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Purpose Social media remarkably changed the way of interaction between the consumers and organizations. The increased acceptance of social media has given rise to social commerce (s-commerce) and s-commerce usage is gradually increasing over the last few years. The progressive development of technologies suggests that s-commerce will become the mainstream for marketing and a literature survey indicates that there have not been many studies in this area. The purpose of this paper is to predict the factors influencing consumer intention towards the adoption of s-commerce. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a survey approach with reference to important behavioural factors such as satisfaction, ethics, trust, enjoyment/easiness, social pressure and awareness. The research model was developed to be in line with the available literature. The data were collected using a five-point Likert scale and the research model was tested using least square regression. Findings The results showed that user intention is significantly and positively related to perceived trust, enjoyment/easiness, social pressure, satisfaction and awareness. Also, “intention” was found to be a significant mediating factor for actual usage. Research limitations/implications First, the questionnaire was a “snap-shot” instead of longitudinal study. Second, future research should use other moderating variables that may affect the usage of social media. Also the study could apply a variant of research methods to include other techniques such as interviews, which allow for deeper understanding of the problem and issues. Practical implications Social media represents an important platform for electronic commerce and has one of the most metamorphic impacts on business. Therefore, investigating the usage of s-commerce with reference to important behavioural factors could provide valuable information for companies in establishing policies and strategies. It could also be useful for management studies and researchers in understanding the consumers’ attitude towards usage of social media for commercial purposes. Social implications S-commerce creates opportunities for firms. Based on findings this research provides insights with major implications for marketers, who would like to generate direct sales on social network platforms. Originality/value Existing literature focusses largely on the effectiveness of social media. Only a handful has endeavoured to analyse s-commerce systems and the literature on consumers’ behaviour in using s-commerce is not mature yet. This study is one of the few studies in this field, and aims to predict and explain the user acceptance of social media for commercial purposes.

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Phenotypic characterization and body biometric in 13 traits (height at withers, body length, chest girth, paunch girth, ear length, tail length, length of tail up to switch, face length, face width, horn length, circumference of horn at base, distances between pin bone and hip bone) were recorded in 233 adult Gojri buffaloes from Punjab and Himachal Pradesh states of India. Traits were analysed by using varimax rotated principal component analysis (PCA) with Kaiser Normalization to explain body conformation. PCA revealed four components which explained about 70.9% of the total variation. First component described the general body conformation and explained 31.5% of total variation. It was represented by significant positive high loading of height at wither, body length, heart girth, face length and face width. The communality ranged from 0.83 (hip bone distance) to 0.45 (horn length) and unique factors ranged from 0.16 to 0.55 for all these 13 different biometric traits. Present study suggests that first principal component can be used in the evaluation and comparison of body conformation in buffaloes and thus provides an opportunity to distinguish between early and late maturing to adult, based on a small group of biometric traits to explain body conformation in adult buffaloes.

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The majority of software development organizations all over the world are small and medium enterprises. These organizations have realized that it is crucial for their business to improve their processes and working methods but they are lacking the knowledge and resources to do it. Successful implementation of SPI methodologies in small and medium-sized software enterprises (SMEs) is generally not possible because such organizations are not capable of investing the cost of implementing these programs. Limited resources and strict deadlines to complete the projects make it further difficult to implement SPI programs which can also affect quality issues in software project. There are various SPI methodologies to address these issues which have been also deployed in these organizations. In this paper, recent and significant SPI methodologies (OWPL, ASPE-MSC, iFLAP, PRISMS, SPM, MESOPYME) for SMEs are compared and discussed. This will facilitate the maturity of software process improvement in SMEs, standardization and also contribute in the development of automation tools for SPIs in future.