potential to influence households’ financial decisions. A higher medical expenditure risk leads to a larger fluctuation and more uncertainty in households’ consumption and therefore utility. As a result, risk-free assets become more attractive. Our machine learning analysis provides evidence that aligns with the predictions of the theoretical life cycle model. Specifically, households with better health hold a larger proportion of stocks in their portfolios. Furthermore, when facing increased medical expenditure risk, households in good health demonstrate a greater willingness to invest in safe assets.

Historically, increased credit union competition in Idaho and Montana has caused commercial banks to offer higher deposit rates to savers and lower loan rates to borrowers. Data are collected for the second quarter of 2018 to examine whether that pattern still holds true. Unlike prior studies, empirical results indicate that credit union competition no longer exerts statistically reliable impacts on deposit rates or loan rates in this northern Rocky Mountain region of the United States. Potential contributing factors include bank and thrift consolidation in recent years, the low interest rate environment prevailing during the late 2010s, and greater emphasis on non-interest forms of intermediary competition in the banking markets that comprise this regional economy.

Access to electricity, a fundamental element of contemporary life, is essential for economic success. Its impact extends to the fundamental foundations of industrial development and has the power to improve a wide range of industries, including healthcare, transportation, utilities, and education. This article aims to analyse the effect of electricity access on primary education in Central Africa over the period 1997-2019. To this effect, we employ data mainly from the World Development indicator on 9 countries of Central Africa. Using the pooled ordinary least squares estimation technique, the results indicate that access to electricity contributes positively and significantly to primary educational attainment in Central Africa during the study period. The results are Robust to the use of alternative estimation strategy and eventual endogeneity problems in the results are account through the two stage least square estimation techniques which confirm our baseline results as well as the nature of the relationship between access to electricity and primary education in Central Africa. These results have important implications for policies in overcoming barriers to electricity access.

In the past, investing in housing has served as an engine of growth for many economies as it is widely recognized that poor housing conditions can have significant negative impacts on human health, education, and economic opportunities. To assess the housing-related quality of life, indicators such as housing quality, housing environment, and cost burdens can be applied. However, recent studies indicate that materials used for construction are critical. Permanent materials, as opposed to temporary materials, typically offer a range of benefits in terms of durability, low maintenance, improved energy efficiency, increased property value, and better safety. The ultimate aim is to identify the key drivers of housing conditions in Cambodia, with a particular focus on materials and water quality, and the legal status of housing. To find the empirical relationship between economic, socio-economic, and demographic variables on the one hand, and variables measuring housing and living conditions in Cambodia on the other, the analysis employs Ordinary Least Squares and Methods-of-Moments regression modeling. Results indicate that high employment rates and entrepreneurship increase home ownership, and improve the quality of drinking water available. Furthermore, in addition to employment and entrepreneurship, the higher-performing construction materials can also be empirically explained by a bigger labor force and variables capturing the wider macroeconomic environment.

Overall development of a country largely depends on the economic policy instruments particularly fiscal and monetary policy to streamline the development and continue the developmental progress. These two policies have significant effects on long-term growth. It is noticed that policy adoption and reforms in both fiscal and monetary policies undertaken by Southeast Asian nations during the 1960s through 1990s have contributed to their advancement. This paper discusses the strategies for flourishing as emerging economies. Examples from Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam are highlighted in this study. It is found that prudent fiscal and monetary policy, effective discounting and interest rate; modernized tax system and most importantly policy regime are the contributing factors of these emerging economies. However, in spite of high-income growth and development because of supportive these policy initiatives, administrative and politico-economic constraints challenged the path of economies. Long-term development strategies are suggested to sustain the growth and continue the development pace.

In order to avoid the real economy development lags behind and the deterioration of ecological problems in the process of traditional urbanization, China has been promoting city-industry deep integration, but the connection between city-industry integration and green economic growth, especially the spatial effect, has not been systematically explained. Based on the panel data from 2007 to 2018, this paper constructs an evaluation index system and uses the SEEA method to measure city-industry integration (CII) level and green economy growth (GEG) level. Then, by employing spatial Durbin model and intermediary effect model, it further systematically investigates the spatial impact of CII on GEG and the potential mechanism. The study found that: (1) On the whole, CII shows “slow-steady integration” trend, but regional heterogeneity was obvious and accompanied by “slow gap expansion”. GEG experienced “sharp increase” with “polarization” characteristic. (2) CII can directly promote regional GEG (with a marginal effect of 0.689), more effectively than traditional urbanization, and CII has obvious spatial spillover effects on GEG in both “local effect” and “neighboring effect”. (3) Interestingly, technological innovation and consumption structure upgrading are significant mediating mechanisms. (4) The direct positive effect of CII shows the regional imbalance characteristic. Finally, the corresponding policy implications are put forward.

Based on the panel data of western central-cities from 2002 to 2021, this paper uses the intermediary effect model to analyze the relationship between urban internationalization, innovation ability and urban competitiveness. It is found that: (1) The internationalization of western central-cities has a positive and direct impact on the promotion of urban competitiveness, which has a significant impact on economic strength and infrastructure, and a weak impact on government efficiency and market efficiency The marginal growth effect of internationalization on urban scale will gradually decrease with the improvement of urban development level. (2) The continuous promotion of city internationalization can promote the innovation ability to enhance the competitiveness of the city. Compared with the internationalization of cities, the influence of innovation ability on the competitiveness of cities is small, and the innovation ability of western central-cities and each city is weak. The scale effect has become the main motivation to promote the competitiveness of cities. (3) In the process of internationalization of western central-cities, innovation ability has a part of intermediary effect on the improvement of urban competitiveness, and the effect on urban “hard environment” is significantly greater than that on urban “Soft-environment”. The results of direct and indirect impact tests show that the impact of the process of internationalization of western central-cities on urban competitiveness is exogenous.