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By using food consumption as a kaleidoscope, the aim of this paper is to illustrate the bidirectional and dialectical interactions among caregivers and between single children and their multiple caregivers in Xiamen.

This paper reports findings from in‐depth interviews with grandparents and parents (n=33) from ten three‐generational families and parents (n=20) from ten nuclear families with single children between six and nine years old.

Grandparents unequivocally accorded supreme importance to ensuring a child finishes his/her meals while parents tended to hold slightly more liberal views. These differences created higher conflict and tensions between the caregivers in three‐generational families as compared to nuclear households. Children in multigenerational families were more frequently force‐fed by adult‐caregivers whereas their counterparts were more capable of feeding themselves during meal times.

This exploratory study provides in‐depth insights but carries the limitation of generalisability. Future research can apply similar methodology on bigger samples so as to ascertain a better estimation of the extent of stress and tension across generations over meal times in urban China.

The initial finding reported in this paper is useful for public health workers and family life educators in China to help families with children of middle childhood to manage tension arising from meal times.

Diverging from most parenting research which tends to focus on parent‐child dynamics, this paper included three generations – grandparents, parents, grandchildren – in the research conceptualization. This is important as grandparents are integral parts of childrearing in China.

Many governments are taking measures in support of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to mitigate the economic impact of the COVID-19 outbreak. This paper presents a theoretical model for evaluating various government measures, including insurance for bank loans, interest rate subsidy, bridge loans and relief of tax burdens.

This paper distinguishes a firm's intrinsic value and book value, where a firm can lose its intrinsic value when it encounters cash-flow crunch. Wang transform is applied to (1) calculating the appropriate level of interest rate subsidy payable to incentivize banks to issue more loans to SMEs and to extend the loan maturity of current debt to the SMEs, (2) describing the frailty distribution for SMEs and (3) defining banks' underwriting capability and overlap index in risk selection.

Government support for SMEs can be in the form of an appropriate level of interest rate subsidy payable to incentivize banks to issue more loans to SMEs and to extend the loan maturity of current debt to the SMEs.

More available data on bank loans would have helped strengthen the empirical studies.

This paper makes policy recommendations of establishing policy-oriented banks or investment funds dedicated to supporting SMEs, developing risk indices for SMEs to facilitate refined risk underwriting, providing SMEs with long-term tax relief and early-stage equity-type investments.

The model highlights the importance of providing bridge loans to SMEs during the COVID-19 disruption to prevent massive business closures.

This paper provides an analytical framework using Wang transform for analyzing the most effective form of government support for SMEs.

In the competitive e-marketplace today, sellers are using an increasing number of signals to entice customers to make online purchases. However, how differential these signals are in terms of their capacity to improve sales performance has not yet been investigated. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Drawing on signaling theory and grounded in the context of China’s largest e-marketplace, Taobao, this study investigated the different effects of five commonly used signals on the sales performance of e-marketplace sellers.

The authors find that warranty has the highest effect on sales performance, followed by overall rating, mean detailed seller rating, percent of positives, and web site quality.

First, this study builds on signaling theory and contributes to the e-marketplace literature by providing new insights into how specific signals differentially affect sales performance in the e-marketplace (with evidence from a large-scale empirical analysis). Second, the study extends the applicability of signaling theory to the e-marketplace domain by incorporating distinctive features of the e-marketplace into the original signaling theory. Finally, the findings lend practical support to e-marketplace sellers’ investment decisions on signals and provide guidelines for deployment of such signals.

There are several technologies positively impacting the management of construction projects. Building information modelling (BIM) is one such technology, slowly changing project delivery. However, enhancing knowledge transfer (KT) within the construction industry is crucial because of the characteristic slow uptake of innovation. Therefore, this study aims to establish the effectiveness of the KT mechanism for BIM implementation in construction organisations.

This study adopted a quantitative research method where a structured questionnaire was distributed to construction professionals. A partial least square structural equation modeling path analysis was used to test the direct and indirect relationships of computer self-efficacy (CS), perceived ease of use (PEOU), KT and BIM usage.

This study found that CS could improve KT, which will, in turn, increase the implementation of BIM within construction organisations. However, in terms of KT, individuals’ confidence and ability to use BIM inspires them to share the knowledge of BIM they had received through training. Furthermore, this study found that the ease of interacting, learning and being skilful with BIM may not necessarily ensure the actual transfer of knowledge.

This study provides valuable insights into KTs (BIM implementation) in the construction industry. It will enhance the use of BIM systems and related knowledge through effective training amongst construction practitioners. Other previous studies have focused on challenges and barriers to BIM implementation, this study goes deeper into establishing the effectiveness of the KT mechanism for BIM implementation in construction organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to argue for a multi-dimensional and developmental notion of researcher positionality in conducting qualitative research, in lieu of the dichotomous notion of outsider and insider. The former emphasizes the agentive role researchers play in knowledge production, whereas the latter has been much challenged as oversimplified and insufficient in understanding the dynamic interactions in which field researchers engage.

The paper borrows Milner’s (2007) four-level framework of research personality to reflect on one cross-cultural narrative inquiry study.

Reflective stories revealed that researcher positionality captures threads of intersectionality as well as inter- and intra-personal dynamics, and thus better informs the research process than what concept of insider/outsider dichotomy can do.

The paper enriches the discussion of research positionality in qualitative research by involving a cross-cultural study where the researcher moved to-and-fro two sites.

The paper suggests a methodological and practical way of raising researcher’s awareness and agency relative to positionality by exposing the researcher to cross-cultural settings.

While the multi-dimensional aspect of researcher positionality and its relatedness to research findings has been much discussed, not much acknowledgment has been given to the developmental aspect of research positionality.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how consumers simultaneously process multiple cues for different dining occasions when making a restaurant decision.

This paper investigates the influence of priming (review prototype), effort (distance) and involvement (occasion) on restaurant evaluations, willingness to drive and willingness to pay for a restaurant meal. A 2 (prototype: negative, positive) × 2 (distance: close, far) × 2 (occasion: casual, special) between-subjects factorial design was used.

The paper finds that each variable influences a different outcome, whereby people rely on a review prototype for restaurant evaluation and choice, a distance cue for willingness to drive and a dining occasion for willingness to pay.

This paper suggests that restaurant marketers can highlight exemplary service through online reviews, increase profitability by promoting special occasions and geographically expand their market by attracting people to drive for a special dinner.

This paper evaluates the simultaneous interactive effects of multiple cues in service settings. It demonstrates that situational cues moderate the effect of primary cues in online reviews.

The purpose of this study is to identify the process of virtual influencer stickiness in the age of influencer marketing, which has received little attention in the literature. This is essential because the research creates a theoretical model of follower loyalty/stickiness to virtual influencer techniques from the standpoint of influencer marketing, which has a substantial effect on the evolution of the global marketing world.

In 2022, 302 people who currently follow an Instafamous virtual influencer took part in an Instagram self-administered online survey.

The findings show that both expertise and trustworthiness have a positive and significant influence on parasocial interaction, which in turn has a significant influence on virtual engagement and stickiness.

This research will specifically assist international readers in understanding how to harness and increase the efficiency and efficacy of interactive marketing strategies and methods to engage and retain followers of Instafamous virtual influencer. Moreover, the findings will be beneficial to opinion leaders, brand managers, company investors, entrepreneurs and service designers.

1. The study pioneers a holistic virtual follower stickiness mechanism that comprises the role of source credibility, parasocial interaction, informational influence and virtual follower’s engagement and their interrelationship to each other.

2. This study is based on parasocial interaction theory and source credibility theory to understand the relationship between virtual followers and influencers stickiness process at social media platforms.

3. In addition, the study examined the subsequent effects of sources of credibility components on parasocial interaction; as well as, on virtual follower engagement and stickiness.

4. This study also categorized and examined the moderating effects exerted by the genres of informative influence of virtual influencer.

The study pioneers a holistic virtual follower stickiness mechanism that comprises the role of source credibility, parasocial interaction, informational influence and virtual follower’s engagement and their interrelationship to each other.

This study is based on parasocial interaction theory and source credibility theory to understand the relationship between virtual followers and influencers stickiness process at social media platforms.

In addition, the study examined the subsequent effects of sources of credibility components on parasocial interaction; as well as, on virtual follower engagement and stickiness.

This study also categorized and examined the moderating effects exerted by the genres of informative influence of virtual influencer.

Research has shown that when presenting large amounts of social media information on small devices, design should consider multiple contexts which include user preferences, time, location, environment and so on. It should also take into account the purpose of use, for example, the kind of tasks undertaken by users. However, little research has been done on the organization of social media information by multiple context and tasks. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Using tourism as a domain, the authors conducted a user evaluation study with a prototype to investigate users’ preferred ways of organizing different types of social media information based on multiple contexts.

In this paper, the authors present a sequence of context types for organizing four types of social media information (recommendations, events, friends and media elements). The study revealed that users preferred to view recommendations by location and environment context, events by location and temporal context, contacts by location and identity context and finally, list of media elements by environment and identity context.

There may be different sequences of context types for organizing social media information in domains other than tourism. Researchers are encouraged to analyze users’ needs in other domains so as to find their preferred ways of organizing social media information.

This paper includes implications for the design and development of user interface, in particular, for mobile applications presenting large amount of social media information.

It presents a new way of organizing social media information using multiple context types and with consideration of users’ needs.

The design of context‐aware mobile applications can be improved through a clear and in‐depth understanding of context and how it can be used to meet users' requirements. Using tourism as a case application, this paper aims to address the lack of understanding of context and tourists' goals.

This is achieved through a literature review of existing research and focus groups to gather information needs for tasks commonly executed by tourists.

This paper proposes the TILES (temporal, identity, location, environmental and social) model to define and classify five main contextual types, and properties associated with each type for tourism‐related applications. The TILES model (with 32 factors) derived from the analysis of the literature review is refined through inputs from two focus groups to incorporate an additional ten factors.

The TILES model can be generalised to support domains other than tourism, such as medical and edutainment.

The model will help to achieve a better understanding of context, users' information needs and their goals. In addition, this work extends findings in the field of context‐aware computing and information retrieval on mobile devices. Solution providers will also be able to adopt TILES as a framework for guiding the design of their context‐aware mobile applications.