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Although there are at least two important characteristics of targeted promotions—promotion individualization (i.e. whether the offer is personalized for the recipient) and notification exclusivity (i.e. how small the number of recipients is)—most previous studies on targeted promotion have conceptualized them synonymously. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of targeted promotion on consumer purchases by conceptualizing these separately and incorporating them in a single model. Also, this study explores how the effects of these differ depending on customer loyalty. We particularly examine the promotional responses of extremely loyal customers, distinguishing them from other loyal customers.

Using actual customer purchase data, we develop a two-stage model of the consumer decision-making process involving decisions of whether and how much to purchase. The two characteristics of targeted promotions—promotion individualization and notification exclusivity—first influence the probability of purchase and then the purchase amount given purchase.

The results show that customers respond positively to individualization and exclusivity. The effect of individualization is reduced as customer loyalty increases from loyal customers to extremely loyal customers while that of exclusivity remains the same.

By clearly identifying the two characteristics of targeted promotions and developing an empirical model that captures the effects of these separately, this paper provides new academic and managerial insights that were not clearly identified in the current literature.

This chapter provides a historical contextualisation of health tracking and public health communication from the post-World War Two development of the welfare state, through the birth of neoliberalism, until today’s individualising practices of digital health tracking and quantification of bodies. Through an examination of these three phases of public health quantification of bodies, encompassing the socio-economic, cultural and political shifts since 1948, combined with the development and wide adoption of digital health and self-quantifying technologies, this chapter traces the changing landscape and the dramatic implications this has had for shifting who is responsible for maintaining ‘good’ health. This chapter illustrates how neoliberal free market principles have reigned over UK public health discourse for many decades, seeing health as no longer binary to illness, but as a practice of individual self-quantification and self-care. In turn, the chapter explores how the quantification and health tracking of bodies has become a dominant discourse in public health promotion, as well as individual citizenship and patient practices. This discourse still exists pervasively as we move into the digital society of the 2020s, through the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond; with public health strategies internationally promoting the use of digital health tools in our everyday, further positioning citizens as entrepreneurial subjects, adopting extensive technological measures in an attempt to measure and ‘optimise’ health, normalising the everyday quantification of bodies.

The purpose of this paper is to review two school intervention projects aiming to promote students' self‐efficacy in Germany. Self‐efficacy, defined as people's “beliefs in their capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments”, is a core prevention criterion of mental health. It is positively connected to important facets of personality (e.g. motivational orientation, social competencies) as well as to health‐related situation‐specific behaviour (e.g. coping with stress, conflict solving).

Two intervention projects, “Self‐efficacious Schools – SESC” and “Fostering Self‐efficacy and Self‐Determination in class – FOSS”, made teachers familiar with the concept of self‐efficacy to enable them to develop and adapt intra‐curricular promotion measures of students' school self‐efficacy and social self‐efficacy.

Individualisation of task demands and performance feedback as well as a high transparency of teachers' demands and evaluation criteria are beneficial for students' school self‐efficacy. Social self‐efficacy is enhanced by establishing a positive class climate, where students support each other and teachers are sensitive to the individual needs of their students.

Both FOSS and SESC are multi‐component non‐randomised controlled studies. Thus, future research is needed focusing on the different measures separately using RCT‐designs.

The actual implementation of promoting strategies into school lessons is the decisive step of strengthening students' mental health at school. As a consequence, promotion measures have to be embedded into organizational structures which can motivate teachers to learn and implement innovation even under unfavourable conditions.

In contrast to extracurricular activities, there has been limited research on the implementation and evaluation of prevention activities continuously integrated into the mainstream school curriculum and normal lessons.

This article aims to discuss the individualisation trend in the provision of social services, focusing on activation services specifically.

The individualisation trend in the provision of activation services is analysed against the background of public sector as well as social sector as well as social policy reforms: the introduction of new modes of governance and the rise of the active welfare state respectively.

Concrete manifestations of individualised service provision are often based on various interpretations of individualisation and reflect different meanings of citizens’ participation, and refer to different modes – or rather, mixes of different modes – of governance. The general argument of the article is illustrated and elaborated by analysing three national case studies of individualised service provision in the context of activation: the UK, The Netherlands and Finland.

The trend that is analysed in the article – individualised service provision – is very clearly present in welfare state reforms, but has thus far not received much attention in academic literature.

The first part of the paper aimed to interpret the changes addressed by the concepts of governance and activation in their context, in order to grasp the larger picture of the societal transformation underlying them: the starting point is the assumption that new modes of governance in activation policies are a fruitful entry point for effectively understanding deep waves of change of contemporary society. The second part aims to briefly introduce the papers included in this issue.

The paper insists on a perspective according to which there are two main dimension characterising the context of addressed transformations: the paradoxical torsion of the historical process of individualisation in the new spirit of capitalism; the profound redesign of the institutional programme, implying a new horizon for the instances of publicness.

Different and contradictory trends are pointed out in the actual pursuing of objectives of governance and activation, as far as the process of individualisation and the redesign of publicness are concerned. The impossibility of finding an abstract and universal evaluation of these transformations and the necessity of situated empirical inquiries are stressed.

The paper demonstrates the relevance of deepening the normative underlying dimensions (with regard to individualisation and publicness) of social processes for a better understanding of concrete transformations (specifically: operational and substantive changes introduced by new modes of governance in activation policies).

This paper aims to explore how neo‐liberalism shapes income support policy and lone mothers' experiences in Canada and the USA.

A critical comparative analysis is undertaken of how Canadian and US governments take up sociological concepts of risk, market citizenship, and individualization, whether explicitly or implicitly, in the design and administration of neo‐liberal income support policies directed at lone mothers. Specifically, the contradictory life circumstances that Canadian and American lone mothers experience when they access income supports that are designed ostensibly to construct/reconstruct them as citizens capable of risk taking in their search for employment and self‐sufficiency are compared.

The paper finds that the realities for poor lone mothers are remarkably similar in the two countries and therefore argue that income support policies, particularly welfare‐to‐work initiatives, underpinned by neo‐liberal tenets, can act in a counter‐intuitive manner exposing lone mothers to greater rather than lesser economic and social insecurity/inequality, and constructing them as risk aversive and dependent.

The economic and social implications/contradictions of neo‐liberal restructuring of income support policies for lone mothers is revealed.

This paper contributes to broader scholarship on the gendered dimensions of neo‐liberal restructuring of welfare states in late modernity.

This study aims to, with family structures in urban China becoming increasingly diverse, examine how and to what extent the characteristics of everyday family meals relate to the establishment and strengthening of a collective sense of the Chinese family. Integrating ritual and family identity theories developed through studies conducted in the West, the research explores the relationship between family identity and the major dimensions that characterize ritualistic practices through an examination of family dinners in a non-Western context.

The mixed-method approach combines a qualitative phase (focus groups and interviews) with a large-scale survey of households (n = 1,319) in four Chinese cities.

The results find a positive relationship between family identity and commitment to family meals, as well as continuity promoted through family meals, at a 99 per cent confidence level.

One important research limitation is that the sample was limited to four cities. In addition, it is difficult for quantitative measures to capture the richness of emotionally and symbolically laden constructs, such as communication, commitment, continuity and family identity.

The results provide insights into the meanings of family meals in China. With over one-third of household expenditures spent on food in Chinese cities, the formulation of brand positions and promotions can be informed through a greater understanding of the influence of family dynamics on food consumption.

The findings indicate that, within China’s dynamic environment of changing family values, strengthening the ritualistic characteristics of everyday family activities, such as family meals, can lead to an increase in a collective sense of family.

The study demonstrates under what conditions, within this rapidly changing socioeconomic environment, the family dinner provides stability and a sense of unity for Chinese families. In China, a trend toward individualization is accompanied by a deep-seeded sense of obligation toward family that exerts an important influence on meal composition and patterns.

This article proposes a new paradigm including the concepts of contextualized multiple intelligences (CMIs) and triplization for reforming education. A pentagon theory is developed as the base for learning and teaching, to help students develop the necessary CMIs in the new century. Then the article illustrates the concepts and processes of triplization, including globalization, localization, and individualization, and explains why they together can provide a completely new paradigm to reform school education, curricula and pedagogy and how they can substantially contribute to the development of CMIs, of not only students, but also teachers and schools. Finally, the implications of the new paradigm for changing curricula and pedagogy are advanced. It is hoped that the new century education can support students becoming CMI citizens, who will be engaged in life‐long learning and will creatively contribute to building up a multiple intelligence society and global village.

This article's purpose is to analyse the current transformations of public action in two main respects: on the one side the relationships between individuals and institutions and their recent evolutions, on the other, the new contractual or market‐like ways of designing and implementing public action. This twofold transformation and the extent to which it represents a deep‐seated revolution or a more limited recalibration of the public realm are to be investigated against the case of Swiss active labour market policies.

This issue is examined through the design of a theoretical and normative typology, which is then applied to the case of active labour market policies in Switzerland, based on an in‐depth empirical investigation (more than 50 interviews with field actors).

The emergence of new modes of governance coincides with the promotion of market solutions to unemployment, thus leading to a conception of welfare and its individual beneficiaries as subordinate to labour market requirements.

The empirical part of this paper focuses on one specific case, the Swiss ALMPs. Further research is needed for a more general assessment of the issue.

One key element of the approach is the link made between substantial and procedural issues related to recent evolutions in the field of social integration policies. In the authors' view substantial and organisational aspects of the political process should be studied jointly.