Search results

The present study, underpinned by the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) theory, aims to examine the impact of packaging semiotics on brand image, perceived brand quality, brand loyalty and purchase intention of well-established food brands.

A self-administered questionnaire was disseminated to participants residing in the Lucknow region of India. We conducted an experiment in which 374 participants evaluated the factors on a stimulus (chips packaging) using an online survey. Collected data were analysed through structural equation modelling (SEM).

The result suggests that packaging semiotics exhibits a positive influence on brand image and perceived brand quality of consumers. The brand image significantly impacts brand loyalty and consumers’ purchase intention. In addition, the perceived brand quality has a positive significant impact on brand loyalty, but a negative and insignificant influence on purchase intention. The results show that both brand image and perceived brand quality significantly mediate the relation between packaging semiotics and brand loyalty. Brand image significantly mediates but perceived brand quality does not mediate the relation between packaging semiotics and purchase intention.

The results of the study will assist food brands in determining how to utilise semiotics in packaging to positively influence brand image, perceived brand quality, brand loyalty and consumers’ intent to purchase.

The study is unique in the sense that it assesses the role of packaging semiotics as antecedent in mapping of brand loyalty and purchase intention through brand image and perceived product quality. This study takes a lead as these constructs have been less explored relatively from the lens of packaging semiotics in an emerging Asian market.

This article explores brand positioning and authenticity within the global-local continuum, utilizing the evolution of the Italian rock band, Måneskin, as a case study.

Employing Greimas’s (1987) semiotic framework, I analyze social media and media articles on Måneskin’s success, unveiling consumer perceptions of global, local and intermediate brand positionings and related authenticity dimensions. I particularly uncover a narrative centered on “global” versus “local” brand positioning and their counterparts (i.e. “not global” and “not local”), forming a semiotic square.

In the “global” perception, the band is evaluated in terms of conforming to global standards, while, in the “local” understanding, the emphasis shifts to connections to local roots. In the “glocalization” perspective (global and local), the band’s activities are assessed concerning an integration between global conformity and local connections. The “glalienation” viewpoint (neither global nor local) is related to consistency, in the sense of being unique and avoiding a commitment to either global or local values. The data also highlight issues of inconsistency regarding brand positioning’s contradictions, such as the band’s incoherently merging local and non-local elements.

The proposed structural semiotics approach enriches previous theories by examining authenticity within global-local dynamics, offering insights into various authenticity dimensions and their interplay. It underlines shifts in authenticity perceptions and challenges binary brand positioning, advocating for strategic placement across the global-local continuum. Moreover, it emphasizes leveraging cultural elements and semiotics to effectively communicate authenticity.

This study responds to the need in social entrepreneurship research for more empirical studies to clarify the meaning of social value. Specially, it aims to explore the meaning of social value communicated on social media (SoMe) within the local context of a social enterprise (SE).

A multimodal social semiotic approach was applied to several hundred Facebook posts of a Finnish SE providing elderly care solutions, complemented by secondary data from high-quality press sources.

Building on Young’s (2006) dimensions of social value and Hidalgo et al.’s (2021) theorisation of social capital in social entrepreneurship, the authors find that an SE draws on multiple levels of social capital on SoMe to express the meaning of the social value it creates.

Although limited to one case, this study provides a deep contextual understanding of how SEs can give meaning to social value and leverage social capital on SoMe to do so.

The authors offer a contextually embedded framework for SEs to communicate social value through media. This approach enables SEs to engage stakeholders more effectively and improve the quality of support for local initiatives.

Improvements in SEs’ ability to communicate social value will increase their legitimacy, thus enhancing their prospects to survive and create sustained social value.

The authors strengthen the theoretical underpinnings of social value by being among the first to empirically describe its connection to social capital in an SE, thereby deepening previous studies on subjective social value. Methodologically, this study is the first, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to apply social semiotics to research on SEs.

This study aims to examine the construction of feminine beauty by onnagata kabuki actors in Japan’s history, with a focus on their narratives in modern advertorials about beauty products. The objective is to identify emerging themes in their narratives and to analyze the symbolism and rhetoric used to persuade the audience to enhance traditional feminine “beauty” by using the specific brand in the wake of Japan’s modernization and Westernization.

The study primarily employs semiotic analysis of advertorials in the newspaper and in the kabuki theatre’s program. They are supplemented with images from premodern prints. Visual content is described and analyzed as well.

The narration of the onnagata in the advertorial is the process of “truth-telling,” where the primary concern of the storyteller is persuasion about truth, such as belief in the new method of makeup with the advertised brand, and falsehood, such as belief in the old method of skincare. Four themes and binary oppositions of values emerged from the data: (1) Identity: selves vs others; (2) Material objects, cosmetics: scientific vs primitive; (3) Practice: competent vs incompetent, and (4) Transformations: intentional vs incidental.

The research shows that Japan’s onnagata transvestism tradition and its influences on women’s beauty practice have existed since the premodern period, preceding contemporary cross-gender beauty practices observed in social media.

This study delves into 17th-century colonial port cities – Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta – examining the impact of British imperialism on urban sustainability and heritage conservation. It explores historical development, spatial organization, and connectivity.

This study intricately explores the interplay among urban sustainability, morphology, and heritage conservation using space syntax analysis. It focuses on examining White and Black Town dispersion during British imperialism.

The investigation reveals varying degrees of dispersion of White and Black Towns, with Calcutta exhibiting the most consistent distribution among the three cities. These findings underscore the profound influence of British imperialism on the spatial organization of colonial port cities, offering valuable insights into their historical evolution and layout.

While this study provides valuable insights, it is limited by its focus on the colonial period and the specific cities of Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta. The findings may not be directly generalizable to other contexts or time periods. Additionally, the study’s reliance on historical data sources may present data accuracy and completeness challenges.

This study contributes to understanding colonial port cities, guiding sustainable urban development, heritage preservation, and equitable resource access for global sustainability. By focusing on the historical impact of British imperialism, the research provides original insights into the spatial dynamics of these cities, contributing to the broader discourse on urban sustainability and heritage conservation.

This paper presents a 10-year systematic review of research on the visual framing of crises to identify the priorities, theories applied and trends in the scholarship of visual framing during crises. The gaps are analyzed to provide evidence-based recommendations for advancing future research.

A total of 269 articles published in 156 peer-reviewed communication journals between January 2014 to December 2023 were reviewed. Data were analyzed using open and axial qualitative coding. A codebook was developed for the quantitative coding and data were analyzed in SPSS descriptive statistics and chi-square tests to answer the research questions.

The proportion of visual framing of crises has remained the same in the last 10 years – there is significantly more research on the visual framing of non-crises. Overall, research on the visual framing of crises is largely exploratory/descriptive and could benefit from a research agenda that is more theory driven. Additionally, there is a skewed focus for research on North America compared to other regions, and for political communication and climate compared to other themes. Environmental sciences and engineering are the most widely investigated journal fields, while disaster is the most common typology studied when looking at the visual framing of crises.

The systematic literature review has some limitations – most particularly that the sample was drawn from a single publisher, which may not be exhaustive enough to represent the full population of articles in the field of visual communication. However, it is a systematic review of the publications that are officially aligned with three of the major communication organizations – the International Communication Association, National Communication Association and World Communication Association. However, future research considering the inclusion of an additional publishers, like Emerald, would further enrich scholarship in visual framing during crises. Second, manual coding of the articles could present potential differences in analysis and interpretation by other researchers. Despite the limitations, the study also provides some important insights into the present and future of the visual framing of crises.

Addressing gaps in the internationalization of visual crisis communication would expand studies for visual framing among underrepresented communities such as populations with low reading literacy, gender minorities and displaced communities and inform visual framing strategies for government and relevant institutions as primary information disseminators during crises.

Addressing the gaps identified in this systematic literature review on the visual framing of crises is important for extending theory in this relatively nascent field and guiding crisis visual framing strategies to mitigate uncertainty and panic, threats to stakeholder relationships, social vulnerabilities and the visual framing of stakeholder-centric crisis responses.

Based on available literature, this is the first systematic literature review investigating the use of all types of visuals used during all crisis typologies, reflecting the ubiquity of crises and the increased focus on the use of visuals in crisis communication in the last decade.

To advance understanding of transparency by problematising the motivations and strategies of a so far underexplored group: its users.

We explore the relationship between blindness, visibility, and transparency by drawing on our analysis of Max Frisch’s experimental novel Gantenbein (1964), in which the protagonist lives a life of feigned blindness.

The accounting scholarly debate on transparency has neglected the users of transparency. We address this through a novel theorisation of transparency as a game, highlighting some of its distinctive features and paradoxes.

By theorising the transparency game we move beyond concerns with what transparency reveals or conceals and conceptualise the motivations and strategies of the players engaged in this game. We show how different players have something to gain from the transparency game and warn of its emancipatory limits.

This paper aims to strengthen the connection between therapeutic built environments and tourism research and practice. While there is evidence in the importance of the Built Environment (BE) of cities, workspaces and health-care facilities to health, the BE of facilities for tourism in relation to health remains relatively unexplored.

The paper conducts an exploratory search on architecture and tourism BE and narrowed it down to a scoping review on wellness tourism and architectural health impacts from 2010 to 2024. This would highlight lessons learned from the field of medical architecture, i.e. a cross-disciplinary field combining BE research, public health and health-care services research, to explore potential synergies of cross-pollination with the field of hospitality and medical architecture.

Principles and theories of medical architecture can be incorporated into the BE of wellness hospitality, tourism for ageing and pandemic preparedness.

The paper sets the basis of a novel cross-disciplinary collaboration between therapeutic architecture and hospitality for increasing the societal impact of the latter. This is particularly important in a post-Covid and an ageing society.

本文旨在加强治疗性建筑环境与旅游研究和实践之间的联系。虽然有证据表明城市、工作场所和医疗设施的建筑环境(BE)对健康很重要, 但与健康相关的旅游设施的建筑环境仍相对未被探索。

作者对建筑和旅游建筑环境进行了探索性搜索, 并将其缩小到2010年至2024年期间的健康旅游和建筑健康影响的范围审查。这将突出医疗建筑领域的经验教训, 即结合建筑环境研究、公共卫生和医疗服务研究的跨学科领域, 以探索与酒店业和医疗建筑领域交叉授粉的潜在协同效应。

医疗建筑的原则和理论可以纳入健康酒店业、老龄化旅游和大流行病准备的建筑环境中。

我们为治疗性建筑和酒店业之间的新型跨学科合作奠定了基础, 以增加后者的社会影响。这在后疫情时代和老龄化社会中尤为重要。

Este documento pretende reforzar la conexión entre los entornos construidos terapéuticos y la investigación y la práctica del turismo. Aunque existen pruebas de la importancia del entorno construido (EC) de las ciudades, los espacios de trabajo y las instalaciones sanitarias para la salud, el EC de las instalaciones para el turismo en relación con la salud sigue estando relativamente inexplorado.

Realizamos una búsqueda exploratoria sobre arquitectura y el EC turístico y la acotamos a una revisión de alcance sobre el turismo de bienestar y los impactos arquitectónicos en la salud desde 2010 hasta 2024. Esto pondría de relieve las lecciones aprendidas en el campo de la arquitectura médica, es decir, un campo interdisciplinar que combina la investigación de la EC, la salud pública y la investigación de los servicios sanitarios, para explorar posibles sinergias de polinización cruzada con el campo de la hostelería y la arquitectura médica.

Los principios y teorías de la arquitectura médica pueden incorporarse a la EC de la hosteleria para el bienestar, el turismo para el envejecimiento y la preparación ante pandemias.

Sentamos las bases de una novedosa colaboración interdisciplinar entre la arquitectura terapéutica y la hostelería para aumentar el impacto social de esta última. Esto es especialmente importante después de la crisis y en una sociedad que envejece.

This paper aims to advance recent literature on the performativity of accounting by examining how project accounting affects a project organization’s ability to deliver a relevant project outcome, such as a product or a building, for a receiving client organization.

The paper draws on a longitudinal case study of a 41.4-billion-kroner (5.5-billion-euro) Danish project of constructing 16 new public hospitals. Its objective was to reduce the average unit costs and improve the quality of patient care. Each hospital construction was managed by a separate project organization and handed over to a separate receiving hospital organization. The project organizations applied a common approach to project accounting. The paper relies on Michel Callon’s concepts of performativity and sociotechnical agencement – approaching project accounting as an arrangement of devices.

The paper shows that the project-accounting agencement simultaneously supported and undermined the project organizations’ ability to deliver hospitals relevant to the receiving hospital organizations. The agencement performed hospital designs, disciplined project actors and guided decision-making, thus supporting the overall work of the project organizations. It also, however, compelled the project organizations to compromise on hospital designs when unexpected events occurred. These compromises led to the delivery of hospitals, which largely prevented the receiving hospital organizations from achieving the project’s objective.

This paper advances our limited understanding of the dynamic and complex relationship between project accounting and the relevance of project outcomes. It introduces the concept of a “contronymity device” to capture the way project accounting simultaneously produces two opposing consequences, both supporting and undermining the enactment of a particular reality. The paper lastly enriches our understanding of how project-accounting devices impact hospital organizations’ operating cost structures and challenge patient care capabilities.

This research endeavours to achieve two primary objectives within the context of regenerative tourism (RT). Firstly, the study aims to explore the trends and conceptual structure of RT, mapping its scope through a bibliometric analysis. Building upon the knowledge garnered from the initial exploration, the second aim is to establish a regenerative stakeholder framework for tourism, grounded in biodiversity.

Data from the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus were collected for a bibliometric analysis in this research. The merged database found a total of 42 publications.

Based on bibliometric analysis in Biblioshiny, six indicators were identified (e.g. the annual publications, the most cited studies, productive countries, journals and thematic map). Furthermore, the authors' keyword analysis was conducted using the VOSviewer software package, revealing four clusters, namely, stakeholders, ecotourism, circular economy and climate change.

This research's scope is restricted to Scopus and WoS through 21 February 2024. Future research could broaden RT perspectives through different databases.

The research offers the RT stakeholder framework developed based on the RT and stakeholder theory.

This research advances awareness of the Earth's current needs and the literature on tourism stakeholders by establishing a biodiversity-based regenerative stakeholders' framework in which both human and non-human stakeholders can coexist.

本研究旨在实现再生旅游背景下的两个主要目标。首先, 研究旨在通过文献计量分析探讨再生旅游的趋势和概念结构, 通过映射其范围来实现目标。第二个目标是在从初步探索中获得的知识基础上, 建立一个以生物多样性为基础的旅游再生利益相关者框架。

本研究收集了来自Web of Science（WoS）和Scopus的数据, 进行了文献计量分析。合并后的数据库共找到42篇出版物。

基于Biblioshiny中的文献计量分析, 识别了六个指标（例如, 年度出版物, 最常引用的研究, 富有成效的国家, 期刊和主题图）。此外, 使用VOSviewer软件包进行了作者的关键词分析, 揭示了四个簇, 即利益相关者, 生态旅游, 循环经济和气候变化。

本研究的范围限于截至2024年2月21日的Scopus和WoS。未来的研究可以通过不同的数据库拓宽再生旅游的视角。

该研究提供了基于再生旅游和利益相关者理论发展的再生旅游利益相关者框架。

本研究通过建立一个以生物多样性为基础的再生利益相关者框架, 增进了对地球当前需求和旅游利益相关者文献的认识, 在这个框架中, 人类和非人类利益相关者可以共存。

Esta investigación tiene dos objetivos principales dentro del contexto del turismo regenerativo. El primer objetivo es explorar las tendencias y la estructura conceptual del turismo regenerativo, mapeando su alcance a través de un análisis bibliométrico. El segundo objetivo, basándose en el conocimiento obtenido en la exploración inicial, es establecer un marco de agentes del turismo regenerativo fundamentado en la biodiversidad.

En esta investigación se recopilaron datos de la Web of Science (WoS) y de Scopus para realizar un análisis bibliométrico. La base de datos combinada encontró un total de 42 publicaciones.

A partir del análisis bibliométrico en Biblioshiny se identificaron seis indicadores (por ejemplo, las publicaciones anuales, los estudios más citados, los países productivos, revistas y el mapa temático). Además, se realizó un análisis de palabras clave de los autores utilizando el software VOSviewer, que reveló cuatro grupos, a saber: agentes, ecoturismo, economía circular y cambio climático.

El alcance de esta investigación se limita a Scopus y WoS hasta el 21 de febrero de 2024. Futuras investigaciones podrían ampliar las perspectivas del turismo regenerativo a través de diferentes bases de datos.

La investigación ofrece el marco de los agentes del turismo regenerativo desarrollado a partir de la teoría del turismo regenerativo y los grupos de interés.

Esta investigación avanza en el conocimiento de las necesidades actuales de la Tierra y en la literatura sobre los grupos de interés del turismo al establecer un marco de actores regenerativos basado en la biodiversidad en el que pueden coexistir agentes humanos y no humanos.