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The study analyses the resilience of food rescue organisations’ operating as “essential services” in response to the COVID-19 pandemic (March 2020) in Aotearoa New Zealand. It explores the impact of COVID-19 on the organisations’ operation, preparedness, and potential positive impacts.

The study employed a qualitative approach based on semi-structured interviews with 19 out of 23 active food rescue organisations across the country. Interview participants included CEOs, founders, managers, and coordinators.

The study identifies six impact areas experienced by food rescue organisations during COVID-19, policy and preparedness, funding, operation - logistics and personnel, supply continuity, food security and sector collaboration. Despite these impacts, the organisations showcased admirable resilience through innovation, adaptability, and collaborative practices, enabling the continuation of their services during the crisis.

The paper provides a three-stage crisis management framework to guide the development and implementation of a crisis management plan to improve the resilience and preparedness of food rescue organisations’ response to future crises. The framework is flexible and adaptable to each food rescue organisation’s unique operation and capacity.

This paper offers a retrospective analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 on 83% of food rescue organisations in Aotearoa New Zealand. It is the first paper to study the impact of COVID-19 on food rescue organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to gain insight on parental attitudes towards weaning practices and weaning foods for health in Malaysia using Q-methodology.

The study population was parents that had a child aged three years or less. A total of 47 parents were recruited to partake in a one-on-one activity which involved sorting 69 statements about weaning practices and weaning food products into a grid that was normally distributed ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”. Sorting was immediately followed by a short interview to understand the reasons behind the placement of particular statements.

Data analysis identified three statistically distinct participant attitudes towards weaning practices and foods for health that were then interpreted using the rich qualitative data from the post-sort interviews. The attitudes identified were “All Homemade and Natural”, “Commercial Convenience and Trust” and “Balance and Variety”.

This study identified the dominant sets of attitudes held by Malaysian parents towards weaning practices and weaning foods for health using Q-methodology. To authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper focussing on weaning foods for health, specifically on functional weaning food. This new understanding of shared attitudes will allow product developers, marketers and health communicators to more effectively design their products and their marketing mix to ensure that these messages resonate well with the target audience who want to provide the best weaning foods possible for their children.

The purpose of this paper is to facilitate the successful adoption of traceability technologies, such as blockchain, into food supply chains and facilitate the understanding of the barriers and enablers to their uptake by channel members' needs so that appropriate enabling strategy can be put in place.

In this paper, an integrated framework involving five components was used as the methodology: (1) diffusion of innovation theory, (2) the innovation concept, (3) the business structure-conduct-performance paradigm, (4) legitimacy and (5) trust was developed and assessed for validity through interviewing 21 channel members, including distributors, wholesalers, Internet retailers and traditional retailers associated with a global fresh produce company's supply chain in China.

Barriers negatively framing channel members' attitudes and decisions included a perceived lack of need owing to fresh produce having a short shelf life and being of low value and risk. However, the importance of traceability and the need for effective food recalls were not always understood among channel members, and distributed trust innovations were also suppressed by their lack of compatibility with the Chinese hierarchical culture.

To date, channel members' perception of innovations in food supply chains has not been considered in light of the components proposed in the integrated framework. The adapted framework used in this study ensured a comprehensive assessment of channel members' attitude and motivations toward traceability practices.

Food safety is an issue of key concern for Chinese consumers. This study identifies intrinsic and extrinsic cues on product labels or websites that Chinese consumers use to assess a product's perceived safety.

Five structured focus groups (total participants n = 41) were run in Suzhou China, in Chinese, to gather consumers' perceptions towards food safety cues.

A total of 18 safety cues were identified during the focus group discussions. Certifications, country of origin, production date and shelf life, ingredients and materials and nutritional information were the five safety cues consumers perceived to be the most important. The risks perceived by consumers differed based on: product category (e.g. meat, dairy, cereal); product form (e.g. fresh, chilled, frozen) and degree of processing. Interestingly, consumers used different food safety cues to assess a packaged product compared to the product shown on a website.

While providing deep qualitative insights into perceptions of food safety cues, further studies which seek to conduct quantitative work within a wider demographic context are encouraged.

This information will help to provide best practice advice for international marketers and government risk communicators on how and where to communicate the safety of food products so that they can maximise the effectiveness of their messaging within the appropriate information channels and thereby ensure that it resonates well with Chinese consumers.

This study contributes to the academic knowledge of consumer perceptions of cues related to food safety.

Audits are an essential part of supply chain management, whether they be of a single supplier's facilities or the whole supply chain. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, auditors mainly conducted supplier audits in-person and on-site. Subsequent travel restrictions have meant that auditors have had to perform these audits remotely. The purpose of this paper is to conceptually describe the emerging phenomenon of remote audits and explore the implications of this change for the future.

This exploratory research used qualitative interviews with key stakeholders (firms, auditors and regulators) to provide an empirical basis for the study. A total of 60 interviews were conducted in two rounds with 40 respondents from 26 organizations. A process perspective lens was used to explore the fundamental changes in supplier audits.

The study provides an interpretative conceptual framework of remote supplier audits grounded in key factors (audit process, use of technologies, document and record sharing) and identifies a set of contingency factors (technological sophistication, reputation for integrity, maturity of internal audit processes, and level of complexities and risk involved) that affect the effectiveness of remote audits.

Remote supplier audits have radically changed how supply chains operate. This paper presents the first empirically-grounded study on remote auditing. It provides a springboard for future research in this domain and practical implications for managers to assist them with the development of remote auditing in their firms and supply chains.

The purpose of this study is to investigate consumers' post–purchase experience when buying fresh food online. It examines the key dimensions of post–purchase online customer experience (post–purchase OCE) that impact customer satisfaction and repurchase intention. It also explores the role of corporate image as a moderator.

An online survey was conducted in China to capture participants' post–purchase OCE, satisfaction, repurchase intention and perceived corporate image. Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was utilized to analyse data collected from 317 Chinese fresh food online shoppers. Moderated mediation analysis was conducted to analyse the moderating effect of corporate image.

Four post–purchase OCE dimensions “product-in-hand”, “customer support”, “benefits” and “packaging” significantly drive customers' repurchase intention by enhancing customer satisfaction. “Delivery” is not influential. Additionally, for firms with a good corporate image, customer repurchase intention is more easily affected by post–purchase OCE than firms with a lower level of corporate image.

The findings inform fresh food e-commerce firms of the critical post–purchase OCE dimensions that mostly drive customer satisfaction and help retain customers. Furthermore, it implies that firms with a good corporate image must provide high-quality post–purchase OCE that matches the image because the consequences associated with a poor post–purchase OCE can be severe.

This research is among the first to investigate fresh food post–purchase OCE. It also introduces the previously underexplored moderating role of corporate image.

Strategic quality management represents a state wherein the organization’s total quality management (TQM) system is tightly interwoven with the strategy formulation process, thereby contributing to a sustainable competitive advantage. Numerous models have been proposed to describe how organizations can fully integrate strategy and TQM. Proposes that organizations undergo evolutionary stages on the way to full integration of strategy and TQM. The conceptual bases of the proposed model consist of organizational life cycles, stages of quality maturity and models describing the evolution of strategic management. Gives examples of corporations in the USA and the Asia‐Pacific region which provide preliminary support for the model’s validity.

National Animal Health Week, usually the last week in May, was instituted by presidential proclamation in 1984. (The related observances Be Kind to Animals Week, sponsored by the American Humane Association, and National Pet Week, sponsored by the Auxiliary to the American Veterinary Medical Association, are usually celebrated during the first full week in May.)

In April we celebrate Pets Are Wonderful Month (PAW) to honor the companion animals that bring joy and love to their owners' lives. Humans have lived with animals as companions for thousands of years and during that time our knowledge about the animals we choose as pets has grown enormously. Recent research involving pet therapy indicates that not only do pets give us love and companionship, but they also are beneficial to our physical and mental health. Pets are used in nursing homes, prisons, and mental health institutions, with autistic children, and in many other capacities.