Search results

During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, ubiquitous social media has become a primary channel for information dissemination, social interactions and recreational activities. However, it remains unclear how social media usage influences nonpharmaceutical preventive behavior of individuals in response to the pandemic. This paper aims to explore the impacts of social media on COVID-19 preventive behaviors based on the theoretical lens of empowerment.

In this paper, survey data has been collected from 739 social media users in China to conduct structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis.

The results indicate that social media empowers individuals in terms of knowledge seeking, knowledge sharing, socializing and entertainment to promote preventive behaviors at the individual level by increasing each person's perception of collective efficacy and social cohesion. Meanwhile, social cohesion negatively impacts the relationship between collective efficacy and individual preventive behavior.

This study provides insights regarding the role of social media in crisis response and examines the role of collective beliefs in the influencing mechanism of social media. The results presented herein can be used to guide government agencies seeking to control the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study aims to explore the efficacy of government policy directions in mitigating the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic by employing a panel of 22 countries throughout the 2020-second quarter of 2022.

The panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model is employed to examine this phenomenon and to investigate the long-run effects of government policy decisions on infection and mortality rates from the pandemic.

The study reveals the following key findings: (1) Income support and debt relief facilities and stringent standards of governments are associated with reduced infection and death rates. (2) The response of governments has resulted in decreased mortality rates while simultaneously leading to an unexpected increase in infection rates. (3) Containment and healthcare practices have led to a decrease in infection rates but an increase in mortality rates, presenting another counterintuitive outcome. Despite the expectation that robust government responses would decrease infection rates and that healthcare containment practices would reduce mortality, these results highlight a lack of health equity and the challenge of achieving high vaccination rates across countries.

To effectively combat the spread of COVID-19, it is crucial to implement containment health practices in conjunction with tracing and individual-level quarantine. Simply implementing containment health measures without these interconnected strategies would be ineffective. Therefore, policy implications derived from containment health measures should be accompanied by targeted, aggressive, and rapid containment strategies aimed at significantly reducing the number of individuals infected with COVID-19.

This study concludes by suggesting the importance of implementing economic support in terms of income, and debt relief has played a crucial role in mitigating the spread of COVID-19 infections and reducing fatality rates.

To effectively combat the spread of COVID-19, it is crucial to implement containment health practices in conjunction with tracing and individual-level quarantine. Simply implementing containment health measures without these interconnected strategies would be ineffective. Therefore, policy implications derived from containment health measures should be accompanied by targeted, aggressive, and rapid containment strategies aimed at significantly reducing the number of individuals infected with COVID-19.

This research makes a unique contribution to the existing literature by investigating the impact of government responses on reducing COVID-19 infections and fatalities, specifically focusing on the period before COVID-19 vaccinations became available.

Personal Protective Equipment plays an inevitable part in the current scenario of pandemics in the world. A novel coronavirus, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Corona Virus-2 (SARS-Cov 2), began as an outbreak of pneumonia in Wuhan, China, in late December 2019, and quickly spread worldwide. It quickly escalated into an international public health crisis. This opened up the high demand for the innovation and research of new materials in the Personal Protective Equipment industry.

PubMed, Embase and Google Scholar were searched for relevant literature regarding personal protective equipment and the information was organized in a systematic way.

There are no adequate number of studies taken up in the field of use of textiles in medical applications especially with PPEs.

This structured review will generate a sense of the significance of using PPE for controlling pandemics and also awaken need for additional research and innovations in this area.

The authorities of the management should take timely intervention in choosing the right material for their PPE in their hospitals. Hence health care professionals teams have an inevitable role in preventing the adverse environmental impact due to the inadvertent disposal of PPEs.

There is a lack of systematic way of disposing contaminated single-use face masks in a safe, environmentally acceptable manner. The dumping of single-use PPE in domestic garbage has had an adverse effect on the environment. Mismanaged plastic waste endangers the health of ecosystems by polluting marine and terrestrial environments, posing a significant risk of ingestion or injury to animals and contaminating habitats.

This review article provides an in-depth review of the use of different materials in PPE and challenges regarding its long-term use and implications on the environment.

As Generation Z (Gen Z) represents one of the most important segments in the travel and tourism sector, the present work aims to analyse Gen Z's behaviour in a post-pandemic scenario. In particular, the present work deepens the factors that may influence future accommodation choices.

This study uses data from a web-based questionnaire targeting Italian tourists belonging to Generation Z, reaching 221 complete responses. After the statistical analysis of the sample, an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was then carried out.

Data provided evidence about the main factors affecting Gen Z tourist choices. In particular, these young consumers are positively influenced by the information (especially from institutional and verifiable sources), more flexible purchase terms (e.g. full refund in case of cancellation due to contagion of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and digital payments) and structure features (e.g. cleanliness, sanitisation, digitalisation and sustainability).

This work attempts to contribute to the academic literature by looking at the tourism experience from Gen Z's perspective. From this angle, this work underlines the influence some factors exert on the final accommodation choice, especially in the presence of exogenous events. Moreover, as this study focusses on a post-pandemic scenario, the study seeks to provide valuable indications, both at the theoretical and managerial level, for the tourism sector to boost the sector's recovery and prepare the sector to face similar events.

This paper examines whether following a health crisis the use of health and safety protocols and hotel brand awareness influences hotel perceived value and intention to visit.

Using an experimental design, the study evaluates the effectiveness of the use of health and safety protocols and the moderating effect of brand awareness on perceived value and intention to visit.

The results show that the hotels using health and safety protocols (compared to those that do not use them) will achieve a higher perceived value and intention to visit. In addition, the awareness of brand does not moderate the effect of the health and safety protocols on perceived value and intention to visit.

This research identifies mechanisms for future consideration by hotel companies to promote the recovery of their activity after a health crisis. Specifically, using health and safety protocols will result in the market evaluating the brand more highly and produce a greater intention to visit. At the same time, the research indicates that regardless of whether the brand is well-known or not, the use of a health and safety protocol is advantageous.

This study offers new insights that can be useful for developing a resilient hotel sector in the face of future health crises. Specifically, the results show progress in understanding the effects that the use of health and safety protocols and brand awareness have on key consumer variables for the recovery of the sector in a post-pandemic context.

On completion of this case study, students will be able to understand collaboration and synergy between farmers and organisations through value creation, like fundraising, based on the comprehension of the resource-based theory; understand the overview and concept of the value chain and supply chain management in the agribusiness to reduce costs of inventories; understand the concept of segmentation and positioning to increase revenue for organisations by leveraging existing resources – human and financial; and understand the branding strategy to create a sustainable competitive advantage for Suguna Foods.

Suguna was started by two brothers, B. Soundararajan and G.B. Sundararajan, to help other farmers. Suguna, with just 200 broilers in 1984, grew to be the number 1 poultry company across India. Soundararajan was a pioneer and innovator who started “contract farming” in India in 1991. This model helped both the farmers and the company to became successful. The farmers always struggled to pay the cost of feed and other materials, as credit was not readily and easily available from financial institutions. Suguna helped farmers by providing feed, medicines, etc., free of cost in return for the good rearing of chickens. Because of the success of this venture, they decided to continue with it. Today, Suguna is a successful company that sells chicken, eggs and processed meat. They modernised the retail chain to supply consumers with fresh, healthy and hygienic meat. Suguna’s vision was to “Energize rural India” by helping farmers succeed. They helped over 40,000 farmers from 15,000+ villages in 18+ Indian states. Although the growth helped both farmers and Suguna, the increased cost of raw materials for Suguna and increased input costs/power costs for farmers had to be tackled on a war footing so that both could have good income despite the increased inflation. Moreover, the retail price of live chicken was more or less stagnant in the past five years, especially after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This case can be used as the basis for a 90-min class discussion. This case study is suitable for use in an master of business administration course module or in an executive education program on developing an understanding of value creation in the business model in a rural market and also how the supply chain works. This case study can also be used to teach pricing, segmentation in marketing and supply chain perspectives and decision-making skills.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS8: Marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that influence older adults' intention to use virtual fitting room technology during the COVID-19 pandemic based on the extended technology acceptance model (TAM).

An online survey was conducted with a sample of older adults from 60 to 90 years old (n = 819). A structural equation modeling was conducted to test a proposed research model.

The results revealed that older adults' behavioral intentions were positively influenced by perceived usefulness and ease of use, and fear of infection during the pandemic was significantly related to the perceived usefulness. Fit concern was not significantly related to perceived usefulness of virtual fitting room technology.

This research extends the TAM by adding antecedents to perceived usefulness in explaining older adults' adoption of virtual fitting technology.

An unexpected Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has negatively affected the tourism and the hospitality industry, including luxury accommodation service providers. While this was not the first virus outbreak to impact the tourism sectors, in this case, its consequences were devastating. In this light, this contribution analyzes the case of an Italian luxury hotel, a winner of numerous awards during the last few years, including the prestigious World Luxury Hotel Award. The researchers compare its pre- and the post-COVID situation. They clarify that the outbreak has resulted in reduced reservations and explain how the upscale hotel responded to the unprecedented crisis by implementing different approaches. The luxury hospitality business decided to defend its brand differentiation and positioning strategy by continue offering improved service quality and by introducing enhanced hygiene and sanitation facilities, in order to deliver customer-centric experiences to their valued guests.

Human life has been unfavourably impacted by COVID-19, which has impacted the entire planet. Contrastingly, it is now crucial to discern the significance of health in human life and pay more attention to protecting health. Owing to COVID-19's influence on lifestyle, it is evident that the pandemic contributes to the development of health tourism and that wellness tourism, which was in the pre-pandemic growth trend, is favoured more often. Therefore, it is indisputable that stakeholders in the health and tourism industries view the rising demand for health-focused holidays as a potential. However, on the opposite hand, it is meaningful to broaden the number of products made available within the context of wellness tourism, to pinpoint areas that are conducive to health-related activities, to generate the infrastructure and superstructure required in these areas and to step up marketing initiatives in order to make the most of this opportunity. To address these concerns, it is deemed crucial that the parties involved in the tourism and health sectors coordinate their efforts.

This research aims to analyse the perceptions of practitioners in three regions regarding the challenges faced by their firms during the pandemic, considered a black-swan event. It examines the strategies implemented to mitigate and recover from risks, evaluates the effectiveness of these strategies and assesses the difficulties encountered in their implementation.

In the summer of 2022, an online survey was conducted among supply chain (SC) practitioners in France, Poland and the St. Louis, Missouri region of the USA. The survey aimed to understand the impact of COVID-19 on their firms and the SC strategies employed to sustain operations. These regions were selected due to their varying levels of SC development, including infrastructure, economic resources and expertise. Moreover, they exhibited different responses in safeguarding the well-being of their citizens during the pandemic.

The study reveals consistent perceptions among practitioners from the three regions regarding the impact of COVID-19 on SCs. Their actions to enhance SC resilience primarily relied on strengthening collaborative efforts within their firms and SCs, thus validating the tenets of the relational view.

COVID-19 is (hopefully) our black-swan pandemic occurrence during our lifetime. Nevertheless, the lessons learned from it can inform future SC risk management practices, particularly in dealing with rare crises. During times of crisis, leveraging existing SC structures may prove more effective and efficient than developing new ones. These findings underscore the significance of relationships in ensuring SC resilience.