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The purpose of this paper is to introduce emulation marketing as an important strategy to consider for services marketing researchers and practitioners, given the ability to plant an aspirational goal in consumers' minds. Building on theories of lifestyle, values, self-concept and others, this conceptual paper presents the case for emulation marketing as an important consideration within services marketing.

To explore mechanisms that will define service research in the future, this conceptual paper reviews the literature across the spectrum of social comparison and learning, social adaptation, conformity, values, persuasion and role modeling. The authors analyze existing theories while proposing a new mechanism, emulation, to advance research in service literature.

This paper suggests mechanisms to promote emulation in services marketing through the consumer decision process. A research agenda for future work is provided with emphasis on lack of emulation, emulation and status, emulation and aging, emulation and technology, emulation and linguistics and the dark side of emulation. Within each area, a series of considerations are discussed.

This paper introduces emulation as an important mechanism within services marketing. It offers a research agenda focused on a variety of emerging areas in the field. The paper contributes to services marketing and future research by proposing a novel approach, via emulation, to services marketing.

Megaprojects are seen as vehicles for delivering significant social value. However, megaproject decision-making, which is deeply embedded in networks comprising formal and informal practices involving the exercise of power, can facilitate or hinder social value delivery. Moreover, these decision-making practices are often intentionally designed and executed to remain hidden and so are not easily identifiable but have implications for maximising social value. This paper aims to identify the hidden barriers to social value delivery on megaprojects resulting from the decision-making environment.

Governmentality theory was used to deconstruct the megaproject decision-making environment. The critical realism philosophy was merged with a narrative inquiry approach to analyse the everyday, taken-for-granted practices that resulted in the decision-making outcomes. Data were collected through 22 in-depth semi-structured interviews to uncover stories highlighting the nature of power relations underpinning the decision-making environment of one megaproject in the Asia Pacific region.

Governmentality theory as a lens showed that emergent, informal governing practices blend with formal governance mechanisms, creating a complex mix of overt and covert power dynamics. The findings suggest that the exercise of covert power by project team members through deviant tactics hinders social value delivery. Therefore, understanding the power dynamics that influence the decision-making of project team members is key for maximising social value delivery.

Originality stems from the use of governmentality theory and critical realism to deconstruct and explain the megaproject decision-making environment, enabling observation of otherwise challenging-to-understand, complex and hidden barriers to the delivery of social value. This paper offers a novel way of explaining social value delivery through megaproject decision-making.

This study aims to examine the drivers of membership at the micro-level to influence club retention rates and promote positive health-related behaviours through encouraging active member participation.

The data for this study (n = 197) was obtained from four martial arts groups in Melbourne, Australia. Self-administered questionnaires assessed the importance of personal benefits, risk taking, personal values and enjoyment of specific benefits.

Hierarchical analysis identified shared values, excitement (ß = −0.066, p < 0.05), sense of belonging (ß = 0.644, p < 0.05), enjoyment of activities (ß = 0.179, p < 0.05), fitness level (ß = 0.564, p < 0.05), belt status (ß = 0.466 p < 0.05) and the expectations of instructor (ß = 0.144 p < 0.05) and others (ß = 0.483 p < 0.05) as predictors in attracting and retaining club membership. Adult Australians share socio-demographic characteristics and common desires to attain specific benefits which appear to evolve, as membership is not perceived as an interim engagement but rather as a lifelong lifestyle choice.

By advocating positive associations between lifetime membership and active participation, social marketing campaigns can inform and contribute towards a knowledge base for sports clubs to develop targeted strategies and practices towards membership retention.

This study contributes to evidence-based social marketing approaches in an era of ageing demographics, where there remains a need to learn more about how to manage active memberships to promote healthy lifestyles and well-being at a national, community and individual level. The approach of exploring club membership at micro-level to inform tailored macro-level strategic health-related messages is also novel.

The aim of this paper is the analysis of teenage consumers with varying degrees of healthy and unhealthy lifestyle habits and different healthy and unhealthy eating behaviours and food involvement, and its effects on packaging cues. At the same time, the paper tries to analyse the moderating role of gender.

With a sample of 589 (316 girls and 273 boys) young consumers (14–17 years old) and using SEM methodology, this paper tested a theoretical model related to the association between health, food, packaging cues and gender differences.

Among teenagers, healthy habits (sports) and healthy eating behaviours affect positively food involvement (p < 0.01 in both cases), and food involvement is positively related to informative packaging cues (p < 0.05). There are some differences between girls and boys. For example (1) there is a significant relationship between your consumers' sports activities and food involvement, and young consumers' healthy eating behaviours and food involvement. (2) More food-involved teenagers are those consumers that significantly read more carefully the packaging labels. Or (3) gender could be considered as a variable able to moderate the relationships between health and unhealthy lifestyle habits and eating behaviours, food involvement and packaging decisions.

The present paper tries to fulfil some literature gaps by developing a study with teenage consumers to solve three main questions/objectives: (1) Do healthy behaviours affect teenagers' food involvement? (2) Does teenagers' food involvement affect teenagers' packaging perceptions? and (3) Do girls and boys differ in their food packaging perceptions?

This paper examines the role of senior personnel within Active Partnerships as the personnel seek to strategically manage UK policy developments. This paper explores how Active Partnerships engage with the policy process within an environment characterized by systemic structural changes, mounting fiscal challenges, political uncertainty and a succession of public health concerns.

Using the Multiple-Streams Framework (MSF), a case study approach was adopted, focusing on the perspectives of senior personnel. Semi-structured interviews with individuals involved in the management and operation of five Active Partnerships across the South of England and one national stakeholder that works closely with Active Partnerships were conducted. Data were collected during the period following Andy Reed's review of the operation of Active Partnerships. The interviews were complemented by documentary analysis.

Findings illustrate that while senior practitioners within Active Partnerships often behave in line with Lipsky's notion of street-level bureaucrats, by maximizing collective leverage, advocating priorities and providing a voice for local partners, the senior practitioners adopt behaviors more akin to policy entrepreneurs. In this sense, they seek to influence the policy process at critical junctures in order to promote preferred outcomes and protect sectoral interests.

This study has explored the relationship between strategic management and the policy process in the context of the rapidly changing policy domain that frames the work of regional sports organizations known as Active Partnerships. The conceptual frame of the investigation is the concept of “policy entrepreneurship”, which seeks to articulate how individuals and collectives engage in the policy process, in order to secure outcomes conducive to their objectives. This, in turn, provides a sense of context for the contemporary challenges associated with the management of sport and physical activity (PA).

Sports betting has become more prevalent, visible and socially accepted in Western liberal societies than ever before. This normalisation of gambling on sports has been fuelled by deregulation, the omnipresence of advertising and the growing dependency of elite sports on sponsorship revenue streams from the gambling industry. That said, much remains to be uncovered about the mechanisms through which this normalisation of gambling occurs in sports. This chapter focuses on the role of sports clubs in Belgium and the Netherlands, drawing on empirical insights from two related studies that examine the oft-neglected salience of integrity as a key factor shaping gambling-related policy and practice at the organisational level. This sets the stage for a critical research agenda that can support the denormalisation of gambling, and the deconstruction of dominant discourses that frame sports betting as a fun, risk-free social practice.

This study aims to examine the impact of the gameful experience on behavioural outcomes. Drawing from stimulus–organism–response theory, it proposes and tests a new model that investigates the relationship between the gameful experience, brand loyalty and intention to use gamified branded applications in the sports context. In addition, it explores the mediating role of customer–brand engagement (CBE) and the moderating role of self-image congruity (SIC).

A sample of 436 active users of sport-related branded gamified applications was used to test the model. Data was collected from online sports forums, brands’ Facebook communities and during sporting events.

Results indicate that the gameful experience positively and directly impacts behavioural intentions but does not directly influence brand loyalty. This relationship becomes partially significant when mediated by CBE. In addition, results show that users with high levels of SIC are more likely to continue using the gamified application, whereas users with low levels are more likely to engage with the brand.

This study expands the gamification literature in the sports sector by revealing the importance of the gameful experience in driving loyalty, behavioural intentions and CBE. It proposes a new model that sheds light on the emotional aspect of the interaction between a user and a gamified system and the importance of exploring the effects of moderators, such as SIC, in these relationships.

This research work explores the perception of children's experiences as spectators of a sporting event. The study focusses on the 19th Mediterranean Games hosted by Oran in the summer of 2022 and aims to analyse the trace of emotions and memories that the event left in their minds. A qualitative survey was conducted with 22 resident children who attended the event as spectators. The results show that a child's experience at a sporting event is holistic, appearing in several dimensions: a cognitive dimension, referring to what the child learnt from the event, and an affective dimension, which is important for creating strong and meaningful experiences for children at sporting events.

There are many profound links between fashion and tourism. This chapter provides a critical reflection, mainly from a philosophical, historical, and linguistic perspective, on the dynamic relationship and parallel evolution between these two sectors. It explains how their interconnectedness form and mirror contemporary society. This chapter classifies the connections between the two, starting with the person, her body, and the relationship the latter has with fashion and tourism, and with the contemporary society at large. Four layers of such connections are exemplified. It also discusses a selfie, as a symbolic (digital) communication object and a complex phenomenon facilitated by changing technological affordances and societal functions as an excellent case of the complex relationships between fashion and tourism.