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This study aims to develop a framework to identify the drivers underpinning food tourists' behavioral intentions (BIs). This framework centers on examining how local food consumption value (TLFCV), local food experiential value (TLFEV) and social media influencers (SMIs) impact upon tourists’ attitudes toward local food (ATLF) and food destination image (FDI). The impact of ATLF and FDI on tourists’ BIs is also examined.

PLS-SEM was used to test the hypothesized relationships using survey responses from 379 tourists visiting Rasht, Iran.

The results demonstrate that TLFCV, TLFEV and SMIs can be used to populate a theoretical framework for predicting and understanding the factors influencing tourists’ ATLF and FDI. Specifically, positive ATLF and FDI stimulated positive BIs (e.g., intending to recommend Iranian food to others and intending to revisit Iran in future for culinary tourism purposes).

The findings provide managers and practitioners within the culinary tourism industry with suggestions for how best to strategically market their offerings to increase inbound food tourism.

This study is one of the first to empirically evaluate the drivers of food tourists' BIs, presenting a newly developed model for deployment in future research. Originality is also established by simultaneously investigating TLFCV and TLFEV within the context of food tourism.

This study aims to investigate the effect of country image on investment intention and the role of investment image as a mediating factor. Both cognitive and affective country image dimensions were addressed to assess the functional and emotional aspects of the country image and their effects on investment intention. The current study targeted Egypt, as one of the developing countries, from the point of view of Nordic investors.

Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed model using data collected from 124 top managers of different companies in the clean energy sector in Nordic countries.

The results showed that cognitive and affective country images are positively related to the investment image, and that investment image is positively correlated with the investment intention. The investment image has a full mediating role in the relationship between cognitive and affective country images and investment intention.

The past few decades have witnessed a growing interest in country image research; however, limited studies have investigated the impact of country image on foreign investment intention. This study adds to the understanding for the potential contribution of the investment image of developing countries in the decision-making process for the foreign direct investment.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to explore how Africa has been branded, and to suggest ways the continent could be re‐branded to attract both international and domestic investments.

An extensive review of literature that encapsulates branding, nation branding, place/destination branding, foreign direct investment and issues associated with investment opportunities in Africa was conducted towards exploring how Africa has been branded and could be re‐branded.

This paper finds that the extant literature is replete with publications that essentially associate Africa, as a brand, to poverty, underdevelopment, corruption, doom, pestilence and several other inauspicious features. Nonetheless, the article also shows that there are several existing virtues especially in the form of business opportunities in several sectors that could be accorded extensive publicity to espouse the continents' brand equity. These range from agriculture, to tourism, to real estate, to sports and several existing foreign direct investments already thriving in several parts of the continent. Hence, the suggestion for re‐branding Africa as a viable continent for global business transactions is strongly emphasised in the article.

This paper has a significant implication for positioning Africa as a relevant business partner in the global marketplace by echoing the extensive business opportunities that await both the indigenous and foreign investors in the continent.

The article espouses the brand equity of Africa as a continent and suggests avenues for constantly communicating the inherent virtues of the content to the world towards maintaining her rightful position in the international business community.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of the literature and develop a model of the determinants, indicators and effects of destination competitiveness (DC), as well as several propositions.

This study thoroughly reviewed extant literature to develop a conceptual model and propositions.

Two key findings are listed below. First, 12 different environmental factors are identified and 12 propositions are developed linking these environmental factors to DC. Second, a new indicator of DC is developed, namely, Tourism Attractions-Basics-Context (TABC) model. The TABC model is simple and directly taps into the benefits tourists seek in a destination.

Directions for future research are discussed in detail in the paper.

Managerial implications are discussed in detail in the paper.

The extant research on the topic of DC has been rather fragmented and incomplete in scope. The research presented in this paper addresses these limitations.

This paper aims to examine Bangladesh's overall economy with special focus on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats (SWOT) analysis, choosing right foreign direct investment (FDI) strategy, remittance inflow, lessons from South East Asian nations, risk factors and aftermath.

Phenomenological research has raised awareness and increased insight into Bangladesh's overall strength, weakness, opportunity and threat in terms of her current position in world economy. The approach is based on observation of the business environment, online research, a close watch on Bangladesh's economy, analysis of newspapers, books, brainstorming with co‐researchers for five years and 30 years of living and working experience in developing countries.

The research has found that Bangladesh is going to encounter series of economic hurdles in near future. A SWOT analysis of Bangladesh has uncovered her overall strength, weakness, opportunity and threat in terms of her current position in world economy. Despite some strengths and opportunities, Bangladesh has lots of weaknesses and threats that could seriously undermine nation's development process at any time. A holistic and concerted effort is much sought after to address those problems while capitalising on strengths and opportunities. Side by side, Bangladesh should try her level best to attract quality FDI. However, remittance inflow plays very crucial role in Bangladesh's economy. But deplorably, since it is almost impossible to follow the successful model of South East Asian nations, Bangladesh does not have any sure success formula of any country in hand to follow. In fact, many less successful countries will have to struggle for long uncertain period. And sadly, Bangladesh falls into that category indeed. In fact, Bangladesh's economy has been on an inherently unstable path that can only end in tears. But remittance inflow will act as lifeblood for Bangladesh's economy and it will slow down the total apocalyptic process indeed. However, considering the totality, Bangladesh must have to face several critical challenges at once even before embarking on the track of vision 2020! Truly, nightmare is just on!

This paper offers a holistic view that would guide a reader to identify key challenges of a typical least developed country.

Informed by the resource-based and resource-advantage theories, this study, a comparative study, aims to examine the core dimensions of nation brands – culture, tourism, exports, foreign direct investment, migration and governance – from the company-based brand equity perspective in a sample of 48 countries clustered into three groups (strong, moderate and weak nation brands) from 2011 to 2019 to identify the most critical predictors of nation brand strength in each cluster.

A clustering technique was applied to the modified Country Brand Index to cluster the included countries into strong, moderate and weak nation brands. The authors were then able to analyze each cluster in an effort to explore the relative importance of the predictor variables and determine if that importance varied across the clusters.

This approach revealed novel findings of great importance to policymakers and academics. The results indicate the resources that contribute the most to nation brand equity in each cluster. Such information can guide policymakers in effectively leveraging these strategic resources. First, the cultural dimension was a more critical predictor concerning countries with moderate and weak nation brands than countries with strong brands. Second, tourism exhibited the highest predictive importance concerning all the clusters. For academics, these findings help foster a better understanding of the determinants of nation brand strength, as aligned with the resource-based and resource-advantage theories.

The findings of this study contribute to the literature concerning nation brand management, particularly the stream related to nation brand equity monetization.

Building on previous literature, proposes a theoretical approach to the study of the factors affecting the major decisions related to the internationalisation process of firms. Provides some empirical evidence through the study of a group of newly internationalised companies in one of the less industrially developed regions of Spain. Uses a descriptive methodology to rank a literature‐based list of factors according to their relevance for the decisions to internationalise, to choose a form to do so and to select a destination. The results contribute to determining which capabilities and governmental policies should be primarily developed to promote the global strategies and international success of firms.

The purpose of this paper is to provide details of the communist and socialist past to inform the debate on redesigning tourism in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries as impacted by the transition and accelerated by European Union (EU) membership.

The issues from two sides are addressed: academic and practical. Based on a literature review, the authors propose a model of five main research topics that represent the main areas of change and conceptualise the general EU accession research debate on tourism. Content analysis is conducted on each of the revealed main research topics that are presented and discussed from the standpoint of tourism-relevant socialist and communist stature and image. On the other hand, this paper engages with reality as it surveys real-life practices in tourism development and business operation based on the personal experience of the researcher regarding the social situation under consideration.

The findings concerning the revealed main areas of tourism change in CEE countries following EU accession refer to the: change from communism towards a new image (Europeanisation and re-imaging), change from communism to capitalism (transformation and marketisation), change from old communist tourism products to new products (rejuvenation, diversification), change from communist towards sustainability values (sustainability) and change from tourism inside the communist block to international tourism (re-internationalisation) The discussion indicates how each area of change relates to socialist and communist content and its tourism relevance and the potential for tourism development, policy and business.

The list of relevant works is not exhaustive as only tourism-focussed quality journals are surveyed in order to define the main areas of change.

A very relevant source of information and impartial advice for tourism developers and policymakers in ex-socialist and communist countries is provided regarding tourism development at the strategic and managerial levels.

This paper fills an identified information/resource gap concerning the potential and contribution of communist and socialist heritage to tourism development and business, and places this in the context of the changes CEE countries have made in order to stay and/or become tourism destinations. It introduces a new term “tourism redesign” which explains the transition in tourism development, policy and management through different areas of change.

The aim of this study is to identify the distinctive features of the diaspora phenomenon through the aggregation and systematization of the business and management literature and propose a framework to apply in the future studies.

The two-step research was based on a combination of bibliometric analysis and a manual in-depth study of academic articles. Overall, 421 academic papers in management and business journals until 2019 year were analyzed.

The authors provide a new holistic insight on the role of national diasporas for business outcomes via the analysis and systematization of the extant diaspora research. They revealed four definition approaches and five main clusters in the diaspora literature that have three main directions of research as international marketing with the tourism management focus, the IB research and diaspora entrepreneurship studies. The authors cover these main research streams and their contribution to the development of a topic.

The proposed framework including definition approaches and suggestions on the further research can serve as a foundation for future studies to investigate the diaspora phenomenon. The findings also are of practical value for firms whose attention is paid to the effective management.

To bring more clarity to the existing and future development of diaspora research, this paper improves the structuring of the overall diaspora literature through clarification of the existing definitions of diaspora, provision of the criteria qualifying someone to be identified as a member of a diaspora, as well as an analysis and systematization of existing diaspora research streams and suggestions for future research directions.