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Agricultural and food systems in the Mekong Region are undergoing transformations because of increasing engagement in international trade, alongside economic growth, dietary change and urbanisation. Food systems approaches are often used to understand these kinds of transformation processes, with particular strengths in linking social, economic and environmental dimensions of food at multiple scales. We argue that while the food systems approach strives to provide a comprehensive understanding of food production, consumption and environmental drivers, it is less well equipped to shed light on the role of actors, knowledge and power in transformation processes and on the divergent impacts and outcomes of these processes for different actors. We suggest that an approach that uses food systems as heuristics but complements it with attention to actors, knowledge and power improves our understanding of transformations such as those underway in the Mekong Region. The key transformations in the region include the emergence of regional food markets and vertically integrated supply chains that control increasing share of the market, increase in contract farming particularly in the peripheries of the region, replacement of crops cultivated for human consumption with corn grown for animal feed. These transformations are increasingly marginalising small-scale farmers, while at the same time, many other farmers increasingly pursue non-agricultural livelihoods. Food consumption is also changing, with integrated supply chains controlling substantial part of the mass market. Our analysis highlights that theoretical innovations grounded in political economy, agrarian change, development studies and rural livelihoods can help to increase theoretical depth of inquiries to accommodate the increasingly global dimensions of food. As a result, we map out a future research agenda to unpack the dynamic food system interactions and to unveil the social, economic and environmental impacts of these rapid transformations. We identify policy and managerial implications coupled with sustainable pathways for change.

The novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) variant of 2019 has taken more than 3.8 million lives according to the World Health Organization. To stop the spread of such a deadly and contagious disease, lockdown of varying nature was imposed worldwide. Lockdown, preventive techniques and observation of standard operating procedures (SOPs) have effectively decreased the spread of contagious diseases but have affected various businesses and industries economically. The food industry has been hit hard by different restriction parameters, due to which a disruption in food supply and demand was observed. Therefore, this study aims to study this disruption in the supply chain of processed food.

A comprehensive review was conducted on PubMed, Google Scholar, and Scopus to locate articles on processed foods, food delivery and supply chain. The selected articles were evaluated using the context analysis method.

The pandemic situation has increased the consumption and demand for processed food products from retail stores, and decreased the demand for food service products. These circumstances called for technological advancement in the field of food supply from farm to fork. This study reviews research articles, policies and secondary literature. Several advances have been made to deliver safe, nutritious and wholesome food to consumers. Block chain-based food supply chains, value stream mapping, sustainable supply chain domain and online ordering systems via mobile apps have been discussed in correspondence with information and communication technology (ICT) during COVID-19.

This study concludes that the use of advanced software and its adequate knowledge by suppliers, logistics companies and consumers have assisted in handling shocks to the global food system and provided in-time food delivery, traceability, database information and securely processed food to consumers.

This study shows the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on global food systems; disruption in food demand and supply chain is overlooked and changed; use of technological advances in food supply chain to tackle pandemic; online food ordering system gained popularity and improved technically.

1. The review highlights the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on global food systems.

2. The disruption in food demand and supply chain is overlooked and changed.

3. The use of technological advances in the food supply chain to tackle the pandemic.

4. The online food ordering system gained popularity and improved technically.

The review highlights the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on global food systems.

The disruption in food demand and supply chain is overlooked and changed.

The use of technological advances in the food supply chain to tackle the pandemic.

The online food ordering system gained popularity and improved technically.

Importance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in marketing domain is increasing immensely. The effect of CSR perception on the purchase intention differs on the basis of mediators and contexts. The objective of this study is to examine the consumer behaviour of young consumers. For this, impact of CSR perception on purchase intention, satisfaction and price fairness of Generation Z is studied.

Preliminary data analysis is run to check normality, skewness and common method bias. PLS-SEM is deployed to examine the relationships amongst the research variables. Sequential mediation through PLS bootstrapping helped in exploring new and exciting research results which are supported with literature.

The CSR perception of Generation Z does not have a direct effect on their purchase intention. Interestingly, satisfaction and price fairness fully mediate the relationship between CSR perception and purchase intentions separately, i.e. CSR perception of Generation Z influences purchase intention only through satisfaction and price fairness. Furthermore, satisfaction and price fairness are also found to sequentially mediate the relationship between CSR perception and purchase intentions.

The research will aid not only the fast-food industry but the industries that are looking to focus on what Generation Z consumers expect in emerging markets including India. Understanding consumer expectations out of CSR initiatives will help them to incorporate social considerations into their marketing strategies and increase their profitability. Generation Z is regarded as the most challenging consumer demographic to market due to their proclivity for conducting extensive research and comparison shopping before making a purchase decision. As a result, the companies that want to use CSR as a strategy may find it advantageous to investigate how marketing of their CSR initiatives will lead to competitive edge and influence purchase decisions of this generational cohort.

This study adds to the academic literature by developing and evaluating a research model for consumer responses of a very important generation cohort to CSR in an emerging economy setting. CSR activities alone may not be enough to improve purchase intention of Generation Z adults. Sequential mediation for Generation Z adults' relationship between CSR and price fairness flows through satisfaction and finally to purchase intention is interesting because it clearly establishes a link amongst belief, attitude and actions of the target audience under study in a meaningful way within the framework given by cognitive consistency theory.

This study aims to discuss Slow Food Tourism (SFT) as an ethical paradigm and important tourism microdriver to address sustainability and climate change. Its key principles are based on slow, sustainable, secure and democratic processes for SFT.

The paper draws on published research to identify ethical parameters for a slow food paradigm for tourism.

Within the context of a global, technological and rapidly changing world, SFT is a pathway to contribute to locally based agricultural and food practices for sustainable development, food security, social sustainability and community well-being. SFT visitors are active participants in ecological, cultural and heritage conservation through co-creating with local producers the sociability, enjoyment and sharing of bioregional foods in diverse ethnic and cultural spaces.

This research advocates that SFT is an important microtrend that supports a much-needed paradigm shift toward a conscious way of slow living, sustainable travel and responsible food production–consumption to help address the climate crisis and global environmental challenges in the Anthropocene.

Operational risks can cause considerable, atypical disturbances and impact food supply chain (SC) resilience. Indicatively, the COVID-19 pandemic caused significant disruptions in the UK food services as nationwide stockouts led to unprecedented discrepancies between retail and home-delivery supply capacity and demand. To this effect, this study aims to examine the emergence of digital platforms as an innovative instrument for food SC resilience in severe market disruptions.

An interpretive multiple case-study approach was used to unravel how different generations of e-commerce food service providers, i.e. established and emergent, responded to the need for more resilient operations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

SC disruption management for high-impact low-frequency events requires analysing four research elements: platformisation, structural variety, process flexibility and system resource efficiency. Established e-commerce food operators use partner onboarding and local waste valorisation to enhance resilience. Instead, emergent e-commerce food providers leverage localised rapid upscaling and product personalisation.

Digital food platforms offer a highly customisable, multisided digital marketplace wherein platform members may aggregate product offerings and customers, thus sharing value throughout the network. Platform-induced disintermediation allows bidirectional flows of data and information among SC partners, ensuring compliance and safety in the food retail sector.

The study contributes to the SC configuration and resilience literature by investigating the interrelationship among platformisation, structural variety, process flexibility and system resource efficiency for safe and resilient food provision within exogenously disrupted environments.

This paper aims to analyze different brand clarity levels (BCLs) of local, global and glocal types of brands in fast-moving consumer goods from the consumer's perspective. The study also intends to identify whether the consumer's previous experience with such brands may impact BCL.

Twenty-eight global and local brands were used to test the hypotheses by conducting a survey with 400 consumers in the emerging economy of Iran. The authors applied a quantitative technique of brand classification, previously proposed in the literature. After categorizing the brands as local, global or glocal, one-way ANOVA, Tukey post hoc and t-test analyses were performed to identify whether the different types of brands had different BCLs.

The results showed that brand clarity was significantly higher for local bands than for global or glocal brands and that it was higher for glocal bands than for global brands. Furthermore, the consumer's prior experience with a brand had no impact on BCL for different types of brands.

For global brand managers, it is essential to know that local brands in Middle Eastern emerging markets may have more brand clarity than global brands. Therefore, if global brands intend to enter these markets, adopting a glocal positioning appears to be a helpful strategy. Besides, the results suggest that managers should analyze brand categorization from the consumer's perspective, i.e. from a subjective instead of an objective perspective.

This was the first study analyzing the BCL of local, global and glocal brands and identifying significant differences in their BCL.

This paper aims at investigating the contemporary trend toward regional consumption from the perspective of consumers’ search for brand authenticity. In particular, the paper joins literature on brand authenticity from the marketing literature and literature on the local food movement to investigate consumers’ response to authenticity claims in the competition of local and global food brands.

The paper engages in a series of three experimental studies; one of which uses a Becker–DeGroot–Marschak lottery to assess individuals’ willingness to pay for authenticity claims of (non)global brands.

Findings show that authenticity perceptions lead to higher brand value independent of brand globalness; while global brands can mitigate competitive disadvantages in localized consumer markets by actively authenticating their brand image.

This paper reveals the usefulness of authentic brand positioning for global beverage brands when competing with local beverage brands to overcome the liability of globalness. To sustainably benefit from the local food movement, local brands thus will require to build up brand images beyond associations of mere authenticity.

The purpose of this paper is to review the food supply chain management (FSCM) in terms of systems and implementations so that observations and lessons from this research could be useful for academia and industrial practitioners in the future.

A systematical and hierarchical framework is proposed in this paper to review the literature. Categorizations and classifications are identified to organize this paper.

This paper reviews total 192 articles related to the data-driven systems for FSCM. Currently, there is a dramatic increase of research papers related to this topic. Looking at the general interests on FSCM, research on this topic can be expected to increase in the future.

This paper only selected limited number of papers which are published in leading journals or with high citations. For simplicity without generality, key findings and observations are significant from this research.

Some ideas from this paper could be expanded into other possible domains so that involved parties are able to be inspired for enriching the FSCM. Future implementations are useful for practitioners to conduct IT-based solutions for FSCM.

As the increasing of digital devices in FSCM, large number of data will be used for decision-makings. Data-driven systems for FSCM will be the future for a more sustainable food supply chain.

This is the first attempt to provide a comprehensive review on FSCM from the view of data-driven IT systems.

As stated in the United Nations Global Assessment Report 2022 Concept Note, decision-makers everywhere need data and statistics that are accurate, timely, sufficiently disaggregated, relevant, accessible and easy to use. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate scalable and replicable methods to advance and integrate the use of earth observation (EO), specifically ongoing efforts within the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Work Programme and the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) Work Plan, to support risk-informed decision-making, based on documented national and subnational needs and requirements.

Promotion of open data sharing and geospatial technology solutions at national and subnational scales encourages the accelerated implementation of successful EO applications. These solutions may also be linked to specific Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) 2015–2030 Global Targets that provide trusted answers to risk-oriented decision frameworks, as well as critical synergies between the Sendai Framework and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This paper provides examples of these efforts in the form of platforms and knowledge hubs that leverage latest developments in analysis ready data and support evidence-based DRR measures.

The climate crisis is forcing countries to face unprecedented frequency and severity of disasters. At the same time, there are growing demands to respond to policy at the national and international level. EOs offer insights and intelligence for evidence-based policy development and decision-making to support key aspects of the Sendai Framework. The GEO DRR Working Group and CEOS Working Group Disasters are ideally placed to help national government agencies, particularly national Sendai focal points to learn more about EOs and understand their role in supporting DRR.

The unique perspective of EOs provide unrealized value to decision-makers addressing DRR. This paper highlights tangible methods and practices that leverage free and open source EO insights that can benefit all DRR practitioners.

Intermediate short food supply chains (SFSC) have been presented as a possible solution to unsustainable global food supply chains. There is currently a knowledge gap about intermediate SFSC. Thus, this review synthesizes the available literature to identify prominent themes and their main considerations.

This research is based on a systematic literature review including peer-reviewed journal articles until December 2021. Inductive data coding resulted in the identification of four themes related to intermediate SFSC.

The identified themes illustrate the complex landscape intermediate SFSCs operate in and focus on the key relationships within these supply chains. The established relationships have implications for the governance of intermediate SFSCs. The organization of intermediate SFSCs affects numerous sustainability indicators.

Future research should focus on the position intermediate SFSCs have in food systems and the roles intermediaries have in intermediate SFSCs. There is furthermore an opportunity for researchers to investigate different types of intermediaries and explore the factors influencing them.

Creating sustainable food supply chains is one of the major societal challenges of today. The current state of the art suggests that intermediate SFSCs could play an important role in achieving this. So far, this area is underdeveloped and this review highlights knowledge gaps in the literature and suggestions for a future research agenda are proposed.