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There are calls for irradiated food labelling due to a significant need for food safety and extensive procedures to safeguard consumer health. Additionally, there is a strong push from producers for mandatory Country of Origin (COO) labelling. The study examines how the COO and Radura labels influence consumer behaviour and shows the interplay between these influences. Using Attitude-Behavior-Context theory, a conceptual model is proposed and tested to evaluate these factors. The use of multiple labels allows for more choices. How the information presented on labels corresponds to consumers' pre-purchase information search is tested on regular label users.

Structural Equation Modelling (SEM), Generalised Linear Modelling and Cluster Analysis were used to analyse the data on a sample of 322 Australian respondents.

The study revealed that COO labelling had a significant positive relationship with attitudes but a negative relationship with WTP, acting as a suppressed mediator between attitudes and WTP. Interestingly, while knowledge was not found significant, label confidence emerged as a significant factor. Furthermore, the research suggests that regular users may prioritize COO labels over Radura labels.

This research contributes novelty by being the first to address the interplay between COO and irradiated labels, complementing the growing body of literature on irradiation labelling. It also offers valuable insights for retail practitioners, providing an understanding that can facilitate the delivery of high-value multiple labels at the point of purchase.

This study aims to offer the intellectual structure and dynamics of the sustainability branding field, involving the identification of influential authors and journals, current and emerging themes, theories, methods, contexts and future research directions.

The study conducted a bibliometric approach of 1,509 articles retrieved from Scopus to analyze the evolution of the knowledge of sustainability branding and suggest future research. The analysis used various methods such as performance analysis, keyword analysis, cluster analysis and bibliographic coupling.

The topics of corporate image, philanthropy and stakeholder pressures were core in the foundation phase. Then rose the topics of sustainable development goals and global supply chains. Green marketing and the new paradigms of circularity, ethical consumerism and hyperconnected societies emerged more recently. Six thematic clusters represent the field’s knowledge structure: (1) corporate branding and reputation, (2) sustainable business development, (3) sustainable branding and ethical consumption, (4) corporate social responsibility, (5) brand equity and green marketing and (6) sustainability branding in hospitality and tourism.

This paper provides readers with an overview of sustainability branding core themes, key contributions and challenges, which can be used as a toolkit for brand management studies and practice.

The study’s uniqueness lies in bibliometric analysis (combined with network analysis and science mapping techniques) of the sustainability branding field from the identification and evolution of the thematic clusters to propose future research directions.

Today, individuals use social media to express their opinions and feelings, which offers a living laboratory to researchers in various fields, such as management, innovation, technology development, environment and marketing. It is therefore necessary to understand how the language used in user-generated content and the emotions conveyed by the content affect responses from other social media users.

In this study, almost 700,000 posts from Twitter (as well as Facebook, Instagram and forums in the appendix) are used to test a conceptual model grounded in signaling theory to explain how the language of user-generated content on social media influences how other users respond to that communication.

Extending developments in linguistics, this study shows that users react negatively to content that uses self-inclusive language. This study also shows how emotional content characteristics moderate this relationship. The additional information provided indicates that while most of the findings are replicated, some results differ across social media platforms, which deserves users' attention.

This article extends research on Internet behavior and social media use by providing insights into how the relationship between self-inclusive language and emotions affects user responses to user-generated content. Furthermore, this study provides actionable guidance for researchers interested in capturing phenomena through the social media landscape.

This study aims to explore the extent to which customer orientation and creative benefits offered by a firm may weaken rather than strengthen customer engagement. In doing so, it sheds new light on how customer orientation and creative benefits may facilitate rather than hinder engagement by customers.

A field study provides a test of the proposed effects in a hedonic consumption setting with 1,703 customers of an online dating service. Furthermore, an experimental study with 277 executives in a functional consumption setting (new mobile app) helps affirm the robustness of the field study findings.

This research theorizes and examines how communal relationship norms between customers and a firm, along with customers’ psychological empowerment, mediate the effect of customer orientation and creative benefits on customer engagement. A provocative finding of the study is that communal relationship norms help boost, whereas psychological empowerment reduces, the effects of both customer orientation and creative benefits on customer engagement.

The research examines different relationship norms and how they can become integral to customer–company relationships; this perspective helps reveal the underlying dynamics. It contributes to the literature on customer engagement by theorizing and demonstrating the link between customer orientation and customer engagement, two central constructs in the marketing literature. It theorizes and demonstrates that providing creative benefits brings about a direct competitive advantage for the product itself, and acts as a significant variable that explains the company−customer relationship.

The findings highlight the advantages and challenges associated with encouraging customer engagement. First, they suggest that companies emphasize their customer orientation and creative benefits. Second, managers should try to minimize the possible process of raising customers’ psychological empowerment while maximizing the impact of communal relationship norms.

This study identifies psychological empowerment as a key reason customer-oriented companies that provide creative benefits still struggle to engage their customers. It also suggests viable tactics to overcome barriers to enhanced customer engagement, such as by minimizing the effects of customers’ psychological empowerment while maximizing the impact of their perceived communal relationship norms.

A relocalization movement, often referred to as neolocalism, is a foot with the aim of rekindling local and regional bonds between people and communities by intentionally and comprehensively crafting senses of place through various promotional strategies. Local-scale businesses often contribute to neolocal efforts through the integration of “place” with their brand development and marketing schemes. Together such efforts converge to form local consumption spaces that foster both economic vibrancy and social cohesion within and across communities. While sometimes recognized as a secondary benefit, environmental stewardship has yet to be fully developed as a neolocal construct and consistent trait of local consumption spaces. In this chapter, an extensive review of the intersection between the environmentalism, neolocalism, and eco-entrepreneurship literature is used to conceptually frame the notion of eco-consumption spaces. The insights generated lead to a proposed research agenda that includes recommendations pertaining to both empirical settings and methodological strategies.

The recent pandemic disrupted the way in which businesses transact with each other. In response to maintaining cleanliness in business-to-business (B2B) settings, artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled robots have been adopted as substitutes for cleaning personnel, yet their implications remain largely underexamined. This study aims to examine B2B buyer responses to cleaning information notices (human vs AI-enabled agent) placed at either the entry to the premises or the sales counter, thereby adding to the nascent literature in this line of inquiry.

Three field experiments were conducted across diverse B2B businesses (wholesalers in Studies 1–2 and a commercial business in Study 3). To achieve greater empirical rigor and generalizability, this research used diverse stimuli across different B2B settings. In addition, the results ruled out alternate explanations and shed light upon political ideology as a boundary condition. Finally, a single-paper meta-analysis confirmed H1, consolidating the established effect.

Featuring over 1,000 B2B buyers, the results show that politically liberal B2B buyers express greater preference for human over AI-performed cleaning while labor-orientated buyers are indifferent. Importantly, this effect is driven by greater relaxation associated with humans, which in turn, increases their future patronage and referral intent.

The results enrich the collective knowledge of the adoption of AI-enabled robots, reinforcing for marketing practitioners and businesses that the reliance on human-based outcomes remains a preferred touchpoint in B2B settings, particularly for liberals.