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1 – 9 of 9Hamidreza Roohafza, Awat Feizi, Shahnaz Amani Tirani, Masoumeh Sadeghi and Nizal Sarrafzadegan
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the association of empirically derived dietary patterns with hypertension and hyperlipidemia among a large sample of Iranian industrial…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the association of empirically derived dietary patterns with hypertension and hyperlipidemia among a large sample of Iranian industrial employees.
Design/methodology/approach
This cross-sectional study was done under the framework of Epidemiological Survey of Chronic Diseases on Manufacturing Employees. Major dietary patterns were derived based on a validated short form of food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) using exploratory factor analysis. Self-administered validated questionnaires were used to collect data on socio-demographic and job-related variables of participants. Multivariable logistic regression was applied for association analyses.
Findings
Higher levels of Western dietary pattern increased significantly the risk of hypertension (odds ratio [OR] = 1.85, 95% CI [1.36-2.53], P trend <0.001) and hyperlipidemia (OR = 1.45, 95% CI [1.16-1.81], p = 0.001) even after controlling for confounding variables. The traditional dietary pattern was marginally associated with a significant increase in risk of hyperlipidemia ( = 1.14, 95% CI [0.92-1.41], p = 0.084) in the fully adjusted model. However, higher levels of healthy dietary pattern were significantly associated with a decreased risk of hyperlipidemia in the final model (OR 0.80, 95% CI [0.64-0.90], p = 0.025).
Originality/value
To the authors’ knowledge, an association analysis between dietary patterns and major cardiovascular disease risk in workforce population over the world is scarce and has not yet been conducted among Iranian industrial employees. This study’s findings are especially relevant for the industrial workforce population because they are at high risk of other job-related risks that increase the CVD risk.
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Fatemeh Nouri, Fahimeh Haghighatdoost, Noushin Mohammadifard, Marjan Mansourian, Masoumeh Sadeghi, Hamidreza Roohafza, Azam Khani and Nizal Sarrafzadegan
The associations between legume consumption and cardiovascular events (CVEs) have extensively been studied. However, there are few studies that considered longitudinal association…
Abstract
Purpose
The associations between legume consumption and cardiovascular events (CVEs) have extensively been studied. However, there are few studies that considered longitudinal association between legume consumption (with repeated measurements across time) and CVEs in low-income countries where legume consumption is lower than the Western countries. The authors aimed to investigate the long-term longitudinal relationship between soybean, non-soybean and overall legume consumption and CVEs using repeated measures of legumes and time-varying confounders in a cohort study of the general population.
Design/methodology/approach
The current study was performed within the framework of the Isfahan cohort study among 5,432 healthy participants. The participants were followed-up for fatal and non-fatal myocardial infarction, unstable angina, fatal and non-fatal stroke and sudden cardiac death for 13 years. Dietary intake was evaluated using a validated food frequency questionnaire in 2001, 2007 and 2013. The hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for CVEs between categories of soybean, non-soybean and overall legumes intake were examined using marginal Cox's regression analysis.
Findings
Long-term consumptions of overall legumes more than three times per week and non-soybean three times or more per week compared with those who had less than once a week were associated with 19.5% (HR = 0.805, 95% CI: 0.650,0.998; p < 0.048) and a 18.5% (HR = 0.815, 95% CI: 0.673, 0.988; p < 0.037) lower risk of CVEs in the general population, respectively. However, our findings revealed no significant reduction in CVEs following a higher intake of soybeans.
Originality/value
In the long run, even modest consumption of legumes, but not soybeans alone, can be effective to reduce CVEs risk in a low-income population. Further studies are warranted to confirm our results in other populations, examine the associations by the type of cardiovascular events and determine any possible threshold effects in this regard.
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Mona Jami Pour, Sahar Sadeghi and Elahe Yahyaei
Advergame as a new approach in advertising has recently attracted the attention of many researchers and practitioners. Despite the growing investment, managers still do not have a…
Abstract
Purpose
Advergame as a new approach in advertising has recently attracted the attention of many researchers and practitioners. Despite the growing investment, managers still do not have a comprehensive understanding of the success factors of advergames. To the authors’ knowledge, there are no studies that address success factors in advergames. The purpose of this paper is to comprehensively explore the success factors of advergames to enhance the markets' insight regarding the implementation of advergames.
Design/methodology/approach
This study investigates the success factors of advergames implementation using the mixed-method approach. For this purpose, along with a literature review, some semistructured interviews with experts were conducted and the obtained data were analyzed using the thematic analysis. Then a survey was conducted to validate the extracted factors and criteria. The quantitative data were analyzed by Student t-test and factor analysis.
Findings
The results indicated that the main success factors of advergames are game design factors, brand/product-related factors, players' personality-related factors and technical factors. The rank orders of the mentioned factors and their subcriteria were identified using their respective variance.
Practical implications
In advergame initiatives, technical issues must be considered along with game design factors, brand/product-related factors and players' personality-related factors simultaneously. The findings can assist managers to understand all aspects of advergames adaptation and assess the weaknesses and strengths of adervgame projects.
Originality/value
Although the intersection between digital games and advertising has had a growing trend in both practical and academic contexts, there are few studies on what factors must be considered during advergames development and implementation. The main contribution of this study is to explore the important aspects of advergames success and their priorities. The findings provide a comprehensive insight on the interdisciplinary aspects of advergames.
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Mohammad Talari and Mina Khoshroo
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of industry competitive intensity (ICI) on brand performance with the mediating role of market orientation and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of industry competitive intensity (ICI) on brand performance with the mediating role of market orientation and organizational learning using theoretical and experimental materials in fast-moving consumer goods (FMCGs) firms.
Design/methodology/approach
To test the research hypotheses, a model was designed and tested on 124 chief executive officers from 30 FMCG firms active in both food and chemical industries using structural equation modeling and partial least squares methodology.
Findings
The research findings showed that ICI has significant effect on market orientation and organizational learning. It also has significant effect on the firm’s brand performance through developing the market orientation capability as a mediating variable, but the development of organizational learning capability (as a mediating variable) is not effective in the relationship between ICI and brand performance.
Originality/value
Since the early 1990s, addressing intraorganizational capabilities and resources has been a major topic of strategic and marketing research. In this regard, many theoretical and experimental contents have been presented so far. However, little research has simultaneously addressed the industrial environment and the development of competitive capabilities. A manager’s understanding of the competition rate of an industry has the potential to influence the development of organizational capabilities through strategic responsiveness to his/her perception of the environment. This study attempts to show that managers and firms that consider their industrial environment to be volatile must develop their learning capabilities and market orientation, leading to superior brand performance.
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Masoumeh Simbar, Zeinab Aarabi, Zohreh Keshavarz, Fahimeh Ramezani-Tehrani and Ahmad Reza Baghestani
Insufficient physical activity leads to an increase in chronic diseases. Skills-based health education methods are supposed to be more successful than traditional methods to…
Abstract
Purpose
Insufficient physical activity leads to an increase in chronic diseases. Skills-based health education methods are supposed to be more successful than traditional methods to promote healthy behaviors. Skills-based health education is an approach to create healthy lifestyles and skills using participatory methods. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of skill-based education method on physical activities of female adolescents.
Design/methodology/approach
This was an experimental study on 80 female public high school students aged 12-14 years old in Tehran. The participants were randomly divided into two groups: experimental group of 40 girls who were educated using “Skills-based education method,” and control group of 40 girls who were educated by lecture as a routine educational method for health promotion. Data were collected using a valid and reliable questionnaire to assess physical activity-related knowledge, attitudes and behavior. Data were gathered three times; before, immediately after (Phase 1) and two months after educational intervention (Phase 2). Data analysis was performed using SPSS 20.
Findings
Intra-group comparison demonstrated that both educational methods can increase knowledge, attitude and behavior of the students after intervention comparing to before intervention (RMANOVA; p<0.05). However, the comparison between groups demonstrated a significant higher increase of knowledge (t-test; p<0.01 and p<0.0; phase 1 and 2, respectively), and behavior (t-test; p<0.01 and p=0.002; phase 1 and 2, respectively) but not attitude (p=0.083 and p=0.125, phase 1 and 2, respectively) among the students participated in the experimental “skilled based health education” group rather than the control “lecture” group.
Originality/value
Skill-based health education comparing to routine lecture-based education creates deep and long lasting knowledge and behavior and is highly recommended for promoting physical activity and other health-related knowledge and among adolescents.
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Sanaz Kargaran, Masoumeh Hosseinzadeh Shahri, Zahra Ghorbani, Ali Saberi, Seyedh Mahboobeh Jamali and Nader Aleebrahim
Today social media capabilities have enabled businesses and enterprises to more collaboration, engagement and co-creation with their customers. So the current paper expands on…
Abstract
Purpose
Today social media capabilities have enabled businesses and enterprises to more collaboration, engagement and co-creation with their customers. So the current paper expands on this notion. The aim of this study is a bibliometric analysis to examine the trends of publications in the field of co-creation based on social media.
Design/methodology/approach
To data collection of quantitative analysis, Scopus database was selected and the collected data were analyzed using Bibliometrix-package. The Web of Science also was selected to retrieve highly cited and hot papers for qualitative part of analysis besides top 10 Scopus highest citation per year documents on June 6, 2020.
Findings
The results indicate insights into research trends pertaining to social media-based co-creation, as follows: starting jump to the publications occurred in this researches from the year 2008 and the growth trend is progressing in recent years; the stressful points are “co-design,” “co-creation” and “value co-creation” and concepts such as “open innovation,” “co-innovation” and “co-new product design” are new topics that guide future direction; the USA and UK are leaders in number of multiple and single publications; the most active and top journals that are better suited to achieving a high citation rate per year for a related paper were introduced. In addition, the top documents and highly cited papers were qualitatively analyzed on the basis of times cited per year.
Research limitations/implications
The current study is not free of limitations. The database was limited to only Scopus. So the patterns and trends generated in the study may not be generalized to all social media-based co-creation research. Of course, the authors did not intend to ignore other contributions. It is mainly because of the number of documents retrieved from Scopus database and the coverage, Scopus was selected. Moreover, other types of research techniques such as correspondence analysis can be incorporated to generate additional meaningful insight.
Originality/value
In this time of social media and user-generated content portals, co-creation through social media has become quite popular. So the main innovation of this study is providing a visual presentation of the trends and patterns in the evaluation of social media-based co-creation from the first document about the research area published till 2020. The results of this paper can shed light on the factors that strengthen the contribution of studies in a research area. Generally, the bibliometric items the authors analyzed essentially show the entire field picture and guide researchers toward understanding future trends to produce impactful studies.
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Mona Jami Pour, Mahnaz Hosseinzadeh and Hannan Amoozad Mahdiraji
Today, social media is counted as an integral part of marketing strategies, which has led to a paradigm change in this field. As reported, social media marketing has been growing…
Abstract
Purpose
Today, social media is counted as an integral part of marketing strategies, which has led to a paradigm change in this field. As reported, social media marketing has been growing over the recent five years and is predicted to be exponentially growing in the future. However, despite the huge promise and intention to adopt social media marketing strategies by organisations, there remain challenges regarding the successful implementation of these new marketing programmes. Accordingly, marketing managers’ awareness of the success factors of social media marketing is essential to return investment in this area. Due to the little research been accomplished in this field, this paper aims to identify the success factors of social networks’ marketing and to rank the factors by using of interval best-worst method (BWM).
Design/methodology/approach
To serve the research aims, an extant literature review is accomplished and a focus group approach is conducted to identify the main success factors and sub-factors. To analyse the focus group discussions, a qualitative content analysis approach is applied. Interval BWM is used to calculate the weights of each identified factor.
Findings
In the final framework, six main success criteria, including strategy, process, technology, content, performance evaluation and people are identified, for each sub-criteria are developed. The interval BWM results suggest the content criterion as the most important success factor in developing a social media marketing strategy.
Research limitations/implications
First, this research provides a comprehensive insight into the success factors and best practices of social media marketing. This is the first to draw on the critical factors affecting the success of social media marketing, considering people in the organisation such as top management, employees and customers, strategy, process and performance evaluation focussing on the change management requirements for applying social media marketing and technology as the technical factor of the adoption process, simultaneously. Identifying critical success factors of social media marketing will help marketing managers to avoid falling into the trap of developing social media strategies based on less important areas and ignoring the critical ones. Besides, owing to the limited resources of organisations in implementing social media marketing strategies, prioritising and weighing the success factors will lead to a focus on more important areas.
Originality/value
Whilst the related studies have mostly concentrated on the capabilities and activities required to conduct social media marketing and the few research investigated the critical success factors most concentrated on the customer and the content-related factors, the finding of this research goes beyond that and suggests technical, process and human aspects simultaneously in the implementation process in a holistic view.
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Mona Jami Pour, Zohre Kazemi and Hossein Moeini
Advergames have attracted the attention of scholars and practitioners as a new way of increasing customer engagement and advertising effectiveness. Gamified ads provide an…
Abstract
Purpose
Advergames have attracted the attention of scholars and practitioners as a new way of increasing customer engagement and advertising effectiveness. Gamified ads provide an exciting and persuasive environment for customers rather than non-gamified advertisements. Despite the growing spending on advergames projects, the understanding of customer attitude regarding advergames has received less attention and there are not enough studies about advergames. Therefore, the purpose of the current study is to design a novel TAM-based model of determinants of customer attitudes toward advergames to enhance customer engagement and purchase intention.
Design/methodology/approach
To obtain this end, the mixed method was applied. In the first step, the main determinants of customer attitude towards advergames were identified by a literature review as well as semi-structured interviews. In the second step, the proposed technology acceptance model (TAM)-based model was validated by survey method through players of advergames. A total of 15 interviews were conducted in the qualitative phase and 102 completed questionnaires were analyzed in the survey method.
Findings
The results of the qualitative approach indicate that the main determinants of attitude towards advertisements can be classified into three categories, which are added to TAM as external variables. The results of the survey approach reveal that advertising content and game-related factors have a significant positive effect on perceived ease of use (PEOU). The advertising content and player-related factors also significantly affect perceived usefulness (PU). PU and PEOU also positively and significantly affect customer attitude. The findings show that the new TAM-based model can be considered as a robust model for explaining customer attitude toward advergame acceptance.
Research limitations/implications
The research findings can assist digital marketers to have a big picture of customer attitudes regarding advergames and implement these innovative digital-enabled advertising strategies successfully. The findings further suggest considering marketing/advertising aspects and game-related aspects as well as individual factors to design advergames.
Originality/value
Advergames have become one of the priorities for digital marketers to enhance brand awareness and customer engagement, yet there is no study identifying determinants of attitude by considering multi-aspects of advergames. The most important theoretical contribution of the current study is to design a new extended TAM-based model which integrates behavioral variables (PEOU and PU) with factors related to the advergames context.
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Mona Jami Pour, Javad Mesrabadi and Mahnaz Hosseinzadeh
Today, the high cost of e-learning systems’ implementation and the difficulty of managing the infrastructures motivate educational institutions toward application of cloud-based…
Abstract
Purpose
Today, the high cost of e-learning systems’ implementation and the difficulty of managing the infrastructures motivate educational institutions toward application of cloud-based e-learning systems. This new system should be aligned with the academics’ aims and pedagogical principles to be beneficial for learners and instructors. Therefore, the vendor selection of learning systems is one of the most important processes to migrate toward cloud-based e-learning. The purpose of this paper is to develop a new framework to facilitate the vendor selection of cloud-based e-learning systems in the cloud market.
Design/methodology/approach
To identify the initial criteria as to the vendor selection of cloud-based e-learning services, a literature review is done. To enrich the initial criteria, a focus group of experts is investigated, and the framework developed; then, a survey analysis is conducted to validate the proposed framework. The extracted criteria and sub-criteria are weighted and prioritized using best-worst method (BWM).
Findings
The results indicate that the main dimensions of vendor selection framework as regards cloud-based e-learning systems are managerial, technological and pedagogical factors. The rank orders and weights of the mentioned aspects and their sub-criteria are calculated using the BWM.
Practical implications
The proposed framework helps managers to get a big picture of requirements as to cloud-based e-learning and more effectively to select appropriate vendors in this initiative. In the vendor selection process, managers must pay attention to technological issues as well as managerial and pedagogical considerations.
Originality/value
Cloud-based e-learning systems are getting increasingly essential to offer training courses more efficiently in educational institutions. Although the intersection between cloud computing and e-learning has increasingly grown in both practical and academic contexts, there are little studies on how educational institutions and organizations could be able to select appropriate cloud-based e-learning systems. This paper explores the ignored but critically important subject of cloud-based e-learning. The main contribution of this paper is to propose a novel and integrated framework containing the important aspects of vendor selection in cloud-based e-learning services. The proposed framework comprises managerial, technological and pedagogical aspects simultaneously as well as sub-criteria denoting each aspect.
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