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Choice of weaning and infant foods was established among a group of 56 mothers resident in Edinburgh who had infants under 18 months of age. The survey looked at the use of commercial and home‐made infant foods and aimed to identify the factors which influenced the decision to use commercial or homemade foods during weaning. Results indicate that, while convenience and perceived suitability for infants are a major factor in the decision to use commercial infant foods, first or only children are much more likely to be fed commercial infant foods. Mothers who were employed outside the home did not use commercial baby foods more than mothers who were at home with their children and, although older mothers were slightly more likely to make infant foods in the home, the differences were not statistically significant. While further work is essential to establish a nationwide view, these provisional results provide further insight into factors which affect choice of infant foods.

The purpose of this paper is to explore new trends in social networking such as social tourism and determine motivations resulting in visiting others when traveling. A research model is created based on mixed-methods research approach to identify motivations that influence use and factors that result in the willingness to meet others through the social networking tourism (SNT) site.

The current research implements a mixed-methods approach using qualitative data from a questionnaire to identify motivations that were implemented in a theoretical model tested empirically using survey data. The qualitative study consisted of 11 social tourism users followed by a quantitative study using a survey that was administered to 793 social tourism users.

The results of the qualitative study identified networking, curiosity, understanding, and economic benefits as motivations for using social tourism sites. Based on validity and reliability testing, the final research model included only the motivations for networking and economic benefits. The survey results showed that trust, attitude, and use were significant antecedents to the dependent variable willingness to meet with networking and economic benefits as antecedents to attitude and use.

This is an exploratory study so there are several limitations. First, while two motivations were ultimately identified, it is possible that other motivations should be explored. Trust is also a limitation in the current research that identifies trust as an antecedent to the willingness construct without researching factors that influence trust. Further research should be conducted to expand on the current research.

While there has been significant research conducted in the area of social networking, niche areas and special purpose social networks remain unexplored. The current research explores the niche area of SNT to develop a model identifying motivations for use and also creates a new construct identified as behavioral willingness to perform an action when risk is involved. Willingness to meet others through the site and its antecedents were evaluated in the current research.

The concept of “buy now pay later” leads Malaysian Generation Y (Gen Y) to excessively use their credit cards for spending. To gauge the extent of this worrisome scenario, the purpose of this paper is to attempt to investigate the factors, including credit attitudes, knowledge on credit card, materialism, social norm and self-efficacy, that influence credit card misuse amongst Gen Y in Malaysia.

The authors have collected responses from a total of 501 respondents in two urban areas in Malaysia and estimated six multiple regression models to test five hypotheses.

The results suggest that credit card knowledge and self-efficacy are negatively related to credit card misuse amongst Gen Y in Malaysia. In contrast, positive relationships were found to exist between credit card attitudes, materialism and social norm and the dependent variable.

In this study, the authors limit the data collection to the two biggest urban areas in Malaysia, namely, Klang Valley and Ipoh.

For the regulator’s perspective, the results can be used to understand the alarming indebtedness behaviour amongst working members of Gen Y and outline appropriate and effective policies to reduce their serious indebtedness. Financial service providers, however, can collaborate with regulators to curb credit card misuse amongst Gen Y, so that the latter can avoid high bad debt from line of credit facilities and bankruptcy.

The study’s findings will further enrich the existing literature on the factors affecting the credit card misuse, especially for the unique Gen Y cohort in Malaysia.

This paper aims to examine driving retirement and its impact on the well-being of older citizens. The concepts of value creation and destruction are used to understand older consumers’ experiences with the self-service consumption activity of driving. This paper formally introduces the concept of value re-creation, as a means of restoring the overall value lost from the destruction of certain components of previous value structures. In doing so, this paper explores the different ways that resources across the micro, meso and macro levels of the ecosystem can be re-aligned, in order for older citizens to maintain their well-being after driving retirement.

A qualitative, individual-depth interview approach was undertaken with 26 participants living in New South Wales, Australia. The participants comprised of both drivers approaching driving retirement age, as well as driving retirees. Thematic analysis was undertaken to analyse the data.

The findings identified that emotional value in the forms of freedom, independence/autonomy and enjoyment, functional value in the forms of convenience and mobility and community value are created from driving. Driving retirement destroys certain components of this value (e.g. enjoyment and convenience) irrevocably, however freedom, independence/autonomy, mobility and social connectedness can still be maintained through re-aligning resources across the micro, meso and macro levels of the ecosystem. New components of value are also created from driving retirement. These include peace of mind, which contributes to the re-creation of the emotional value dimension, and cost savings, which creates the new value dimension of economic value. These changes to the value structure effectively re-create the overall value obtained by individuals when they retire from driving.

The main contribution of this work is the formal introduction of the concept of value re-creation at the overall and value dimension level, and development of a conceptual model that explains how this value re-creation can occur. The model shows the resource contributions required across all levels of the ecosystem, expanding on existing conceptualisations that have predominantly focussed on resource contributions at the individual and service levels.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a perspective on consumers and technology in a changing world using insights gained from subsistence marketplaces. Consumers in a changing world are on different parts of the economic spectrum and are also reflected in contexts of poverty that is termed subsistence marketplaces. “Data” comes from pioneering the subsistence marketplaces stream of research, education and social enterprise.

The authors study the intersection of poverty and marketplaces, beginning at the micro-level, and take a bottom-up approach to deriving implications.

The authors cover both aspects – what micro-level insights about thinking, feeling and coping mean for technology perceptions and usage in general and what specific insights are derived for designing and implementing solutions that have bearing on the use of technology. In the course of all endeavors in research, education and social enterprise, technology, particularly information and communications technology, has been central.

The authors discuss implications for research at the confluence of a variety of uncertainties inherent in the context of subsistence marketplaces, in environmental issues and climate change and in the nature and speed of technological change and progress.

In this paper, the authors discuss what subsistence marketplaces mean for consumers and technology in a changing world, lessons learned for the design and development of technological solutions, technological innovation from subsistence marketplaces and a broader discussion of the importance of bottom-up approaches to the intersection of subsistence marketplaces and technological solutions.

The authors use insights developed from pioneering the arena of subsistence marketplaces and creating synergies between research, education and social enterprise.