Abdul Kadir Othman

The spread of COVID-19 pandemic starting in late 2019 has changed the way we conduct our teaching and learning activities especially in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Since March 2020, classes have been conducted via online platforms. As a consequence, students missed the campus life, teamwork has been given less emphasis, fieldwork, industry visits and community service have been put aside, and most importantly the achievement of the learning outcomes towards a certain extent has been compromised. The implications of these changes need to be highly considered as they might affect the quality of graduates. This paper intends to discuss the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the education system and highlight some potential solutions that can be considered by the academics and the top management of HEIs to address the negative repercussions of the current practices. Some research implications are also highlighted in the paper.

Buying online is a trend especially for young customers aged less than 30 years old. A lot of studies have been conducted to investigate this phenomenon but hitherto no cohesive model has been established. Therefore, the present study is meant to investigate online shopping factors that contribute to customers’ purchase decision. Five factors were identified to have potential influence on online purchase decision and one factor is expected to be a mediator to affect the relationship. From 384 data collected from online customers who visited popular online shopping sites, it was found that all five factors (perceived convenience, perceived risk, perceived competence, perceived benevolence, and perceived integrity) lead to trust and at the same time trust acts as a quasi mediator to affect the relationship between these factors and online purchase decision. The findings provide the actively sought after evidence to support the claims on the role of these factors in affecting online purchase decision. Online businesses should incorporate the findings in order to facilitate customers’ decision making process while visiting their websites. The websites must contain or portray all the elements as found in this study.