Topic Review
Factors Affecting Consumer Food Choice
Understanding individual food choices is critical for transforming the current food system to ensure healthiness of people and sustainability of the planet. Throughout the years, researchers from different fields have proposed conceptual models addressing factors influencing the food choice, recognized as a key leverage to improve planetary and human health. However, a multidisciplinary approach is needed to better understand how different factors are involved and interact with each other in the decision-making process. The present paper reviews and analyzes existing models, providing an intact point-of-view by integrating key elements into a bigger framework. Key determinants of general food choice are identified and categorized, including food-internal factor (sensory and perceptual features), food-external factors (information, social environment, physical environment), personal-state factors (biological features and physiological needs, psychological components, habits and experiences), cognitive factors (knowledge and skills, attitude, liking and preference, anticipated consequences, and personal identity), as well as sociocultural factors (culture, economic variables, political elements). Moreover, possible directions of influence among the factors towards final food choice were discussed. The need of multidisciplinary impulses across research field with the support of empirical data are crucial for understanding factors influencing food choice as well as for enriching existing conceptual models. The framework proposed here would serve as a roadmap for facilitating communications and collaborations between research fields in a structural and systematic way.
  • 5.6K
  • 06 Feb 2021
Topic Review
eCommerce and Small and Medium Enterprises
The rise of smaller businesses has been an essential trend since the 1990s, when they became engines for economic development. Now, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) across the world are increasingly relying on eCommerce channels to create and capture value. The growth in eCommerce operations is being fueled by several global and technological developments. eCommerce allows SMEs to benefit from globalization by expanding their ability to access customers around the world and across customer demographics and categories. This emergence of a new range of markets has made strategic flexibility essential for SMEs, as such expansion requires a consistent rethinking and adapting to continually changing dynamics in a global environment.
  • 5.5K
  • 07 May 2022
Topic Review
Shopping Cart
A shopping cart (American English) or trolley (British English), also known by a variety of other names, is a cart supplied by a shop, especially supermarkets, for use by customers inside the shop for transport of merchandise to the checkout counter during shopping. In many cases customers can then also use the cart to transport their purchased goods to their vehicles, but some carts are designed to prevent them from leaving the shop. In many places in the United States and the United Kingdom , customers are allowed to leave the carts in designated areas within the parking lot, and store personnel will return the carts to the storage area. In many continental European premises, however, coin- (or token-) operated locking mechanisms are provided to encourage shoppers to return the carts to the correct location after use. Studies have shown that it is advisable for shoppers to sanitize the handles and basket areas prior to handling them or filling them with groceries due to high levels of bacteria that typically live on shopping carts. This is due to the carts having a high level of exposure to the skin flora of previous users.
  • 5.4K
  • 22 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Adaptive Reuse of Architectural Heritage
       Significant architectural and historical monuments become an important point of reference for the local population, increasing their sense of security, and act as a factor shaping social identity. An effort to preserve relevant objects in a city is therefore important both for retaining its unique features and for strengthening the local community. A significant role plays here the adaptive reuse of architectural heritage, which allows for the preservation of architectural objects that are important to the local community, promoting the integrity and historical continuity of the city while restoring the objects’ functional and economic value.         The introduction of a new function in architectural heritage is not only an important impulse for the tangible regeneration of urban tissue, but can also help to reconstruct the image and identity of a city. The local cultural and architectural heritage plays a significant role in the process leading to the creation of positive references and elimination of negative connotations related to an economic or social crisis. These remain an important part of the history of a city and, at the same time, its significance may be reimagined and shown in a new context, that relates to the present day. As a result, artefacts of the past gain new meanings, which are subject to a different, contemporary interpretation through the prism of current needs and ideas. Objects or even groups of objects from the past are being consciously taken into consideration in the activities currently undertaken. The contemporary scale of the phenomenon and complexity of the issues concerning the adaptive reuse of architectural heritage are a consequence of the multi-faceted transformations that have taken place in recent decades in the social, cultural and economic spheres, and, consequently, the contemporary understanding of the role and significance of the architectural heritage.
  • 5.4K
  • 31 Aug 2021
Topic Review
Tourism Commercialization and Perceived Authenticity
The concept of authenticity is closely related to heritage tourism, especially cultural heritage tourism. Seeking authenticity is one of the main trends in heritage tourism because people want to identify and understand themselves or reminisce about the past by looking back to the old ways of life and cultural traditions. Compared with actual authenticity, perceived authenticity has more value. It is a bridge between heritage authenticity and tourist experience. Heritage tourism is essentially a form of tourism that attracts tourists based on the commercialization of historical and cultural assets. A heritage site not only draws tourists to experience the authentic past, but it also provides them with a place for entertainment, relaxation and consumption. That is, heritage tourism development inevitably encounters commercialization. From a demand perspective, heritage tourism is an emotional experience, the perception of tourists at its core.
  • 5.2K
  • 22 Jun 2021
Topic Review
Agorism
Agorism is a libertarian social philosophy that advocates creating a society in which all relations between people are voluntary exchanges by means of counter-economics, thus engaging with aspects of peaceful revolution. It was first proposed by libertarian philosopher Samuel Edward Konkin III at two conferences, CounterCon I in October 1974 and CounterCon II in May 1975, both conferences organized by J. Neil Schulman.
  • 5.2K
  • 23 Nov 2022
Topic Review
2015–16 Stock Market Selloff
The 2015–16 stock market selloff, also known as The Great Fall of China, was the period of decline in the value of stock prices globally that occurred between June 2015 to June 2016. It included the 2015–16 Chinese stock market turbulence, in which the SSE Composite Index fell 43% in just over 2 months between June 2015 and August 2015, which culminated in the devaluation of the yuan. Investors sold shares globally as a result of slowing growth in the GDP of China, a fall in petroleum prices, the Greek debt default in June 2015, the effects of the end of quantitative easing in the United States in October 2014, a sharp rise in bond yields in early 2016, and finally, in June 2016, the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, in which Brexit was voted upon. By July 2016, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) recovered and achieved record highs. The FTSE 100 Index did not do so until later in 2016.
  • 5.2K
  • 29 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Food Marketing
It would seem important to analyse the relationships between food marketing and consumer choice, highlighting the role of brands in these frameworks. For this purpose, a literature review was carried out considering 147 documents from Scopus database for the topics of search “food marketing” and“choices” (search performed on 16 October 2020). As main insights, it is worth highlighting that the main issues addressed by the literature, concerning food marketing and consumer choices, are the following: economic theory; label and packaging; marketing strategies; agriculture and food industry; market segments; social dimensions; brand and branding. In turn, food marketing heavily conditions consumer choices; however, these related instruments are better manipulated by larger companies. In addition, this entry highlights that bigger companies have dominant positions in these markets which are not always beneficial to the consumers’ objectives.
  • 5.1K
  • 07 May 2021
Topic Review
Wine Tourism
Nowadays, wine has become an important beverage that is increasingly being consumed more frequently all over the world, and its production and marketing has received increasing attention from consumers, specialists, and producers. As a result, the growing importance of wine tourism for many destinations and the role of this type of tourism in supporting local economies is now beginning to be understood. It has also been highlighted that wine tourism can play a significant role in the development of tourism by contributing to the economic and social support of local regions and communities. Wine is one of the ingredients of people's journeys, and journeys dedicated to wine-producing areas have led to the tourism product known as wine tourism.
  • 5.1K
  • 18 Apr 2022
Topic Review
Cybersecurity Economics
Cybersecurity economics can be defined as a field of research that utilizes a socio-technical perspective to investigate economic aspects of cybersecurity such as budgeting, information asymmetry, governance, and types of goods and services, to provide sustainable policy recommendations, regulatory options, and practical solutions that can substantially improve the cybersecurity posture of the interacting agents in the open socio-technical systems.   
  • 5.0K
  • 15 Dec 2021
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