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This study aims to evaluate the impact of the proposed CARICOM Octagon “High In” Warning Label (OWL), against four alternative Front-of-Package Nutrition Labels (FOPNLs): US “Facts Up Front” (FUF), UK Multi-Traffic Light (MTL), Mexican OWL and the Brazilian Magnifying Glass “High In” Warning Label, on respondents’ purchase intentions, perception of healthiness and understanding of nutritional information across and within food products.

In an online randomized control experiment, adults from eight CARICOM countries (n = 948) were randomly assigned to a control and four treatment FOPNL groups. Respondents were tasked to choose between four categories of mock products with three variations in healthfulness across and within products.

No statistically significant difference (p > 0.05) was found across FOPNL groups compared to the OWL on outcomes of purchase intentions and perception of healthfulness. Regarding the understanding of nutritional information, FUF performed the best, as participants were 1.76 times (p = 0.03) and 3.23 times (p = 0.00) more likely to correctly identify the products with the highest and lowest amount of sugar, respectively. Results were similar for products with the lowest sodium (odds ratio [OR] = 2.25, p = 0.00) and highest saturated fats (OR = 2.11, p = 0.00).

Some limitations of this study include the use of an online platform to conduct the experiment. Though this was the most cost-effective method of execution and presented many benefits, there were limitations to using this approach. Firstly, this approach may not entirely replicate the real world in store purchasing settings. Although online grocery shopping is becoming increasingly popular, in the Caribbean, most grocery purchases are made in stores. Furthermore, online surveys are more likely to lead to samples with higher educational and income levels than the average population (Bethlehem, 2010). The skewedness observed was not unique to this study and was common with similar published studies (Franco-Arellano et al., 2020; Packer et al., 2021; Talati et al., 2018). Nevertheless, all respondents were randomly assigned to groups, and it was confirmed that there were no systematic differences in the education and income levels of participants across the FOPNL groups.

Some CARICOM policy makers advocate for the use of “High In” warning labels to limit the intake of nutrients of concern (NOCs) and to encourage healthier eating habits among consumers. However, regional private sector stakeholders have expressed concern about the lack of sufficient research undertaken at a regional level, to inform the effectiveness of this model within CARICOM, and some have also expressed a preference for the use of other interpretative and reductive FOPNLs, already in use in the Region. The results of this study reveal that while interpretative FOPNLs like the Draft CARICOM Regional Standard, DCRS5 (OWL) can assist consumers in making healthier purchase decisions, it was outperformed by the MTL on perception of healthiness and by the FUF on the understanding of nutrient information. It was also noted that the DCRS5 (OWL) was more effective when choosing across products with distinct nutritional differences but performed poorly in assisting respondents with making healthy purchasing decisions when all the products contained NOCs above the relevant thresholds. This study’s findings highlight that the existing FOPNL schemes can be further enhanced for improved outcomes. This can be achieved by using a hybrid approach which includes both reductive and interpretative elements to allow for comparison across and within food products. The literature also suggests the use of colour and combining positive as well as negative elements to encourage ease of interpretation, improved understanding and healthier food choices.

A properly designed FOPNL can support consumers in making healthier food choices; however, it must be accompanied by measures to raise consumer awareness and increase the health literacy of the population to cause shifts in preferences and behavioural patterns over time. This must also be coupled with policies to make healthy food choices more affordable to the general population.

The results of this study revealed that FUF and MTL performed the best in assisting participants to correctly identify between products with the highest or lowest NOCs at the 5% significant level, and that the OWL performed poorly in assisting participants with making healthy purchasing decisions when all the products contained NOCs above the relevant thresholds.

This study aims to investigate the mechanical properties of sustainable recycled polypropylene (rPP) composite materials integrated with spherical silicon carbide (SiC) particles.

A representative volume element (RVE) analysis is employed to predict the Young’s modulus of rPP filled with spherical-shaped SiC at varying volume percentages (i.e. 10, 20 and 30%).

The investigation reveals that the highest values of Young’s modulus, tensile strength, flexural strength and mode 1 frequency are observed for the 30% rPP/SiC samples, exhibiting increases of 115, 116, 62 and 15%, respectively, compared to pure rPP. Fractography analysis confirms the ductile nature of pure rPP and the brittle behavior of the 30% rPP/SiC composite. Moreover, the RVE method predicts Young’s modulus more accurate than micromechanical models, aligning closely with experimental results. Additionally, results from ANSYS simulation tests show tensile strength, flexural strength and frequency within a 10% error range when compared to experimental data.

This study contributes to the field by demonstrating the mechanical enhancements achievable through the incorporation of sustainable materials like rPP/SiC, thereby promoting environmentally friendly engineering solutions.

The objective of this paper is to further the understanding of netnography as a research method for supply chain academics. Netnography is a method for gathering and gaining insight from industry-specific online communities. We prescribe that viewing netnography through the lens of the supply chain will permit researchers to explore, discover, understand, describe or report concepts or phenomena that have previously been studied via survey research or quantitative modeling.

To introduce netnography to supply chain research, we propose a framework to guide how netnography can be adopted and used. Definitions and directions are provided, highlighting some of the practices within netnographic research.

Netnography provides the researcher with another avenue to pursue answers to research questions, either alone or in conjunction with the dominant methods of survey research and quantitative modeling. It provides another tool in the researchers’ toolbox to engage practitioners in the field.

The development of netnography as a research method is associated with Robert Kozinets. He developed the method to study online communities in consumer behavior. We justify why this method can be applied to supply chain research, how to collect data and provide research examples of its use. This technique has room to grow as a supply chain research method.

Previous studies on social influence and virtual product adoption have mainly taken users’ purchase behavior as a dichotomous variable (i.e. purchasing or not). Given the prevalence of competing versions (basic vs upgraded) of a virtual product in online communities, this paper investigated the differences in the effect of social influence on users’ adoption of basic and upgraded choices of a virtual product. It also examined how the effect varies with users’ social status and user-level network density.

A natural experiment was conducted in an online game community. Two competing versions (basic vs upgraded) of a virtual product were provided for in-game purchase while a random set of users selected from 897,765 players received the notification of their friends’ adoption information. A competing-risk model was used to test the hypotheses.

Social influence exerts a stronger positive effect on users’ adoption of the upgraded virtual product than of the basic virtual product. Middle-status users have the greatest (least) susceptibility to social influence in adopting the upgraded (basic) virtual product than low- and high-status users. User’s network density enhances the effect of social influence on adoption of both virtual products, even more for the upgraded one.

This research contributes to the social influence and product adoption literature by disentangling the different effects of social influence on basic and upgraded versions of a virtual product. It also identifies the boundary conditions that social influence works for each version of the virtual product.