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This study aims to determine whether consumers are willing to pay a premium for locally produced hard apple cider and examine the factors influencing this premium. This study examines the influence of hard apple cider attributes and consumer characteristics on consumer preferences for local hard apple cider.

Data from a 2019 survey of 875 Tennessee consumers regarding their preferences for a local hard apple cider were obtained. Probit estimates were used to calculate the premium consumers were willing to pay for a locally made hard apple cider and factors influencing this premium. A multivariate probit was used to ascertain factors influencing the importance of attributes (e.g. heirloom apples, sweetness/dryness, sparking/still and no preservatives added) on local hard apple cider preference.

Consumers would pay a $3.22 premium for local hard apple cider compared with a $6.99 reference product. Local foods preferences, urbanization, weekly purchases of other alcoholic beverages and shopping venues influenced premium amounts. Other important attributes were sweetness/dryness and no preservatives. Influence of consumer demographics suggests targeted marketing of local ciders could be successful.

Few studies examine consumer preferences for hard apple ciders. This study represents a cross-sectional analysis of the premium consumers would pay for local hard apple ciders and the importance of other hard apple cider attributes.

This study aims to provide insights on how different sources of information concerning a quality assurance program (QAP) influence consumers’ wine purchase likelihood, profiles of consumers most likely to use QAPs (demographics, wine consumption and expenditures, wine involvement behaviors) and consumer attitudes toward QAPs.

Data are from a 2021 survey of 1,191 wine consumers in Tennessee and other US states. A multiple indicators multiple causes model is used to estimate how consumer demographics, wine consumption and expenditure patterns and several wine-involvement measures influence likelihood of using QAPs from eight provider sources when making wine purchase decisions. Sources include university, government, third-party certifiers, wineries and wine associations at the state, regional, national and international levels.

Wine consumers have an interest in QAP information when making wine purchase decisions. Not all QAP provider information is used equally, with almost 69% of the sample indicating the use of state wine association QAPs, but less than 44% indicating the use of government agency QAPs or third-party QAPs. Wine consumers’ demographics also influence the use of QAP information. Males, higher income consumers, residing outside of Tennessee and more wine-involved consumers are more likely to use QAPs. Consumers view QAPs as indicators of overall wine quality, ingredient quality and wine consistency rather than necessarily a means of building knowledge about local wines.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to examine not only QAP use from multiple providers but also how demographics, wine consumption, wine expenditures and wine-involvement impact QAP use.

Contemporary art organizations play a key role in driving cultural tourism, offering visitors memorable experiences. Among the segments of visitors, young adults represent a key target because they are the most interested customers in contemporary arts and they represent 23% of the international travelers. Despite their relevance, little is known about their customer experiences in contemporary arts, and the resulting arts engagement. Although their contemporary arts experiences are expected to generate great benefits in terms of social, ethical, and economical values for the entire society, the relationship between young adults and contemporary arts is typically difficult to understand and, consequently, to facilitate. To address this issue, we run a complex qualitative research project. Distinguishing young adults between those who are familiar with contemporary arts and those who are not, we conduct four research projects by applying two qualitative techniques: the in-depth interview and the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (Z-Met). Further, we extend the in-depth interviews to the contemporary arts experts. In total, 70 consumers and 10 experts participate in the research project providing cognitive and emotional insights by exploring barriers and benefits of consumption in contemporary arts. Our findings show that arts engagement is the key concept, linked to three levels of consumer reactions – cognitive, emotional, and social responses – and that it is caused by three antecedents, namely – involvement, sharing, and comprehension. Implications for the actors in the world of contemporary arts and cultural tourism are discussed to obtain higher levels of arts engagement among young adults, and, consequently, their attractiveness.

This paper aims to explain the fundraising and valuation processes of startups and discuss the conflicts of interest between entrepreneurs, venture capital (VC) firms and stakeholders in the context of startup corporate governance. Further, this paper uses the examples of WeWork and Zenefits to explain how a failure of stakeholders to demand an external audit from an independent accounting firm in early stages of funding led to an opportunity for fraud.

The methodology used is a literature review and analysis of startup valuation combined with the Fraud Triangle Theory. This paper also provides a discussion of WeWork and Zenefits, both highly visible examples of startup fraud, and explores an increased role for independent external auditors in fraud risk mitigation on behalf of stakeholders prior to an initial public offering (IPO).

This paper documents a number of fraud risks posed by the “fake it till you make it” ethos and investor behavior and pricing in the world of entrepreneurial finance and VC, which could be mitigated by a greater awareness of startup stakeholders of the value of an external audit performed by an independent accounting firm prior to an IPO.

An implication of this paper is that regulators should consider greater oversight of the startup financing process and potentially take steps to facilitate greater independence of participants in the IPO process.

Given the potential conflicts of interest between VC firms, investment banks and startup founders, the investors at the time of an IPO may be exposed to the risk that the shares of the IPO firms are overvalued at offering.

This study demonstrates how startup practices can be extended to the Fraud Triangle and issue a call to action for the accounting profession to take a greater role in protecting the public from startup fraud. This study then offers recommendations for regulators and standards entities.

There are few academic papers in the financial crime literature that link the valuation and culture of startup firms with fraud risk. This study provides a concise explanation of the process of valuation for startups and highlights the considerations for stakeholders in assessing fraud risk. In addition, this study documents an emerging role for auditors as stewards of proper valuation for pre-IPO firms.

The importance of innovation has drastically increased across diverse academic and industrial fields. Innovation has been considered an outcome of intellectual capital management. The role of innovative literacy in intellectual capital management needs to be understood. Employees at all levels of the organisation carry out managerial and/or technical innovation activities by integrating their knowledge (with other members, including researchers and developers) and innovative attitude in line with the organisational goals. This study focuses on the methodological approaches to intellectual capital components at a conceptual level, based on the framework of innovative literacy, which is not prominent in the literature.

A meta-synthesis analysis was conducted, examining published articles from 1990 to 2016 based on selected keywords. The meta-synthesis analysis explored the concept of innovation literacy by revealing some of the relationships involved in intellectual capital performance.

The findings point to gaps and methodological weaknesses in innovative literacy research and provide insights for future research.

While the findings of this study are useful, there are some limitations and recommendations for future research: One limitation of this study arises from the selection of the articles used in meta-synthesis analyses; these were published during the period 1990–2016. An expansion of the article selection to include articles published before 1990 can be useful to better understand the vision on innovation and intellectual capital. This research fills a conceptual gap in the literature. However, since this concept is evaluated using the human, customer and structural components of intellectual capital, researchers in the future can evaluate this concept with other components of intellectual capital. Finally, this research does not present a hypothesis on the relationship between innovative literacy and intellectual capital.

This study provides a novel conceptual view of integrating theories for ensuring sustainability of intellectual management and innovative literacy by synthesising findings from academic studies.

The purpose of this study is to determine the antecedents of obesity among the younger generation of Indians (Generation Y) from a psychological and lifestyle consumer perspective. The study also investigates the moderating role of demography on the body mass index (BMI) of Indian youths.

The study initially develops a conceptual model, stemming from an extensive theoretical research, and subsequently validates this using structural equation modeling (SEM) technique with a sample size of 1,242 Indian youths.

The study concludes that consumers' food habits (FH) and physical activity (PA) positively impact consumers' physical health (PH), which influences their BMI levels (BLs). Anxiety (AX), depression (DE), stress (ST), peer pressure (PP) and work pressure (WP) impact individuals' mental health (MH), which also influences their BLs. Finally, there is a significant moderating impact of demographic factors, such as age (AG), gender (GE) and income levels (ILs) on the relationship between individuals' physical and MH and individuals' BLs.

This study proposes a new model which highlights the issue of youth consumer obesity from the psychological and lifestyle perspectives. The model is effective as it has a high explanative power of 73%. The study investigates consumer obesity from emerging market like India perspective, but the study does not examine consumer food consumption behavior and obesity from developed market perspective.

Youth obesity could be considered a global pandemic, and obesity rates among the Indian youth are also increasing. This study provides valuable inputs and understanding of consumer markets to policy makers, consumer protection institutions, organizations related to the food and beverage industry, healthcare workers and consumers themselves regarding the antecedents of youth obesity (BL) in developing and emerging markets.

The study adds value to the body of literature related to consumer obesity, FH, consumer psychology and lifestyle through findings that are new in terms of findings' specificity, contextual focus and explication. Moreover, the study extends the cognitive theory of DE and the theory of planned behavior (TPB). The research effectively offers significant theoretical and practicable market knowledge to both scholars and marketing practitioners, as well as policy makers and institutions dealing with youth obesity, particularly in emerging markets.

Do female CEOs face a compensation gap? The purpose of this paper is to examine whether gender affects the total compensation of today’s CEOs, and whether it moderates ten factors influencing their total compensation.

Taking the 54 female CEOs cited in the US 2014 Fortune’s 1000 report, a matched sample of male CEOs was selected, matched according to the crosstab of age by education and by the sizes of the companies directed by these female CEOs.

Using four years’ worth of Fortune reports, between 2013 and 2016, this matched sample indicates that female CEOs are not discriminated against in terms of total compensation. However, eight factors do show a significant effect on total compensation. Using moderation analysis, the present study reveals how gender interacts with company size, sector, membership of outside boards and nature of previous experience.

This paper addresses an important and under-researched gap, with contradictory findings in the existing literature, by compiling and testing the characteristics of male and female CEOs which are not cited in Fortune 1000 reports.

Arguably, this is therefore one of the first papers to study gender differences in total compensation among Fortune 1000 CEOs using a matched sample technique, based on a larger number of female CEOs and a larger number of years than any previous research.

The goal of this study is to examine the association between managers' sexually-oriented behavior in publicly traded firms and subsequent stock market reactions. Both sexual harassment and nonharassing sexually-oriented behavior (i.e. workplace romance) are associated with negative shareholder reactions. The authors also examine factors that may alter the stock market reaction and those that may reduce the risk of lawsuit in sexual harassment cases.

Information about incidents of sexually-oriented behavior was collected from media reports and content coded. An event study with a stock market reaction was used to measure the impact of disclosed sexually-oriented behaviors. Logistic regression was used to assess the relationship between incident characteristics and sexual harassment lawsuits.

Disclosure of managers' sexually-oriented behavior is associated with a negative stock market reaction. Interestingly, the reaction was not more severe for sexual harassment disclosures compared to nonharassing behavior (i.e. workplace romance). Results also suggest that terminating a manager prior to disclosure of an event is negatively related to a harassment lawsuit.

The authors report this as the first study to focus on the stock market reaction of sexually-oriented harassing and nonharassing behavior of managers. This work complements research that documents the negative impact of sexual harassment on individuals by demonstrating these behaviors are associated with loss and risk at an organizational level.