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As humans are influenced by their environment, this study explores how different construal levels of ambient scent temperature affect consumers’ food choices.

This study employed a series of experimental methods from three studies, totalling five experiments. The experiments involved both laboratory and field settings, as well as neuroscientific techniques, thus generating empirical evidence.

Three studies were conducted to investigate how construal levels of both ambient scent temperature and tasks influenced food choice. Study 1 found that the construal level of ambient scent temperature significantly affected the type of food consumed. Study 2 included the task’s construal level as another factor to examine whether it interacted with the ambient scent temperature construal level. Both factors were significant, but only when perceived by the participants simultaneously. If the task’s construal level was manipulated before exposure to the ambient scent temperature, the latter did not have a significant effect. Study 3 employed a neuroscientific method to explore the mechanism behind the match between ambient scent temperature and food choices based on construal levels. The congruence of ambient scent temperature and food choice based on construal level enhanced positive emotions.

The sample size, although in line with other neuroscientific studies, was not sufficiently large for robust generalizability. This limitation can encourage future research to increase the number of participants and thus enhance the accountability of the findings. Another limitation is the participants’ cultural background.

This study’s practical implications are twofold. First, odour intensity was perceived to be the strongest in hot samples (Kähkönen et al., 1995), and we confirmed how ambient scent temperature can influence one’s food choice. Thus, food business operators can use warm ambient scent temperatures to promote hedonic food or snacks. Second, participants’ positive emotions were enhanced by the congruence of ambient scent temperature and food choice.

The association between ambient scent temperature and food choice has been extensively researched. However, this study provides an empirical explanation for the application of CLT. Accordingly, we performed a series of laboratory and field experiments using behavioural and neuroscientific approaches. The results confirmed that the construal level of ambient scent temperature significantly affected food choice. Moreover, the FAA revealed that one’s positive emotions would be prompted if there was congruence in the construal levels of ambient scent temperature and food choice.

This study has theoretical and managerial value because people’s poor understanding of food selection is affected by ambient scent temperature. Moreover, its novelty lies in the application of a neuroscientific approach to one experiment.

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to influence sports league and team operations, the brands providing these services are sponsoring sports properties to demonstrate and communicate their performance capabilities. This article examines Amazon Web Services (AWS) sponsorship with the National Football League (NFL). This sponsorship features functional congruence, which is when a sponsor has a participatory role in performing services for the property.

The AWS sponsorship with the NFL is captured by examining specially created websites, in-game sponsored elements, and television commercials aired during the broadcast of NFL games. The AWS website focuses on the services profiled in this article.

AWS provides the NFL with performance-based (on-the-field) and business-based (off-the-field) services. Of particular note, AWS capabilities help the NFL create the game schedule and address the issue of player health and safety. Demonstrating functional congruence appears to be especially valuable in business-to-business marketing where purchase decisions are more focused on brand reliability. AWS television commercials feature the tagline, “if AWS can do this for the NFL, imagine what it can do for your business.”

With the role of AI in sports in its relative infancy, it is imperative to document what services AI brands are performing for a professional sports league. Examining AWS sponsorship with the NFL provides a timely, practical example of how an AI brand communicates and positions itself using sponsorship as a marketing strategy.

Ordinary direct capitalization is normally considered procyclical in its present form (De Lisle Grissom, 2011); for this reason, an alternative approach to direct capitalization may be useful in the determination of a robust opinion of value. The valuation standards propose an alternative determination of terminal value in the discounted cash flow analysis, recommending that for cyclical assets, the terminal value should consider … “the cyclical nature of the asset and should not be performed in a way that assumes “peak” or “trough” levels of cash flows in perpetuity” (IVS 105 Valuation Approaches and Methods para 50.21 lett e).

The introduction in International Valuation Standards (IVS) of Cyclical Assets raises several questions for the community of real estate professionals and academicians (IVS, 2022, 105 Valuation Approaches and Methods para 50.09 lett d). Cyclical assets can be defined as property whose value is “influenced by upturn and downturn of the market in a significant way” (d’Amato et al., 2019).

The paper proposes different solutions to the problem. The determination of the exit value using cyclical capitalization allows for a prudent assessment of the value and may be used either as a valuation procedure or a risk analysis method.

The valuation comparison with the traditional valuation techniques will be based on an iteration of exit value in order to determine the effects of the valuation procedure on the opinion of value.

The implication of the valuation procedure is the introduction of a countercyclical valuation method to determine the exit value in order to reach stable and reliable valuations for income-producing properties.

These models may have a social implication, providing valuation for income-producing properties that may deal with the property market cycle in a more efficient way, providing efficient valuation for banks and institutions.

The paper is the first application of such a valuation procedure to the determination of exit value.

Sudden and unannounced policy changes by the government that provide banks with windfall deposits creates a challenge in terms of resource deployment. In the process, there is an impact on their risk and returns. Using data on domestic Indian commercial banks, this study aims to examine the impact of such an announcement – the 2016 demonetisation episode – on bank behaviour.

Using data on domestic Indian commercial banks during 2010–2020, the paper investigates the effect of a sudden and unannounced policy change on their risk and returns. Using the demonetisation undertaken in November 2016 as a natural experiment, the paper applies the difference-in-differences methodology to tease out the causal impact.

The findings reveal a decline in risk and an increase in returns of state-owned banks, consistent with a flight-to-safety. The response differed in terms of market and accounting measures and across state-owned banks with differing levels of capital and asset quality.

Although several aspects of the demonetisation episode have been well analysed, its impact on banks – the main conduits of the exercise – and in particular on their risk and returns, is an unaddressed area of research. Viewed from this standpoint, this is one of the early studies to undertake a comprehensive empirical analysis on this aspect.

The television (TV) content ecosystem has shifted from traditional broadcasting systems to dedicated content producers and over-the-top (OTT) services. However, less empirical effort has been paid to the actual behaviors of the mobile users who watch TV content when explaining the impact of OTT service and mobile network profiles in watching TV content. This study aims to investigate the impact of gratifications and attitude formed by mobile TV users on actual mobile TV watching behaviors, as well as the moderating impacts of paid OTT service subscriptions and mobile network profiles, based on gratification theory, cognition–affect–behavioral (CAB) framework, sunk cost effect and walled-garden effect.

This study employs the generalized linear model (GLM) with generalized estimating equations (GEE) to test hypothesized relationships. A total of 338 mobile phone users who have been watching TV content using a mobile phone participated in the survey. The moderating variables, 4 types of paid streaming platform subscriptions, were classified based on the walled gardens formed by mobile telecom services.

The study’s results revealed that obtained gratifications and opportunity constructs substantially influenced a mobile phone user’s attitude and behaviors. Additionally, mobile network profiles and the degree of access to paid platform services played significant moderating roles in the relationship between users’ attitudes and behavior.

This research enriches the existing OTT service literature and is one of the pioneering studies investigating the walled-garden effect’s role in mobile phone users’ actual watching behaviors, offering valuable practical implications for the OTT platform providers.