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The purpose of this paper is to explore how consumers’ reactions lead to anti-consumption (AC) behavior and provide some important clues for the practitioners in the Turkish food industry. The reactions are based on consumer complaining behavior in the Turkish food industry.

In total, 16 brands from the food industry with the highest complaint rates were selected as cases of the study. The consumer complaints from these brands were analyzed through a qualitative content analysis. In this analysis, four categories which are beverage group, food preparation group, junk food group, and delicatessen group were observed as the top complained sectors.

The authors made up five semantic categories and one emoticon category which are AC/boycott tendency discourse, bad hygiene, bad servicescape, deceptive advertisement and defective products based on consumer complaints and disappointed, astonished, devil, pouting, confounded, angel. The results imply that especially unfamiliar objects in food products, unconcerned customer services, deceptive campaigns and spoiled products make consumers exhibit AC behavior. In addition, consumers coded with emoticons as pouting, devil and disappointed are more inclined than others to stop purchasing, respectively.

Due to the qualitative nature of the study, the authors do not make a generalization for the field. AC behavior, deceptive campaign, spoiled products, brand lose confidence and children sensitivity can be investigated with a quantitative study. And a new scale for this field can be developed. Through this scale development, researchers can reach new dimensions and expand the literature about the AC behaviors.

An important implication which the authors got from the cases of the study is Hygiene. Although all cases have hygiene standards such as hazard analysis and critical control point, International Organization for Standardization (ISO 9001), etc., BH and spoiled products codes have high ranks among the cases. Due to this reason, companies should pay attention to their hygiene standards and increase the control period of the production process. Through the empowerment of the hygiene standards, they can fix their bad image on the customers and increase their dependability among the consumers.

In the context of this case study, customer service emerges as an important problem and concept. Insufficient customer service infrastructure should be developed and their institutionalization processes should be empowered by the firms. The authors believe that the deficiency of the institutionalization plays an important role on these problems. And the institutionalization level on the field among the cases of the firms particularly should be investigated by the researchers. Furthermore, companies can increase their complaint management efficiency by joining new complaint websites. Through this manner, they can learn how to deal with different problems and increase their problem-solving skills.

This study provides a comprehensive insight into consumers’ AC behavior. It reveals detailed drivers which may lead to AC behavior and contributes to the existing literature by determining the possible antecedents of AC behavior.

This study aims to reveal Türkiye's place on the global cultural map through eight dimensions compared to other countries with the help of these two subresearch questions: “Where is Türkiye positioned on Meyer's map, and how is the positioning when country groups are taken into account?”.

This issue is considered necessary regarding the country’s business culture, which is an emerging market. For this, 17 senior executives engaged in international trade activities were selected as cases. The eight dimensions of Erin Meyer’s culture map were analyzed by considering the interview data obtained from the executives.

As a result of the analysis, it was determined that Türkiye is in a position that can be called an east–west synthesis in terms of culture, even though it is geographically evaluated within MENA and that it is located close to the middle of the continuum axis on the basis of almost all dimensions. However, the three dimensions out of eight – communication, deciding and trusting – are relatively far from the middle. The authors believe that this situation is closely related to Türkiye’s unique historical characteristics.

The placement of the nations on a cultural map may be useful for practitioners. By looking at the relative position on this map and taking it into consideration while building connections and negotiating, for instance, businesses and policymakers who wish to enhance their ties with Türkiye can be aware of the distinctions between their own countries and Türkiye. The inhibiting nature of qualitative research prevents generalization; however, much bigger data set may be used for a comparable approach. Further research can be done to solve this issue because the cases under examination do not permit comparisons specific to the American continent.

The theoretical contribution of this study lies in its focused revelation of Turkey’s cultural positioning within the context of emerging markets. Positioning the countries on the cultural map can provide some convenience to the practitioners. Türkiye is a crucial clustering center when global production is considered. This opens the country to contact other cultures and enables intercultural transfer and learning.

This study aims to reveal consumer perceptions towards organic food, particularly emphasizing the confusion and vagueness in the public eye.

In total, 21 well-educated and relatively high-income consumers were selected as cases of the study. The knowledge about the organic food concept and organic food preferences were analyzed through the grounded theory analysis. In this analysis, ten categories which are shopping from the close circle, the product information attitude, do it yourself (DIY), true and false facts and dilemmas, information sources, the most preferred organic products, perception of organic food indicator, market place trends, organic food orientation reasons, and attitude toward the organic products/producers were detected as the main issues.

The authors chose the cases from well-educated people who have a relatively high income, and it is seen that the knowledge levels of consumers are low regarding organic foods. This low-level knowledge becomes apparent in confused and erroneous answers and actions. The confusion over the organic food concept and the institutional image appear as two main findings of the study. The authors named this false fact as organic confusion and dilemmas in this analysis. According to the study’s results, there is a considerable amount of confusion over healthy and natural food contexts.

This study aims to bring a comprehensive delineation to the general perception of the organic food concept in society. And it reveals a detailed feedback for the institutions and companies on how to solve organic food problems such as confusion, institutional image problem, and false facts. Although organic product knowledge is shown as a critical factor in many studies in the literature, the number of studies that examine this situation in depth is insufficient.