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In response to the rapid growth of the cosmeceutical industry, this study aims to investigate young female consumers' confidence in cosmeceuticals and the perceived competency of cosmeceutical product advertising.

An online survey of 224 young female participants was recruited from an online national young consumer panel from Zoomerang. This group of participants mirrored the characteristics of the largest segment in the cosmeceutical market in the USA.

The results suggest that the perceived information utility of cosmeceutical product advertising is the most significant factor in engaging young female consumers' interests and desire to try cosmeceuticals. Moreover, young female consumers' self‐evaluation on body esteem, their perceived effectiveness of product claims, their interests in reading such advertising, and their attitudes toward advertising jointly affect their likelihood to take cosmeceutical products. Not surprisingly, self‐evaluation on body esteem predicted a negative influence on product purchase intention. As their self‐evaluation on body esteem increases, the likelihood to purchase cosmeceuticals decreases.

The study adds insights on a fast‐growing, but understudied, product category, cosmeceutical products, to the research stream and expands the knowledge on the information utility of cosmeceutical product advertising on young female consumers.

This paper aims to explore the forces at work that negatively influence the self-image perceptions of young women, causing them to strive for an “ultra-thin” ideal.

Focus groups explore why and how perceived self-image influences young women’s body and perceptions and, consequently, health. Thematic qualitative analysis explores the realm of information and emotions involved with the thin-ideal.

Social contagion theory emerged with a significant impact caused by network influencers and the spread of information and emotions within social networks forces that sustain the need to be ultra-thin, even though there is abundant knowledge about adverse effects.

Future research should address limitations involving representativeness and generalizability.

Social marketing programs, including social media, should stress healthy eating habits while focusing on the importance of the self and de-emphasizing the “thin-ideal” image.

Results will assist in developing more informed and effective prevention programs, including social media campaigns, as preventative healthcare to reduce the risk of the spread of eating disorders and promote psychological health of at-risk young adults.

The purpose of this study is to analyze and mitigate consumers’ perceived risk in purchasing cosmeceutical products. The lucrative market of cosmeceuticals has motivated many cosmetics and pharmaceutical companies to rethink their existing product lines to gain a strong foothold in cosmeceuticals industry. It is important that these corporates are taking note and scrambling to integrate their marketing activities to gain a foothold in this emerging sector.

A questionnaire set was created to survey among 473 consumers, using cosmeceutical skincare products as a product group. The risk mitigation and assessment are investigated to understand consumers’ final decision on whether or not to purchase a product.

Results indicate that positive expert opinion reduces consumer risk perception, better product-country image can minimize consumer’s perceived risk and strong brand image lowers perceived risks of consumer.

Practitioners should have a close examination of the product-country image and brand images, as well as an advantageous use of expert opinions – all of which may affect the consumer’s willingness to buy and lower perceived risks associated with the product.

This study enhances the limited research in the new field of pharmaceuticals, which also leads to a better understanding of risk mitigation and factors driving consumers’ willingness to buy a healthcare product.

This study aims to examine the direct effect of compensatory health beliefs (CHBs), environmental self-identity and perceived environmental responsibility (PER) towards consumers' pro-environmental behaviour (PEB). Moreover, this study also investigates the mediating role of PER.

Data were collected from nutricosmetics consumers in Malaysia. A questionnaire survey was carried out in three major shopping complexes in Klang Valley areas, which generated 448 completed usable responses. The partial least square technique (SmartPLS, version 3) was used to analyse the data and to test the study hypotheses.

The results revealed that CHBs, environmental self-identity and environmental perceived responsibility positively affect consumers’ PEB in nutricosmetics consumption. Additionally, data supported the mediating role of PER in the relationship between CHB, environmental self-identity and PEB.

It is expected that the study findings will provide significant insights to help marketers and policymakers about consumers’ nutricosmetic products consumption. It will help the marketers to plan for effective marketing strategies to produce environmentally friendly products and to serve the green consumer segment effectively. Moreover, companies attempting to launch new nutricosmetics brands may find the results helpful in understanding PEB.

This study is among the pioneers to examine consumers’ PEB of nutricosmetics products. Moreover, there is a dearth of studies that have investigated the PEB of consumers in regard to the CHBs, environmental self-identity and PER towards nutricosmetics consumption. Additionally, this study examines the mediating role of PER between “CHBs and PEB” and “environmental self-identity and PEB”, which are yet to examine in the past literature in the field.

The authors have developed an educational model that operates at the undergraduate level and aims to produce graduates who can comfortably operate in the gulf between the laboratory bench and the commercial marketplace. The purpose of the paper is to describe the course, approaches, activities and initial outcomes of the Bachelor of Biotechnology Innovation course at Queensland University of Technology.

Students undertake “hard science” subjects and business subjects on entrepreneurship, innovation and market development. Synthesis of these disparate disciplines is driven through formation of virtual companies that serve to contextualize subject content and provide start‐up company experience across the four‐year course. Student companies design biotechnology products and processes and can progress their product through initial research and development phases or undertake an industry‐based internship working as a team on initial concept projects. This focused, team‐based approach to learning is contrary to traditional science courses that focus on the individual.

Outcomes include graduates of high quality that have moved into positions associated with commercialization and technology transfer where previously a PhD and MBA were required qualifications. Other measures of course success include acceptance and promotion of the new course by business, academia and government.

Postgraduate courses provide the most common pathway for assisted self‐development of entrepreneurial skills in science and engineering graduates. In contrast, this model aims to train entrepreneurs in technological disciplines at an undergraduate level in a framework where innovation and enterprising behaviour are embedded in the fabric of the degree.

Competitive strategy.

Post-Graduate (MBA/Doctoral) level courses.

This paper aims to examine the evolution of Himalaya Drug Company (hereinafter referred to as Himalaya), an Ayurveda-based pharmaceutical-wellness company. Over the eight decades of its history, Himalaya has built a reputation for Ayurveda-based formulations that conform to allopathic standards and are accepted globally. In the recent years, Himalaya dramatically strengthened its competitive position of “scientific Ayurvedic products” through its entry into fast-moving consumer goods (or consumer-packaged goods), categories of wellness products as well as over-the-counter (non-prescription) drugs. This case describes the focused differentiation strategy of Himalaya and sets out the challenges it faced/would face in sustaining its focused differentiation strategy, as it enters into highly penetrated categories such as toothpastes and soaps (that were traditionally dominated by broad differentiators and broad cost leaders).

The outcomes are as follows: to exemplify the logic of focused differentiation, where a competitor commands a higher willingness to pay than its average competitors, by narrowing its target segments; to illustrate how the firm’s entire set of activities are tailored to meet the specific needs of a set of carefully chosen products, narrow customer segments, of defined geographic markets; to highlight how a combination of tradeoffs and fit helps protect the firm’s competitive position from its potential imitators; and to demonstrate the limits of a focused strategy, specifically relating to growth, and how a company such as Himalaya can overcome such limits.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 11: Strategy.

This study enables to critically assess: what constitutes the consequences of a financial crisis to a multi-national enterprise operating in the emerging market of Russia; the decision-making processes behind crisis management and the corresponding search for informational grounds to be used as decision justification; and the role of sustainable development in times of crisis.

During the 2014–2015 financial crisis in Russia, L’Oréal Russia managed to increase growth by 7%–15%, strengthening its place as the market leader in the country. First, the case illustrates the way Antonio, the General Manager of L’Oréal Russia, had successfully approached this situation by learning from the shortcomings of the company’s strategy during the 2007–2008 crisis and deciding to take a proactive position concerning stakeholders. Then, upon recalling his success story, Antonio suddenly found himself at the dawn of yet another crisis caused simultaneously by the COVID-19 outbreak and oil prices drop. In the face of uncertainty regarding the applicability of prior crisis management strategy for the new economic and social reality of Russia, Antonio was worried about whether the company would be able to achieve the 2020 sustainable development goals of L’Oréal by the end of the year. The case dilemma involves choices Antonio faced during mid-March 2020 about strategy formulation based on an adjustment to the expected consumer behavior patterns and possible need to rethink sustainable development goals priority.

This case is appropriate for an undergraduate or graduate-level program curriculum for courses dedicated to or including topics related to crisis management, doing business in emerging markets, corporate social responsibility and consumer behavior. Before engaging with the case, the students should be aware of basic management- and economics-related concepts and terms, such as strategy, sustainable development, CSR and economic crisis.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

Animal welfare is increasingly favoured by consumers in their choice of food and cosmetic products, proposed by manufacturers and retailers. This study aims to investigate the impact of the “not tested on animals” claim on consumers' attitude and behavioural intention towards a cosmetic product through an enriched version of Ajzen's theory of planned behaviour.

A between-subjects design has been used. 450 participants were recruited through the social network of a cosmetics and personal hygiene brand in Quebec, Canada, and answered a questionnaire. They were randomly assigned to either a manipulation group (n = 226) or a control group (n = 224). Data were analysed with partial least squares structural equation modelling.

This study shows that external (credibility and attitude towards marketing claims) and internal psychological variables (subjective norms and altruistic concerns with animal welfare) influence attitude towards and purchase intention of “not tested on animals” personal care products. More egotistic concerns, such as personal appearance, also explain the formation of attitude towards cruelty-free cosmetics.

This research supplements Ajzen's original model with internal psychological (individuals' concerns with animal welfare and personal appearance) and external (general credibility of cosmetic products claims, credibility of the “not tested on animals” claim and attitude towards this claim) variables. These variables, as suggested by previous research on cosmetics and their claims, improve the understanding of consumer attitude and purchase behaviour patterns.

The study's findings point out the role of companies to increase consumers' knowledge on the significance and transparency of their messages, notably the “not tested on animals” claim. They also stress that policymakers in regions where regulation is unclear should at least punish untruthful communication pertaining to animal testing in cosmetic and personal care products.

Prior studies on cosmetic products did not investigate the difference of consumer attitude formation towards cruelty-free products compared to conventional cosmetic products. Consequently, this research shows that the construction of attitude towards cruelty-free products highly differs from conventional personal care.

The purpose of this paper is to present a social network approach for identification of micro-organizational re-design interventions to make more efficient and fluid the knowledge flow in a rehabilitation multidisciplinary team. The structural information of different kinds of knowledge networks within a team is augmented with additional analyses aimed at collecting information about the ways through which participants use knowledge, the motivation behind knowledge exchange, and the non-human knowledge sources used by subjects to perform their work. This paperwork was supported by CNCSIS – UEFISCDI, project number PNII – IDEI 810/2008.

The authors propose a definition of knowledge network including human and non-human knowledge source (documents and knowledge repositories) as it is more adequate for the analysis of knowledge flows in multidisciplary medical teams. The mapping and analysis of the network are carried out through: elicitation of knowledge flows between people within and outside the team through a structured questionnaire; mapping of the knowledge flows toward non-human knowledge sources; and identification of critical aspects and proposal of re-engineering interventions to make knowledge flow more efficient and effective.

The analysis of the critical aspects emerged in the field study identifies a number of opportunities to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of knowledge sharing through the re-design of the team network. The re-design interventions concern three main features of knowledge network: “knowledge centralization,” “Over-reliance on External experts,” “Unshared knowledge tools and sources.”

The originality of the work resides in applying social network analysis (SNA) for healthcare management settings, proving evidence and guidelines to show how healthcare organizations can benefit from the adoption of SNA-based approaches.