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The purpose of this paper is to examine the association of various family factors with children’s fruit and vegetable (FV) intake.

A cross-sectional analysis of data from 601 parent-child dyads with children aged three to six years old was conducted. Parents completed questionnaires on child’s FV intake, parenting styles, parental feeding practices, family functioning, television viewing at mealtimes and frequency of family meals. Logistic regression was used to assess the association between various family factors and the likelihood of meeting the child’s daily FV recommendation with adjustment for different demographic variables.

Multivariate model adjusting for sociodemographic data indicated that meeting vegetable recommendation was associated with lower frequency of dining with grandparents (Odds ratio (OR) 0.94, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.89–0.99, p=0.031) and positively associated with parents using more desirable parental feeding practices (OR 1.15, 95% CI 1.09–1.21, p<0.001). Meeting fruit recommendation was associated with parents using more desirable parental feeding practices (OR 1.13, 95% CI 1.09–1.17, p<0.001), higher frequency of dining with grandparents (OR 1.05, 95% CI 1.00–1.10, p=0.041), lower frequency of dining with father (OR 0.89, 95% CI 0.82–0.98, p=0.014) and higher score on authoritative parenting style (OR 1.05, 95% CI 1.01–1.08, p=0.009).

This study highlights the potential protective roles of various family factors, in particular authoritative parenting style and parental feeding practices, such as role modeling, moderate restrictive practices for less healthy foods, avoidance of forced feeding, and not using junk food as reward in relation to meeting FV recommendation in children. The role of grandparents in influencing the young children’s eating behaviors within the Chinese family warrants further investigation.

This study empirically investigates the influence of students' brand attitudes and perceptions of brand fit on their study intention vis-à-vis international brand alliances and individual brands after alliance.

Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used in data analysis, and a questionnaire was administered to a sample of sub-degree business management students recruited from a self-financing higher education institution in Hong Kong.

The results indicate that students' prior attitudes towards the brands of foreign and local institutions and their perceptions of brand fit positively affect their study intention, providing evidence that post-attitudes towards individual brands fully mediate the relationship between attitudes towards international brand alliances and study intention towards individual institutions.

International brand alliances between higher education institutions are becoming increasingly important. In Hong Kong, despite the emerging trend of collaboration between foreign and local universities, an evaluation of the effect of international brand alliances on study intention has been seriously overlooked.

Brands increasingly coappear in television programs while research in product placement has primarily focused on the placements of a single brand. Building on research related to product placement and cobranding, this study aims to systematically examine the roles of product competitiveness and brand competitiveness on the effectiveness of brand coappearance on television programs.

Extensive pretesting and four experimental studies were conducted. Real stimuli that had been digitally manipulated with fictitious brands were used in Study 1 (laboratory experiment involved student samples) and Study 2 (online experiment with a national sample) to examine the short- and long-term impacts of product competitiveness on brand coappearance. Real stimuli incorporated actual brands were used in Study 3 (involved advertisers’ key demographic) and Study 4 (alterative television program with a national sample) to examine the impacts of brand competitiveness and its interaction effect with product competitiveness.

The study found that coappearing with a product of high competitiveness significantly enhanced attitudes and purchase intention toward the coappearing products both in the short and long term. Product competitiveness further interacts with brand competitiveness to influence attitudes and purchase intention toward the coappearing brands suggesting a coopetition pattern for brand coappearances. The effect of brand coappearances did not vary substantially for low or high involvement products with or without character interaction.

The study develops a useful framework for explaining and understanding the potential spillover effects in brand coappearances. It contributes to the existing literature on product placement and cobranding, while also paving the way for future research opportunities.

When introducing new brands, marketers are advised to consider coappearance deals with more competitive brands in highly competitive product categories. Conversely, coappearance deals with less competitive brands in less competitive product categories should be adopted to promote well-known brands. Advertisers may also consider product or brand exclusivity arrangements with broadcasters to enhance the effectiveness of the product placement.

Although brand coappearance in media content is likely to continue to proliferate, little is known about the phenomenon and its effects. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to systematically examine the perceptions toward brands coappeared in television programs.

This study aims to examine the effects of three green information quality dimensions – persuasiveness, completeness and credibility – on green brand evaluation and whether this is mediated by green brand credibility. It also examines the moderating effects of eco-label credibility and consumer knowledge on green information quality dimensions and green brand credibility relationships.

Using a structured questionnaire on environmentally-friendly electrical goods/electronics, cosmetic and apparel product advertisements, involving an elaboration task, this study collected usable data from 1,282 Indian consumers across 50 cities. It also undertook an assessment for three different product groups using structural equation modelling to examine proposed hypotheses and assessed moderated mediation using the Hays process model.

The study indicates that: green brand credibility mediates the effects of green information quality dimensions on green brand evaluation; consumer knowledge moderates the effects of persuasiveness and completeness on green brand credibility and eco-label credibility moderates the effects of persuasiveness and credibility on green brand credibility.

In green information processing, this study supports the relevance of the elaboration likelihood model and the mediation effect of green brand credibility. It also presents evidence that credible eco-labels enhance green information processing. While the results are broadly consistent across the three product categories, the results may only generalizable to the environmentally-aware urban populations.

Help brand managers to design advertisements that add brand credibility in environmentally-aware urban markets.

It helps to define green information quality and the interacting effects of eco-label credibility and consumer knowledge in green information processing.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact that occupational stereotypes held by customers have on value co-creation processes in human-centered service systems (HCSSs) like hospitals. Specifically, by exploring if and how customers’ (i.e. patients’) stereotypes toward frontline employees (e.g. nurses) affect their satisfaction as co-creators of value, this study responds to current service research priorities attempting to understand value co-creation in collaborative contexts like healthcare, and addresses calls to investigate the changing role of health care customers therein.

A field study was conducted in the context of German hospitals, which provides unique empirical evidence into the relationship between patients’ stereotypes toward healthcare professionals and their satisfaction with health services as well as the mediating mechanisms through which such stereotypes affect patient satisfaction.

Negative (positive) stereotypes patients hold toward healthcare occupations decrease (increase) their satisfaction and are associated with perceptions of reduced (improved) patient orientation and patient participation in co-creation. However, only perceived patient orientation partially mediates the link between occupational stereotypes and patient satisfaction.

This study develops and tests new hypotheses related to occupational stereotyping in complex HCSSs, and extends previous research on stereotypes in service by exploring the previously unknown mediating mechanisms through which these impact value co-creation processes overall. It furthermore provides important guidance for future research about stereotyping in general, and its impact on value co-creation and HCSS, in particular.

Consumer researchers have studied a number of asymmetries between gift-givers and gift-recipients. However, one unexplored potential asymmetry concerns gift-givers’ and gift-recipients’ perceptions of the importance of selecting a good (vs. bad) gift. This paper aims to study this uninvestigated facet of gift-giving.

Five experimental studies tested the hypotheses. In each study, participants assumed the role of giver or recipient and read a gifting scenario. Study 1 explored participants’ views on the importance of selecting a good gift by asking them directly. Studies 2-4 instead operationalized the importance of selecting a good gift through participants’ choices between gifts. Studies 1-4 also examined our proposed mechanism pertaining to givers overestimating the negative implications of giving a bad gift. Study 5 examined a theoretically relevant boundary condition: the nature of the giver-recipient relationship.

Givers regard it as more important than recipients that a good gift be selected. Critically, this mismatch can manifest as givers making choices that do not align with recipients’ preferences. Drawing on contextualized self-enhancement theory, this study shows that this asymmetry is driven primarily by givers overestimating the negative implications of giving a bad gift as opposed to overestimating the positive implications of giving a good one. Consistent with this account, the effect attenuates when the giver and recipient have a negative (vs positive) relationship and thus givers are not concerned with the negative implications of giving a poor gift.

The findings enrich the field’s understanding of gift-giving psychology by introducing contextualized self-enhancement theory to the gift-giving literature and demonstrating that givers worry more than they should about the negative implications of giving a bad gift. This study also sheds light on the important role that the nature of the giver–recipient relationship plays in gift-giving phenomena. Limitations of this work are that there are some potential boundary conditions and control variables that the authors did not explore, such as potential cultural differences and the income levels of the giver and recipient.

This research suggests that gift-givers should not worry as much as they do about the negative implications of giving a bad gift. In many cases, things may not turn out as bad as givers anticipate when they deliver a less-than-ideal gift. This study also shows that givers sometimes make choices that do not match recipients’ preferences, out of a fear of the negative implications that may arise from giving a bad gift.

This research adds to the gift-giving literature by studying a new facet of gift-giving: whether it is more important to givers or recipients that a good gift be selected. In addition, this work introduces contextualized self-enhancement theory to the gift-giving literature and documents two new asymmetries between givers and recipients: first, givers put more importance on the selection of a good gift than recipients; second, givers overestimate the negative implications of giving a bad gift.

This study investigates how actual donations towards social causes within fashion supply chains can be increased in the face of negative country-of-origin effects.

Literature reports a lack of sustained consumer support for social causes within fashion supply chains. Driven by perceived psychological distance between the manufacturer and the fashion consumer, negative country-of-origin effects have an impact on donation behaviour. Using two online experiments, this study shows that including a garment worker’s image in swing tags mitigates negative country-of-origin effects on actual donations.

Fashion consumers’ actual donations towards worker rights increased with the presence of a garment worker’s image. In the higher psychological distance condition, exposure to the image reduced negative country-of-origin effects, increasing actual donations. This increase in actual donations is driven by pleasure-seeking, thus indicating that consumer support for social causes within fashion supply chains is underlined by hedonism.

This study focuses on a visual cue-based mechanism of promoting actual donations towards social causes and the role of pleasure-seeking in this process – two previously under-explored areas in the fashion marketing literature. The use of an incentive-compatible measure that required participants to donate real money allows the demonstration of actual donation behaviour, providing robust evidence of the impact of visual cues and their potential to be applied in the real-world.

This paper aims to present a supply chain performance assessment tool that measures the performance of key supply chain activities of a firm under different performance dimensions.

The tool was developed based on an extensive literature review. The nine key internal supply chain activities, as proposed by Grant et al. in 2006, constituted the backbone of the assessment framework, while performance was measured based on three dimensions: cost, time, and reliability. The tool was pilot‐tested on 44 local SMEs. The results were then compared with existing performance benchmark as well as within the benchmarked group itself and a high performing Thai multinational in order to see whether the developed tool could identify performance gaps in the trial group.

The results obtained from the tool provide a description of a firm's internal supply chain activity. The utilised supply chain performance framework can isolate each individual supply chain activity. The results are therefore precise enough for firms to identify individual areas of strengths and weaknesses. The tool is relatively simple and easy to use and understand.

Limitation is related to the availability of the required assessment data. The availability of data is a reflection of systematic data collection and storage procedures of the respondent firms.

The tool was developed on clearly defined theoretical foundations. The three dimensions of cost, time and reliability can balance both financial and non‐financial characteristics of supply chain performance. The data required are simple and objective.