This study investigates a food manufacturer’s optimal product-line design in a health-oriented supply chain characterized by consumer self-control heterogeneity and stochastic demand. Utilizing a newsvendor analytical framework, we examine the manufacturer’s choice among Pure-Healthy, Pure-Unhealthy, and Dual-Product strategies, where low self-control consumers prioritize hedonic attributes and high self-control consumers balance health and indulgence. Our results characterize the optimal product-line strategy regions and identify the Dual-Product strategy as a critical mechanism for retaining demand that internalizes heterogeneous consumer switching behavior. We further analyze demand shaping forces such as firm-led marketing and government interventions including sugar taxes and subsidies, finding that while marketing lowers the threshold for adopting healthy products, its profitability is contingent on consumer composition and reputation effects. We demonstrate that policy instruments exert asymmetric operational pressures, with sugar taxes compressing margins and subsidies expanding market reach; however, excessive subsidies may diminish social welfare if fiscal costs exceed demand expansion benefits. Ultimately, this research highlights that fostering a healthier food supply chain requires the coordinated management of consumer behavior and demand, production decisions, product line interactions, and policy intensity.
This study examines how domestic (dis)order emerges as shifting states shaped by everyday socio-material interactions. Drawing on assemblage theory and photo-elicitation interviews with 22 households, we show how (dis)order develops through dynamic relations among family members, objects, spaces, and temporal rhythms. We identify three assemblage capacities—transient, functional, and conducive—that shape how disorder materialises and is understood, along with three corresponding management strategies: restoring, tolerating, and concealing. Beyond the home, these capacities extend assemblage theory by providing a transferable framework for theorising how assemblages generate distinct emergent states across consumer and marketplace contexts. Reconceptualising (dis)order as an emergent assemblage property rather than an individual shortcoming, the study reveals conditions under which mess serves as a productive resource supporting household flow, functional efficiency, and relational harmony. The study also offers practical implications for flexible storage design, functional mess zone identification, and organisation solutions that support family wellbeing.
This study challenges the assumption that greater job clarity always benefits service employees. Drawing on selfdetermination theory and the Too-Much-of-a-Good-Thing framework, we test a moderated curvilinear mediation model linking job clarity, career satisfaction, and creativity, with career calling as a boundary condition. Using three-wave, multi-source data from 164 supervisor-employee dyads in Chinese hotels, results reveal inverted Ushaped relationships between job clarity and both career satisfaction and supervisor-rated creativity. Career satisfaction mediates this curvilinear effect. Moreover, career calling amplifies the curvature-employees high in calling gain greater motivational and creative benefits as clarity increases but experience sharper losses at very high clarity levels. These findings position job clarity as a dynamic and context-dependent resource, offering theoretical and managerial insights for fostering creativity and well-being among hospitality employees.
Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly being integrated into on-site heritage tourism, yet little is known about how visitors evaluate hybrid experiences combining physical heritage environments with VR-mediated reconstructions. To address this gap, drawing on telepresence and flow theory, this study conceptualizes and validates Optimal Telepresence Experience (OTE) as a higher-order experiential construct reflecting visitors' overall technology-enhanced heritage experiences. Using a multi-stage scale development process with data collected at a heritage museum in Hue, Vietnam, the study develops and validates the OTE measurement instrument. The findings show that OTE, reflected through emotional, cognitive, and functional dimensions, strengthens visitors’ memory formation and revisit intention. Theoretically, the study advances immersive tourism research by conceptualizing and validating OTE as a higher-order experiential construct for hybrid technology-enhanced heritage experiences. Practically, the validated OTE scale provides a tool for designing and evaluating VR-enhanced heritage experiences that foster deeper visitor engagement and behavioral outcomes.
Background music is a prominent element of restaurant atmospherics, yet its role in shaping customer evaluations in ethnic restaurant settings remains underexplored. Drawing on a schema congruity perspective, this study examines how music type influences dining quality and value for money through perceived music-setting congruency. Two complementary studies were conducted: an online scenario-based experiment in Italian and Korean restaurant settings, and an on-site quasi-experiment in French and Chinese restaurants. Across both studies, culturally aligned background music increased music-setting congruency, which enhanced dining quality and value for money. Cross-context analyses further showed that the effect of music type on music-setting congruency varied across restaurant settings rooted in different cultural traditions, with stronger effects observed in Western-origin than in Eastern-origin restaurants. These findings extend understanding of how background music operates as a cultural cue in ethnic restaurant environments, providing practical guidance for designing restaurant atmospheres for favorable customer evaluations.
