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This study aims to examine adolescents’ social media environment connected to unhealthy food marketing. As social media have become a ubiquitous part of young people’s everyday lives, marketers have also shifted their focus to these channels. Literature on this phenomenon is still scarce and often takes a quite narrow view of the role of marketing in social media. Furthermore, the experiences of the adolescents are seldom considered.

Using a sociocultural approach and netnographic methodology, this study presents findings from a research project conducted in Finland. The data consist of both social media material and focus group interviews with adolescents.

The findings elaborate on unhealthy food marketing to adolescents in social media from two perspectives: sociocultural representations of unhealthy foods in social media marketing and social media influencers connecting with adolescents.

The study broadens and deepens the current understanding of unhealthy food marketing to adolescents taking place in social media. The study introduces a novel perspective to the topic by looking at it as a sociocultural phenomenon.

The purpose of this study is to identify the consumption intention of Baba Nyonya Peranakan ethnic food among the youth generation by examining the effect of media influence and curiosity.

A causal study through the quantitative method is applied. This study focused on the youth generation, and a total of 219 valid responses were used for hypothesis testing using Statistical Package for Social Sciences and SmartPLS software. Purposive sampling, under non-probability sampling, was used. The data were collected through an online survey. The survey link was disseminated mainly on social media groups.

All of the hypotheses were found to be statistically significant. Media influence was found to directly and indirectly influence the consumption intention of Baba Nyonya ethnic food through attitude and curiosity. The involved stakeholders could also be more alert and improve the strategic planning based on the research finding that can stimulate more interest among consumers, benefiting the national gastronomy heritage tourism development.

The integration of biculturalism is rooted in knowledge about food, media coverage about food and food for social events that influence the formation of national food identity. Baba Nyonya food brings a unique identity with mixed heritage and culture, combined ingredients and recipes between two majority races of Malay and Chinese. However, exposure to ethnic food is lacking and causes the youth generation to unaware and not interested to try ethnic food. This study initiates to examine the effect of media influence and curiosity as food promotion via social media potentially to influence and lead to increased consumption of ethnic food.

High levels of child obesity alongside rising stunting and the absence of a coherent food policy have deemed UK’s food system to be broken. The National Food Strategy (NFS) was debated intensely in media, with discussions on how and who should fix the food system.

Using a mixed methods approach, the authors conduct framing analysis on traditional media and sentiment analysis of twitter reactions to the NFS to identify frames used to shape food system policy interventions.

The study finds evidence that the media coverage of the NFS often utilised the tropes of “culture wars” shaping the debate of who is responsible to fix the food system – the government, the public or the industry. NFS recommendations were portrayed as issues of free choice to shift the debate away from government action correcting for market failure. In contrast, the industry was showcased as equipped to intervene on its own accord. Dietary recommendations made by the NFS were depicted as hurting the poor, painting a picture of helplessness and loss of control, while their voices were omitted and not represented in traditional media.

British media’s alignment with free market economic thinking has implications for food systems reform, as it deters the government from acting and relies on the invisible hand of the market to fix the system. Media firms should move beyond tropes of culture wars to discuss interventions that reform the structural causes of the UK’s broken food systems.

As traditional media coverage struggles to capture the diversity of public perception; the authors supplement framing analysis with sentiment analysis of Twitter data. To the best of our knowledge, no such media (and social media) analysis of the NFS has been conducted. The paper is also original as it extends our understanding of how media alignment with free market economic thinking has implications for food systems reform, as it deters the government from acting and relies on the invisible hand of the market to fix the system.

Customers' participation in the online health community to create value with the brand is growing research interest. In addition, customers are using social media platforms to create value in the food sector. This rises points to the need to study consumers' interactions with online communities and the role of social media content and customer satisfaction in such an environment.

This research collects data using a survey approach. The data were analysed using a partial least square-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

The findings indicated the impact of social media content and satisfaction on value co-creation in healthy food online communities. The study’s results provide significant new insights into the food sector during the pandemic.

This research enhances the knowledge of satisfaction and value co-creation in the social media context. The findings build on the previous literature on value co-creation, add to the food sector and explain the mediating role of satisfaction between social media content and value co-creation.

The continuing development of digital technologies creates expanding opportunities for information transparency. Consumers use social media to provide online reviews that are focused on changing levels of consumer trust. This study examines the effect of perceived risk that prompts consumers to search for online reviews in the context of food safety.

Commitment-trust theory forms the theoretical lens to model changes in consumer trust resulting from online reviews. Consumer-based questionnaire surveys collected data to test the structural model, using structural equation modelling (SEM).

The findings show when consumers perceive high levels of risk, they use social media to obtain additional product-related information. The objective, unanimous, evidential and noticeable online reviews are perceived as informative to consumers. Perceived informativeness of positive online reviews is found to increase consumers trust and, in turn, increase their purchase intentions.

The findings contribute to the knowledge of online review-based trust literature and provide far-reaching implications for information system (IS)-practitioners in business.

There is limited research examining the relationship between social media and green food purchasing behaviour. In the current study, we examine the factors that affect consumers’ green food purchasing behaviour in Türkiye.

Data collected from the participants by survey method were analysed using Smart PLS 4.0 with IBM SPSS 26 and PLS to run SEM.

Our findings have revealed that from all the structural elements in the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), only attitude and perceived behavioural control contribute to consumers’ green food purchasing behaviour, while subjective norms do not contribute to consumers’ green food purchasing behaviour. Additionally, it was found that social media usage (SMU) and digital marketing interactions (DMI) have a positive and significant effect on green food purchasing behaviour. More information, experiences, opinions and recommendations on green foods in social media channels can encourage consumers to buy more green food.

This study first evaluates the applicability of the TPB model in explaining green food purchasing behaviour. This study is extended with two new factors included in the original framework of the TPB model, namely, SMU and DMI.

This study explores the tourists' behavioral intention toward tasting ethnic food by proposing 'enjoyment’ as an indirect mechanism in improvising the model of Wang. In other words, when affective and cognitive components are triggered positively while reading online gastronomy reviews on social media platforms, enjoyment is aroused, subsequently enhancing the desire to taste ethnic foods displayed online.

Data from 385 visitors from Kashmir, India, were gathered using a purposive sample technique. The research model was put to the test using PLS-SEM.

Direct and indirect mechanisms influence Behavioral Intention. Enjoyment acts as a mediator. Overall, the results validated the presence of three direct and full mediation paths.

This study will help tourism practitioners justify their promotional activities on social networking sites, particularly in endorsing regional ethnic dishes. For example, tourism authorities could collaborate with bloggers on social media and offer incentives to promote attractive images of ethnic food. Similarly, ethnic food outlets can improve online exposure and interactivity by encouraging travelers to leave feedback after visits.

Unlike other studies, this research broadens our understanding by focusing on direct and indirect mechanisms. The inclusion of a mediator enhanced the total variance of the dependent variable.

Despite the pervasiveness of teen-targeted food advertising on social media, little is known about the persuasive elements (or power) found within those ads. This research study aims to engage with the concept of “visual style” to explore the range of visual techniques used in Instagram food marketing to teenagers.

A participatory study was conducted with 57 teenagers, who used a specially designed mobile app to capture images of the teen-targeted food marketing they encountered for seven days. A visual thematic analysis was used to assess and classify the advertisements that participants captured from Instagram and specifically tagged with “visual style”.

A total of 142 food advertisements from Instagram were tagged with visual style, and classified into five main styles: Bold Focus, Bespoke, Absurd, Everyday and Sensory.

This study contributes to an improved understanding about how the visual is used as a marketing technique to capture teenagers’ attention, contributing to the persuasive power of marketing messages.

Food marketing is a significant part of the young consumer’s marketplace, and this study provides new insight into the sophisticated nature of such marketing – revealing the visual styles used to capture the attention of its brand-aware audience.

This research aims to examine Generation Z's perspectives of sustainable consumption in food tourism experiences, considering the drivers on food tourists' behavioural intents and basing its analysis on the value-attitude-behaviour model of norm activation theory.

Using a qualitative design, 27 qualitative online surveys were conducted with Generation Z travellers who are also active on social media.

Results show that while they are aware of environmental knowledge and ethical food choices and think that sustainable food consumption improves individual and social wellbeing, the sustainability of food consumption is limited by factors such as time and budget. Also, results reveal that the eating habits of Generation Z people are more sustainable when they eat at home than when they travel. Theoretical and practical implications for food tourism management and marketing are described.

While food tourism has been largely investigated in recent years, little previous research has focused on the relationships between daily eating behaviours and sustainable consumption in food tourism experiences, especially from the perspective of Generation Z individuals and the influence of social media on individual and social food decisions.

The current research aimed to examine the prevalence of Instagram posts featuring ultra-processed products targeted at adolescents in Uruguay and hence investigate the frequency of such posts among a vulnerable consumer segment in a country that cannot be classified as WEIRD (i.e. Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic).

The study relied on a cross-sectional content analysis. A total of 2,014 Instagram posts promoting ultraprocessed products or brands commercializing such products, generated by 118 Instagram accounts between August 15th, 2020, and February 15th, 2021, were analyzed. Nine indicators of food marketing targeted at adolescents were selected to identify posts targeted at this age segment. Inductive coding was used to describe the content of the posts. Descriptive statistics and generalized linear models were used to analyze the data.

In total, 17.6% of the posts were identified as targeted at adolescents. Graphic design and adolescent language were the most prevalent indicators of marketing targeted at adolescents, followed by explicit references to adolescents or young adults and memes. Posts identified as targeted at adolescents mainly promoted snacks and discretionary foods. Differences in the content of posts identified as targeted and not targeted at adolescents were observed.

The analysis was restricted to one social media platform in one country during a limited period of time, which limits the generalizability of the findings to other media platforms, samples and settings.

Results stress the need to implement digital food marketing regulations to reduce exposure of adolescents to the deleterious effects of stemming from marketing of unhealthy foods and provide empirical evidence to inform their development.

The study breaks new ground by analyzing the prevalence and exploring the characteristics and content of Instagram posts promoting ultra-processed products to adolescents in an under-researched geographic area of the world.