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Though prior research has addressed customer engagement (CE) with a focal object (e.g. a brand), the dynamics characterizing customers' engagement with different objects and the potential spillover from a customer's engagement with one object to that with another remains tenuous, exposing an important literature-based gap. The authors, therefore, develop a model proposing the existence of a spillover effect from customers' brand engagement to their engagement with brand-related content and suggest customers' personality trait of conscientiousness to moderate this effect.

An online survey-based experiment using 380 Danish Facebook users was conducted to test the model.

The results suggest customers' brand engagement as a significant predictor of their engagement with brand-related content, corroborating the proposed spillover effect. A weaker spillover effect is observed for highly (vs less) conscientious customers, substantiating the moderating role of customer conscientiousness. Moreover, customer conscientiousness is found to interact with brand content-related (i.e. commenting/content creation) task type and brand type (i.e. utilitarian/hedonic) (e.g. more conscientious customers are less likely to engage in brand-related content creation vs. commenting tasks), weakening the spillover effect.

This study extends prior research by quantitatively corroborating an intra-individual CE-based spillover effect from customers' brand engagement to their engagement with brand-related content. The authors also unearth a moderating role of customer conscientiousness, which interacts with brand- and brand content-related task type, on the spillover effect, informing the development of digital marketing strategies.

The increased acknowledgement of the problems associated with food waste has triggered a number of social and commercial initiatives for the re-distribution of suboptimal foods (SOFs). This paper aims to explore a variety of such initiatives and discuss their prospects, considering the commercial contingencies of the food supply system.

The exploration is based on a multi-country study of cases representing three initiatives related to the reduction of waste from SOFs, i.e. social supermarkets (SSMs), food banks and expiration date-based pricing practices. The collected data comprise expert interviews, store-check observations and secondary material; the data are analyzed from a marketing practice perspective.

The analyses indicate that the distribution and re-distribution of SOFs are moving toward normalization, that the diffusion of expiration date-based pricing through all food retailing formats is likely to continue, that food banks – despite reports of dwindling supplies of SOFs – are likely to increase their expansion and that SSMs face a variety of challenges, e.g. as regards their supply of SOFs and their customers’ preferences for stable assortments.

By synthesizing data from various European implementations of re-distribution practices, this article contributes to the understanding of the viability of such practices. Developing this understanding should benefit social and commercial entrepreneurs, as well as policymakers, when designing and implementing initiatives for the reduction of waste from SOFs.