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The Metaverse, a dynamic convergence of real and digital spaces powered by Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), presents a transformative frontier for businesses to expand consumer engagement. It offers a three-dimensional web-powered realm where users can immerse themselves in real-life scenarios and simulations from the convenience of their own devices, fostering real-time interaction and uninterrupted business operations. Integrating technologies like VR, AR, Cloud, Blockchain, and IoT, the Metaverse has already made significant strides across industries, providing consumers with unique digital experiences. Businesses can leverage this to enhance their brand awareness, establish stronger customer connections, and provide immersive shopping experiences, making traditional advertising appear antiquated. Major global companies have already embraced this technology, and the Metaverse represents an innovative digital platform with limitless possibilities, rapidly evolving with enabling technologies. This chapter delves into the potential of the Metaverse to bolster brand development and its recent growth, exploring the practical applications for businesses in the near future.

Customer value co-creation behavior is promising but undertheorized. To bridge this gap, this study examines the viability of a social cognitive theory positing that customers' value co-creation behavior is shaped by their co-creation experience, self-efficacy, and engagement.

Using healthcare as a case, a stratified random sample comprising 600 patients from 40 hospitals across eight metropolitan cities in an emerging economy was acquired and analyzed using co-variance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM).

Customers' co-creation experience has a positive impact on their co-creation self-efficacy, co-creation engagement, and value co-creation behavior. While co-creation self-efficacy and engagement have no direct influence on value co-creation behavior, they do serve as mediators between co-creation experience and value co-creation behavior, suggesting that when customers are provided with a co-creation experience, it enhances their co-creation self-efficacy and engagement, ultimately fostering value co-creation behavior.

A theory of customer value co-creation behavior is established.

The COVID-19 pandemic was a shock to the food supply chain without modern precedent. Challenges in production, manufacturing, distribution and retailing led to the highest rates of food price inflation in the US since the 1970s. The major goal of this paper is to describe statistically the impact of the pandemic of food price inflation and volatility in the US and to discuss implications for industry and for policymakers.

We use Bureau of Labor Statistics data to investigate food prices in the US, 2020–2021. We apply 16 statistical approaches to measure price changes and volatility and three regression approaches to measure counterfactuals of food prices, had the pandemic not occurred.

Food price inflation and volatility increased substantially during the early months of the pandemic, with a great deal of heterogeneity across food products and geographic regions. Food price inflation was most pronounced for meats, and contrary to expectations, highest in the western US Forecasting approaches demonstrate that grocery prices were about 7% higher than they would have been without the pandemic as of the end of 2021.

The research on COVID-19 and the food system remains in its nascent stage. As findings on food loss and waste, employment and wages, food insecurity and more proliferate, it is vital to understand how food prices were connected to these phenomena and affected. We also motivate several ideas for future work.

This chapter provides a mapping of the so-called couple apps, i.e. apps that generically promise to promote connectivity in several areas among the members of a romantic relationship. We focus on Apple's App Store offering and analyse all the available relevant apps: their year of release, the different categories, the apps' developers, the apps' presentation through its icon and description and the profile creation process. If couples' communication and behaviours have an impact on romantic relationship satisfaction and users' well-being, we question how such apps are characterised. We reveal that these apps try to respond to couples' needs related to several romantic relationship topics through a variety of approaches and methods. Nevertheless, such apps are governed by private companies with a commercial objective and through their design and affordances promote behaviours of a one-size-fits-all approach. As such, they seem not to promote diversity or spontaneity. Among these apps, heteronormativity regarding gender, roles, sexual orientation and romantic relationship format is to be assumed as the norm. As an effect, traditional views of what a couple is and related behaviours are transmitted, impacting how apps are understood and appropriated by users and having consequences on practices.

This study aims to investigate the impact of tour guides’ ethical behavior on tourist satisfaction, intention to revisit and to recommend and examine whether gender plays a moderating role in these relationships.

The study was conducted in the Cappadocia Destination in Turkiye. A total of 910 participants were included in the study. The partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) method was used to examine the research model in this study.

The study results indicate that the ethical behavior of tour guides has a significant impact on tourists’ satisfaction with the tour, satisfaction with the tour guide, recommendation intention and revisit intention. Furthermore, the study found that the effect of ethical behavior on these outcomes was more pronounced among male tourists than female tourists.

Despite the tourists’ satisfaction, they may want to remember the experience using mental time travel, and they may fear not having the same positive experience during any revisits. Tour guides should be given continuous training on the concept of professional ethics throughout their education and professional life. The factors causing higher ethical perceptions in male tourists than female tourists may be examined in further studies (i.e. marital status).

The research fills an important gap in the literature by shedding light on the significance of ethical behavior in the context of tour guides, a topic that has received relatively little attention. In particular, the results obtained reveal the originality of the study. Besides that, investigating the moderating role of gender and determining the behavioral intentions of male and female individuals according to the ethical behaviors of tour guides are important for the future of Cappadocia tourism.

本研究旨在（1）调查导游的道德行为对游客满意度、重游意向和推荐意向的影响; （2）研究性别在这些关系中是否起到调节作用。

研究在土耳其卡帕多西亚目的地进行。共有 910 名参与者参与研究。本研究采用 PLS-SEM 方法检验研究模型。

研究结果表明, 导游的道德行为对游客的旅游满意度、对导游的满意度、推荐意向和重游意向有显著影响。此外, 研究还发现, 道德行为对这些结果的影响在男性游客中比在女性游客中更为明显。

尽管游客对心理时空旅行（MTT）感到满意, 但他们可能希望记住曾经的经历, 而且他们可能担心在重游时无法获得同样的积极体验。导游应在整个教育和职业生涯中不断接受有关职业道德观念的培训。在进一步的研究中, 可以探讨导致男性游客道德观念高于女性游客的因素（如婚姻状况）。

这项研究填补了文献中的一个重要空白, 揭示了导游道德行为的重要性, 而这一主题受到的关注相对较少。尤其是所获得的结果揭示了这项研究的原创性。此外, 调查性别的调节作用, 并根据导游的道德行为确定男性和女性的行为意向, 对今后卡帕多西亚旅游业的研究具有重要意义。此外, 本研究还具有创新性的解决建议和实际意义。

Este estudio pretende (1) investigar el impacto del comportamiento ético de los guías turísticos en la satisfacción de los turistas, la intención de volver a visitar y de recomendar y (2) examinar si el género desempeña un papel moderador en estas relaciones.

El estudio se llevó a cabo en el destino Capadocia, en Turquía. Se incluyó en el estudio a un total de 910 participantes. Se utilizó el método PLS-SEM para examinar el modelo de investigación en este estudio.

Los resultados del estudio indican que el comportamiento ético de los guías turísticos tiene un impacto significativo en la satisfacción de los turistas con el viaje, la satisfacción con el guía turístico, la intención de recomendación y la intención de volver a visitar el lugar. Además, el estudio halló que el efecto del comportamiento ético sobre estos resultados era más pronunciado entre los turistas varones que entre las turistas mujeres.

A pesar de la satisfacción de los turistas, es posible que quieran recordar la experiencia que han vivido con el viaje en el tiempo mental (MTT), y que teman no tener la misma experiencia positiva durante cualquier revisita. Los guías turísticos deberían recibir formación continua sobre el concepto de ética profesional a lo largo de su educación y su vida profesional. Los factores que causan percepciones éticas más elevadas en los turistas varones que en las turistas mujeres podrían examinarse en estudios posteriores (por ejemplo, el estado civil).

La investigación llena un vacío importante en la literatura al arrojar luz sobre la importancia del comportamiento ético en el contexto de los guías turísticos, un tema que ha recibido relativamente poca atención. Especialmente los resultados obtenidos revelan la originalidad del estudio. Además, la investigación del papel moderador del género y la determinación de las intenciones de comportamiento de los individuos masculinos y femeninos en función de los comportamientos éticos de los guías turísticos son importantes para los futuros estudios sobre el turismo de Capadocia. Además, el estudio tiene sugerencias de soluciones innovadoras e implicaciones prácticas.

The study examines how calculative practices and accountability appear in a rural community of marginalised people in Egypt who depend on jasmine plantations that contribute to the production of global essences.

The data were collected from various sources, namely conversations with villagers, documents and relevant videos and news available on social media and the Internet. This study draws on the concepts of social accountability, the politics of blame avoidance and using calculative practices as a language to explain accountability in context.

The author found a lack of accountability on the part of the government and business owners, with serious implications for the livelihoods of people in a community that has been wholly dependent on jasmine plantations for a century. Power holders have deployed a blame-shifting game to avoid social responsibility. In response, calculative practices rather than advanced accounting tools are used by the poor in the community to induce power holders to be accountable.

The findings of this study show that authorities need to take proactive steps to address the disadvantaged position of powerless people in the lower echelons of society, recognising their accountability for those people.

This paper enhances the understanding of the status of calculative practices and accountability in a community of marginalised people who contribute to the production of global commodities. The paper also enhances the understanding of what goes on behind the scenes with popular and prestigious commodities, whose development is initiated in poor countries, with the end product marketed in rich Western countries.