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The main objective of this study is to consider how to benefit efficiently from the significant potential of humanitarian operations by individuals. For this purpose, this study aims to assess failure factors in humanitarian supply chain operations after the Kermanshah earthquake considering the role of all parties, focusing on individuals who did not wish to work with formal organisations on the whole. In the aftermath of the Kermanshah earthquake, which occurred on 12 November 2017, improvised groups of Iranian civilians from all over the country played an important role in humanitarian supply chain operations as individuals. Although most of these groups sincerely intended to help the affected society, victims could not benefit properly from these significant potential humanitarian actions. On the contrary, these potential actions caused some issues during humanitarian operations, such as blocking roads, inappropriate last-mile distribution, wasting resources and so on.

This research study considers mixed methods, including an on-site survey, semi-structured interviewing and a questionnaire designed for statistical analyses. The analysis included 140 responses to the questionnaire, semi-structured interviews with 32 affected families, interviews with 5 emergency managers from the Housing Foundation of the Islamic Republic of Iran and on-site survey reports.

This study presents a framework for humanitarian supply chain management to deal with future disasters in the same area or areas with similar characteristics to the case study. In general, the results of this study demonstrate that the nature of humanitarian supply chain operations makes it impossible to consider that these operations are free of challenges. However, several influential factors, such as training humanitarian actors and integrated management, might considerably increase the efficiency of humanitarian operations by individuals.

This study highlights the influential factors of inappropriate humanitarian operations by individuals, derived from an analysis of the Kermanshah case and literature review. The authors suggest a framework to benefit from the significant potential of individuals with wide-ranging experiences and proficiency, for future cases similar to the case study.

This study aims to add to the understanding of the interactive nature of brand love by using a multilayer perspective that incorporates individual, group and societal contexts.

The qualitative empirical study uses abductive reasoning. Its theories and conclusions are grounded in naturally occurring data from an online brand community. The approach revealed new interactive processes of brand love.

This study extends our understanding of the interactive nature of brand love by adopting a layered perspective incorporating micro- (individual), meso- (in-group), macro- (in-group vs out-group) and mega-layer (societal) social dynamics that complements the predominant focus on individual psychological processes. It challenges the linear, monodirectional trajectory approach to brand love, suggesting that brand love is in constant flux as individuals move across the layers in their identification with the brand.

This study provides data from one destination brand in Finland. Future studies could consider other types of brands and contexts in other countries and cultures.

This study shows brand managers that brand lovers can be divided into subgroups with distinct drivers of their love to which brand managers should attend.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to describe the interactive nature of brand love through interactions between and within four layers of brand love. Furthermore, this study enhances our understanding of the contradictory aspects of brand love.