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Pedestrian injuries and deaths should be viewed as a critical public health issue. The purpose of this chapter is to show how incorporating safety from traffic into broader efforts to increase walking and physical activity has the potential to have a significant health impact. In this chapter we provide an overview of pedestrian safety considerations having to do with population health and the built environment. The chapter is organised around a conceptual framework that highlights the multiple pathways through which safe walking environments can contribute to improved population health. We review the existing literature on pedestrian safety and public health. Pedestrian safety will remain a vexing challenge for public health and transportation professionals in the coming decades. But addressing this problem on multiple fronts and across multiple sectors is necessary to reduce injuries and fatalities and to unleash the full potential of walking to improve population health through increased physical activity. This chapter uniquely contributes a conceptual framework for understanding the relationship between the walking environment and public health.

Building a strong brand is an important way to build a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Brand-oriented companies regard their brands as strategic resources, and they create value and increase competitiveness by building a strong brand. However, studies on how companies become brand-oriented and how brand orientation influences brand performance are still rather limited. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to propose a theoretical model explaining what factors contribute to brand orientation, as well as the impact of brand orientation.

Questionnaire surveys were distributed to branding companies in Taiwan. The sample data of 106 branding companies were collected in order to test the theoretical model using partial least squares (PLS).

The empirical results showed that organizational resources (product differentiation capability), organizational structure (cross-function departmental integration), and organizational culture (members' organizational identification and long-term remuneration criteria) could facilitate the building of brand-oriented companies. It was also found that a higher level of brand orientation contributed to better brand performance.

According to this research, corporate managers can understand how to build brand-oriented companies by shaping their organizational context. In other words, if companies want to become brand-oriented, they should build product differentiation capabilities, promote cross-functional integration among departments, and develop an organizational culture with high organizational members' identification and long-term remuneration criteria.

This paper is the first study to propose some antecedents of brand-oriented companies based on the organizational context perspective. The empirical results of this study illustrate how companies can become brand-oriented by arranging their organizational context, as well as the impact of brand orientation on brand performance.

Drawing on the resource-based view, this paper aims to investigate how a firm’s integrated marketing communication (IMC) as a capability is influenced by the organisational antecedents of learning orientation (LO), market orientation (MO) and brand orientation (BO). Further, the research examines how an IMC capability influences brand performance and whether these relationships are influenced by brand size.

Based on survey data from 187 managers responsible for brand communications, this paper applies structural equation modelling using SmartPLS3 to assess hypothesised relationships.

IMC capability is directly influenced by BO but not by MO and LO; these have important indirect effects. Size does not moderate key relationships but directly affects IMC capability.

Organisational antecedents play an important role in shaping IMC capability and ultimately brand performance. Future researchers should consider a larger sample of brands and firms, IMC capability building in small firms and longitudinal design to evaluate the effects of IMC capability.

BO is nested in and complementary to learning and MO, and thus cannot stand alone. Developing an IMC capability is critical for translating the benefits of organisational orientations into performance outcomes. IMC capability links MO and BO to firm performance. Appropriate resourcing is critical for success, as it has implications for developing other resources and capabilities.

This study empirically establishes for the first time a relationship between critical organisational antecedents of LO, MO and BO, their influence on IMC capability and subsequently on brand performance.

The chapter examined the consumer meanings of product placements embedded in social games in different cultural contexts.

The theoretical perspective guiding the study is phenomenology, and the essay assignment and in-depth interviews were used to collect data.

The chapter was based on two qualitative research projects. Findings revealed that consumers in both countries appreciated certain characteristics of product placement in the context of social game, such as subtleness (naturalness) and unobtrusiveness (users’ freedom of choice and proactive choice); consumers’ real-world consumption in both countries seems to be more or less influenced by the product placement in social games; and while the young American consumers didn’t construct specific meanings for Facebook, the Chinese white-collar consumers actively created meanings for the Chinese social-network site.

The chapter offered some thick descriptions and in-depth analyses of product placements in social games in different cultural contexts from consumers’ experiential perspectives to enrich our theoretical understanding of product placement in the new media environment as well as to add valuable insights to the research literature on new advertising formats in general.

No study to date has been conducted to explore the product placement in social games in different cultural contexts. The study fills the research gap by exploring US college-aged consumers’ and Chinese white-collar consumers’ interpretations of product placements in the context of social games.

The goal of this paper is to investigate how market sensing (market orientation) and customer linking capabilities (service branding and customer empowerment capabilities) enable firms to achieve superiority in customer satisfaction.

To achieve this goal, a conceptual model was developed, specifying the mediating role of branding and customer empowerment capabilities in the relationship between market orientation and customer satisfaction. The model was tested using partial least squares, on 266 responses obtained via an online survey conducted amongst executives of services firms in Australia.

The findings show that possessing a strong service branding capability and co‐opting customer involvement through customer empowerment in the marketing effort is essential for services firms to realize the potential value of market orientation. This is important if the firm wants to translate the understanding gained from market intelligence (via market orientation as the “know‐what” capability) into superior customer satisfaction.

Through interaction activities that centre on utilizing market intelligence and shared sense of brand meaning, customer empowerment practices help institutionalize market orientation and service firms branding capability.

This study offers a greater understanding of the underlying processes (i.e. service branding and customer empowerment capabilities) which market orientation works through to contribute to customer satisfaction.

The purpose of this research is twofold: first, to conceptualise integrated marketing communication (IMC) by adopting a more inclusive and broader organisational perspective, and second, to empirically develop and validate a new measurement scale to assess firm-wide IMC.

This paper is based on a multistage research design adopting qualitative and quantitative approaches. First, a comprehensive literature review and a two-round Delphi study served as the primary basis for the development of the IMC theoretical framework, including generation of items and content validation. Second, a pilot study (n = 39) enabled us to purify the measurement tool. Third, the data gathered via an online survey conducted among CEOs and other senior managers (n = 180) led to empirical validation of the proposed firm-wide IMC scale applying second-order confirmatory factor and structural equation modelling analyses.

This research produced the firm-wide IMC scale, a 25-item Likert-format measure exhibiting adequate dimensionality, reliability and construct (convergent, discriminant and nomological) validity.

The need for a more holistic approach emerged from both the academic literature and the professional arena. However, even very recent attempts to measure integration have involved the adoption of a narrow marketing communications-centred approach. Thus, the value and uniqueness of this paper lies in its novel definition of IMC as a four-dimensional construct and the development of a theoretically consistent, valid and reliable measurement tool for the assessment of integration based on a firm-wide organisational approach.

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature regarding negative information’s impact on consumer behavior in the context of tourism services. In addition, this paper empirically examines the likely difference between first-time and repeat tourists in terms of their: resistance to negative information.

Using a sample of 539 visitors to Mount Yuelu, a popular tourist destination in China, this study explores the differences between first-time and repeat tourists regarding how destination social responsibility (DSR) and service quality (SQ) influence tourist resistance to negative information.

The effect of SQ on resistance to negative information is stronger for repeat tourists than for first-time tourists. In addition, the study identifies that DSR and SQ have a positive impact on tourists’ resistance to negative information. Finally, findings indicate that destination identification partially mediates the relationship between DSR, SQ and tourists’ response to negative information, respectively.

The findings provide valuable theoretical and empirical insights into the driving factors that influence consumer resistance to negative information.

The paper brings together DSR, SQ and tourist-destination identification to better understand the impact that visitation frequency (first-time versus repeat tourists) has on how tourists resist negative information about a tourist destination.

Negative information that is generated about a destination may cause the number of future tourism visits to decline. Findings of this paper provide insight as to the framework that can make tourists more resistant to said negative information.

This study contributes to the services marketing and tourism literature by investigating the degree to which DSR and SQ affect tourist resistance to negative information as mediated by tourist-destination identification and moderated by visiting frequency.