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Rapid globalization has continually promoted integration between different cultures. This study attempts to examine responses toward culture mixing based on spatial metaphor theory. Specifically, it focuses on power relationships to explore the impact of space image schemas on consumer attitudes. The boundary conditions of this effect, the significance of cultural symbols and the dominance trait are also analyzed.

Three experiments are conducted, and 567 participants are involved in this research. The data are analyzed using ANOVA and Process 213.

The results show that the relative vertical positions of cultural symbols significantly impact consumer attitudes toward culture mixing, and demonstrate that perceived cultural threat enhances ethnocentric tendencies. The data also indicate that individuals only express their distinct attitudes toward culture mixing when significant cultural symbols are presented, and only high-dominance individuals, who prefer to link vertical spatial metaphor with power relationships, are sensitive to vertical spatial metaphor.

This research highlights the underlying mechanism, encouraging ethnocentric tendencies among the young population in China. It extends work on the use of metaphorical concepts and contributes to the increasing literature on power in consumer behavior. Additionally, it generates useful suggestions for multinational entrepreneurs who want to facilitate symbolic localization.

The current work aims to present a review of academic literature that systematizes the body of knowledge related to marketing and consumer behavior in order to identify the most effective variables that encourage the consumer towards a proper and better lifestyle, accordingly the paradigm of management, marketing and technology efforts to promote a “better” society preventing obesity.

A literature review was carried out to examine the studies of marketing and consumer behavior published in international peer-reviewed journals over the last twenty-three years (2000–2023). Our review finally considered a total amount of 46 articles.

Findings elucidate three overarching themes and associated sub-hemes, encompassing: (1) Product design for obesity prevention, including aspects such as labeling, nomenclature, packaging and assortment; (2) Technology-supported preventive measures, involving mobile applications, self-monitoring, short message services and digital therapeutics; and (3) Marketing and communication strategies, incorporating social advertising, nudge, social influence and initiatives targeting childhood obesity prevention. Furthermore, a comprehensive research agenda is presented, delineating potential avenues for future investigations predicated on the utility of the results in fostering subsequent endeavors within the realms of: efficacy and effectiveness studies; personalization and tailoring; behavioral change techniques and gamification; user experience and acceptance; cost-effectiveness and implementation; as well as ethical and privacy concerns.

Main limitations are related to the characteristics of the analyzed literature, resulting in only English journal articles, book chapter and so on. Thus, other relevant contributions in different languages discussing interesting insights might have been neglected.

This study offers several insights to managers, marketers and policymakers involved in the issue of the obesity prevention. Since obesity represents a crucial challenge for public health at a global level, with its incidence reaching epidemic proportions in recent decades, the results may be extremely useful and powerful because suggesting – by employing a robust resulting corpus of knowledge on this domain – several practical features, actions and tactics to face such an important challenge. Moreover, this paper offers for scholar and researcher a systematized knowledge around the issues of obesity prevention, together with a detailed research agenda emerging by the critical analysis of the emerging insights, and to practitioners systematized useful insights to project and develop their future business strategies.

By providing several actions and tactics for obesity prevention (e.g. as for product labeling, naming, packaging, assortment; the exploitation of new technologies for mobile applications design, self-monitoring, short message service (SMS) alert systems, digital therapeutics; the role of social advertising, nudge, social influence) this work perfectly match the emerging societal orientation related to business, marketing and technology efforts to create a “better” society.

The study shed lights the need for a holistic approach to obesity prevention, involving interaction between individual main topics. Importantly this is the first study to analyze the issue of obesity prevention by considering a multidisciplinary corpus of literature, analyzed trough an individual-centric orientation.

Although prior research has shown the influence of the degree of simplicity (versus complexity) in packaging design on consumer’s product and brand perceptions, no research to date has analyzed the effect of minimalist packaging on perceived product naturalness. This research thus aims to investigate the underlying mechanisms explaining how a minimalist food packaging design may lead consumers to perceive a product as more natural.

The paper is based on two pre-tests and two experiments (N = 152 and N = 220) focusing on food products. Serial–parallel mediations are performed to test the effect of minimalist packaging design on perceived product naturalness.

In a food consumption context, we demonstrate and replicate the positive impact of minimalism on perceived product uniqueness, which then positively influences both production mode and perceived taste, which, in turn, increases perceived product naturalness.

The findings provide new insights into the influence of food packaging design on consumers’ product perception. This paper offers a deeper understanding of the relationship between minimalist food packaging design and product naturalness by highlighting the mediating roles of perceived uniqueness, production mode and perceived taste.

The purpose of this study was to examine consumer data acquired by branded prescription drug websites and the ethics of privacy related to the interconnected web of personal information accessed, packaged and resold by tracker technologies.

The research used the DMI Tracker Tool to collect data on the top 17 branded prescription drug websites, with a specific interest in the tracker technologies embedded in those websites. That data was analyzed using Gephi, an open-source data visualization tool, to map the network of trackers embedded in those branded prescription drug websites.

Findings visualize the interconnections between tracker technologies and prescription drug websites that undergird a system of personal data acquisition and programmatic advertising vehicles that serve the interests of prescription drug marketers and Big Tech. Based on the theory of platform ethics, the study demonstrated the presence of a technostructural ecosystem dominated by Big Tech, a system that goes unseen by consumers and serves the interests of advertisers and resellers of consumer data.

The 17 websites used in this study were limited to the top-selling prescription drugs or those with the highest ad expenditures. As such this study is not based on a random sampling of branded prescription drug websites. The popularity of these prescription drugs or the expanse of advertising associated with the drugs makes them appropriate to study the presence of tracking devices that collect data from consumers and serve advertising to them. It is also noted that websites are dynamic spaces, and some trackers within their infrastructures are apt to change over time.

Branded prescription drug information has over the past three decades become part of consumers’ routine search for information regarding what ails them. As drug promotion moved from print to TV and the Web, searching for drug information has become a part of everyday life. The implications of embedded trackers on branded prescription drug websites are the subject of this research.

This study has significant social implications as consumers who are searching for information regarding prescription medications may not want drug companies tracking them in a way that many perceive to be an invasion of privacy. Yet, as the Web is dominated by Big Tech, web developers have little choice but to remain a part of this technostructural ecosystem.

This study sheds light on branded prescription drug websites, exploring the imbalance between the websites under study, Big Tech and consumers who lack awareness of the system that operates backstage.

This study examined the differential effects of printed advertisements with luxury and nonluxury brands on consumer brand attitude persuasion using a qualitative experimental approach.

The authors adopted a qualitative experimental approach and the authors conducted two experiments over six months. In the first experiment, participants were asked to view five print advertisements related to five different luxury brands. In the second experiment, the same participants were asked to view another five print advertisements on non-luxury brands. The qualitative thematic differences for each brand were analyzed using NVivo software, employing the theoretical assumptions of Petty and Cacioppo's (1981) elaboration likelihood model (ELM).

In experiments 1 and 2, it was identified that brand experience, personalized brand experience, product quality, product quantity, personal image-conscious, nonpersonal image-conscious, affordability and unaffordability as the main thematic findings leading to consumer attitude persuasion.

The two main contributions are as follows: theoretically, applying a social psychology theory to the advertising industry offers an understanding of the social cognition stages of a human mindset. As a practical implication, this study's findings guide advertising agencies, marketers and salespeople regarding how to design effective print advertisements in a way that persuades consumer attitudes.

Through the theoretical assumptions of Petty and Cacioppo's (1981) ELM, this paper can be considered one of the first studies to combine social psychology and advertising to investigate the differential effects on consumer brand attitude persuasion for luxury and nonluxury brands.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) ISO standards have been noted as an essential marketing strategy by which firms can achieve consumer trust while improving environmental, social, and quality factors. This study discloses the contextual relationship between CSR ISO standards and sustainable impulse buying behavior. This study also looks to uncover the CSR ISO driving and linkage factors that motivate consumers to make sustainable impulsive purchases.

Three distinct research methods were employed in this research. First, a consumer expert opinion-based Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) approach was adopted to reveal the contextual relationship between CSR ISO factors and sustainable impulse buying behavior. Secondly, Matrice Impacts Croises Multiplication Appliques Classement (MICMAC) was used to examine these factors' driving and dependent power. In addition, Minitab package software was also used to check the statistical validation of ISM-MICMAC results.

The results indicate that although environmentally responsible CSR ISO 14001, socially responsible CSR ISO 26000, and consumer perception of product quality CSR ISO 9001 standards contain strong driving power, their dependent power was weak. All these CSR ISO factors (14,001, 26,000, and 9001) strongly impact each other and sustainable impulse buying. Therefore, these three CSR ISO factors have been placed at the bottom of the ISM model. The CSR ISO 14020 standard (labeling of the product), knowledge of CSR ISO standards, consumer trust, and advertising about CSR ISO standards have been placed in the middle. The mentioned factors have intense driving and dependent power and are classified as linkage factors for sustainable impulse buying. Impulse buying behavior has weak driving and strong dependent power, yet this factor strongly depends on other CSR ISO factors. Hence, this factor is placed at the top of the ISM model. In addition, the Minitab package software results indicate that ISM-MICMAC results are statistically valid.

To the best of our knowledge, this research is unique and examines the influence of CSR ISO factors on sustainable impulse buying in the context of Pakistani consumers. Secondly, our study has thoroughly investigated several CSR ISO factors and allied these factors in the context of consumer buying behavior. Third, several CSR ISO factors and impulse buying behavior were examined using a mix of ISM-MICAC and Minitab methods. Thus, including these steps in our study has led to the development of a novel technique.

Front-of-packaging (FOP) is a critical branding tool that uses “cues” to communicate product attributes and establish distinct brand images. This paper aims to understand how food brands utilize cues and their relative proportions to hierarchically communicate brand image and belonging to particular subcategories.

A content analysis is used for analysing 543 food FOPs sold in Australia (breakfast cereals, chips, snack bars). Samples are collected and classified into product sub-categories defined by ingredients, consumer-audience and retail placement. A novel 10 × 10 coding grid is applied to each FOP to objectively analyse cue proportion, with statistical comparison undertaken between sub-categories.

Results reveal intrinsic cues are favoured over extrinsic cues, except for those in the eatertainment sub-category. Hierarchies are evidenced that treat product and branding cues as primary, with health cues secondary. Statistically significant differences in cue proportions are consistently evident across breakfast cereals, chips and snack-bar FOPs. Clear differentiation is evidenced through cue proportions on FOP for health/nutrition focused sub-categories and eatertainment foods.

“Cue utilization theory” research is extended to an evaluation of brand encoding (not consumer decoding). Design conventions reveal how cue proportions establish a dialogue of communicating brand/product image hierarchically, the trade-offs that occur, a “meso-level” to Gestalt theory, and achieving categorization through FOP cue proportions. Deeper understanding of packaging design techniques provides inter-disciplinary insights that extend consumer behaviour, retailing and design scholarship.

This paper aims to explore the influence of a particular label surface texture, i.e. embossing, on consumer purchase intentions and willingness to pay. This paper further highlights the underlying mechanisms explaining this relationship by unveiling the mediating role of willingness to touch and perceived package uniqueness.

Based on the visual salience theory and the stimulus–organism–response (SOR) model, this paper tests mediations and serial mediations across two online experiments and evidence from a laboratory experiment.

Study 1 reveals perceived package uniqueness as the mediator, such that embossed elements on the label increase perceived uniqueness, hence leading to greater purchase intentions and willingness to pay. In addition, Study 2 replicates these results and goes further by demonstrating the positive effect of embossing on purchase intentions and willingness to pay through willingness to touch then perceived package uniqueness.

The findings provide insightful managerial implications by drawing attention to the importance of using embossed elements on packaging, particularly when companies seek to differentiate themselves from competitors by stimulating consumers to touch their product packaging and having them perceive their products as unique.

Using visual salience theory and the SOR model, this research is, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the first to shed light on the effect of embossing as a visual element of the packaging design on willingness to touch the product (haptics) and perceived uniqueness, ultimately enhancing purchase intentions and willingness to pay.

Children’s sensory involvement refers to the degree to which children engage their senses, such as sight, touch, taste, smell and hearing, in their interactions with the environment. In the context of parents' purchase decisions, children’s sensory involvement pertains to how children's sensory involvement influences the purchasing decisions made by their parents. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of children's sensory involvement on parents’ purchase decisions considering the mediating role of the parent’s attitude.

In this study, a structured questionnaire survey was conducted with parents of children aged 7–12 in Isfahan, Iran. The sample consisted of 210 parents, aimed at elucidating the relationship between variables. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to analyze the relationship between variables.

Results showed a significant relationship between children’s sensory involvement and parents’ purchase decisions, children’s sensory involvement and parents’ attitudes and parents’ attitudes and purchase decisions. It was concluded that children’s sensory involvement could indirectly influence the parents’ purchase decisions considering the mediating role of parents' attitudes.

In today's business landscape, it is imperative for organizations to discern the multitude of factors influencing consumers' purchasing decisions. Among these, family dynamics play a substantial role, with children often exerting a strong influence on their parents' buying choices. Despite the acknowledged importance of this dynamic in existing literature, the specific impact of children's sensory involvement on parental purchasing decisions remains largely unexplored. Therefore, this paper aims to fill this gap in the literature by shedding light on the role of children's sensory involvement in shaping parental buying behaviors.