Editorial

Editorial

Crowdfunding is the approach fundraisers take to raise funding for a project, venture, or personal needs, from a crowd of people, or known as investors, backers, or supporters based on characteristics of different crowdfunding models, essentially through the Internet. Crowdfunding is considered as an alternative finance option for different purposes of businesses (e.g., new venture creation, business growth, and exit), individuals (e.g., life events and challenging circumstances), local communities (e.g., saving a local pub), and public sector. This entry will have a brief look at the history and trend of the different crowdfunding models, as well as their relationship with entrepreneurs and the public sector.

The Sage Handbook of Political Marketing is a comprehensive resource that introduces the theory and practice of political marketing in a global, yet simultaneously localized, world. The practice of political marketing has evolved significantly during the 20th and 21st centuries, adapting to the rise of mass media, marketing communication, advertising, and the web. Traditionally dominated by US, European, and Australasian scholars, the field has up-to-now emphasized the Americanisation and professionalisation of campaigning styles. Since the start of the new millennium, however, political marketing has transformed into a data-driven, specialized profession. With increasing digitalisation and the advent of AI, political marketing involves personally targeted, evidence-based messaging with real-time engagement and sentiment analysis. This approach is not limited to democratic regimes but is also widely adopted by authoritarian states worldwide. The handbook addresses the global perspectives on political marketing, covering a myriad of contexts, cultures, and regimes. It encompasses insights into political marketing in regions seldom discussed in the literature, including Zimbabwe, Japan, India, Hong Kong, and Ukraine. These chapters enrich the debate on political marketing’s impact on democracies and its use in non-democratic societies. Organized into four parts, the handbook covers strategy, propaganda, digital evolution, ideology, and contemporary practices in political marketing. It explores topics such as the marketing of ideology, the impact of the internet and social media, the use of AI in political marketing, and the role of fake news and disinformation in campaigns. The handbook addresses the use of political marketing techniques in crisis management, political branding, the measurement of political marketing effects, and political marketing use outside of electoral campaigns. The Sage Handbook of Political Marketing is an essential resource for scholars, practitioners, students, and politicos in general, seeking to understand the complexities of political marketing. It provides a comprehensive and nuanced exploration of the field, equipping readers to engage with the theoretical and practical aspects of political marketing in a rapidly changing world. Part 1: Strategy in Political Marketing: Orthodox and Occidental Perspectives Part 2: Political Marketing, Propaganda, and Digital Evolution: Global South and Eastern European Perspectives Part 3: Ideology in Political Marketing: Advocacy, Movements, Lobbying, and Public Diplomacy Part 4: Contemporary Political Marketing: Cybercampaigning, Fake News and Social Media

Earth observation data contains vast amounts of valuable information that enhance comprehension of environmental changes and support informed decision-making regarding our planet. The Copernicus Browser is a powerful online platform designed to facilitate the visualisation and analysis of these data. Meanwhile, the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming numerous fields. This case study presents a scenario demonstrating how AI can assist in the spatial analysis of imagery data related to wildfires in Los Angeles, obtained from the Copernicus Browser.

Consumers often use cosmetics long after their expiry date, despite the health risk. This paper aims to understand why and to suggest policy changes that can promote safer practices in cosmetics use. This is the first study to investigate risk perception in relation to expired cosmetics. Thirty-three semi-structured interviews with both cosmetics users and employees of cosmetics companies were conducted in the UK and China. Perceived risk theory was found to be a useful analytical lens. Eight risk factors emerged from the data, including two not previously identified. Combinations of risk were also found to be valuable in explaining consumer attitudes to cosmetic expiry dates, which suggests that perceived risk factors interact with each other to create an emergent perception of risk, requiring an integrated understanding. While physical, performance and self-brand connection risk can promote adherence to an expiry date, other risk factors such as financial and social risk can override such concerns, leading to the expiry date being ignored. Implications for suppliers’ and regulators’ policies and risk-communication strategies are identified that may help reduce the risks being taken by cosmetics users.

The following study will explore the stories which are not told – that is, it will scrutinize the process of intertextual emergence of an ultimately open story: one which has neither discernible authorship nor agenda and which remains in-the-making rather than strives to achieve closure. The paper will discuss the process in which multifaceted and multidirectional organizational stories are created, in which plots and characters exchange and ‘ending’ is defied. This lack of closure is perceived here as a breeding ground for networked meanings, which, if allowed to remain interdependent and plural, eschew the danger of a new organizational story becoming universal carrier of inflexibly established contents. Since the unifying semantic organizational frameworks (e.g. ‘success story’) may be construed as impostors attempting to ascribe both authorship and agency to a nonagentical and non-authored ‘untold story’, this study proposes one way in which multidirectedness and plurality of the story may be preserved.

This paper introduces AIRSim (AI Responses Simulator), an innovative AI tool designed to support students in practicing their questionnaire analysis skills within the café and restaurant discipline. Utilizing artificial intelligence (AI), AIRSim generates hypothetical feedback data to facilitate student learning. Through a series of 16 experiments, we evaluated AIRSim’s capability in simulating participant responses to user-uploaded questionnaires. Our findings demonstrated a notable degree of diversity in the generated results, as indicated by the Entropy Index, across various perspectives and participant-question combinations. To the best of our knowledge, there exists a lack of relevant studies exploring this specific application of AI in the context of student learning within the café and restaurant discipline. By introducing the AIRSim tool, educators can efficiently enhance their students’ analytical abilities and responsiveness to customer needs. This practical contribution addresses the pressing need for effective training methods in the hospitality sector while also capitalizing on the transformative potential of Generative AI technologies, such as ChatGPT. Overall, this study provides valuable insights into AI-driven student learning and identifies areas for future research.

Levels of poverty and deprivation and the demand for food aid has increased significantly as a result of the joint effects of ongoing austerity measures (O’Loughlin et al., 2024), welfare reforms (DWP, 2015), pension credit cuts (Slocombe, 2023), the COVID-19 pandemic (Oncini, 2021; Summers et al., 2021) and the ongoing cost-of-living crisis (Moraes et al., 2024; Bull et al.,2023). Moreover, a significant correlation exists between these economic/social drivers and health inequalities (Garthwaite et al., 2015), with many predicting a public health emergency (Wolfson and Leung, 2020). Despite recording significantly higher levels of poverty, poor health and housing in comparison to white ethnic groups, older individuals from ethnic minorities are under-represented as recipients of food aid. Thus, there are many knowledge gaps in our understanding of food services provided to older people within older ethnic minority communities (Power et al., 2017). In response to this empirical gap, this research draws on service ecosystem evaluation frameworks (see Baron et al., 2018) to empirically advance our understanding of community food service provisioning within South Asian communities as well as identify appropriate food support ecosystem approaches which can be used to address food insecurity in ethnic minority communities. Through the use of in-depth interviews carried out by researchers belonging to Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities, our findings reveal that systems adressing food insecurity and well-being issues within older ethnic minorities are inadequate, especially considering specific cultural, social and economic shortfalls in the provision of appropriate services. Consequently, we conclude by providing recommendations to food service providers within ethnic minority communities.

PURPOSE: This study aims to explore the extent to which social innovation is prioritised among a sample of organisations promoting nancial inclusion through the provision of a ordable credit, advice and nancial education. Additionally, we seek to understand the nature of the adopted innovation process and how this is perceived as in uencing social change (if at all). METHODOLOGY: This exploratory study uses a combination of qualitative, semistructured, face-to-face interviews with 35 managers in 29 di erent organisations and three focus groups with 16 practitioners and stakeholders. FINDINGS: Innovation processes are in the main, largely incremental as opposed to radical with organisations focusing on process-led innovations. More notably, most organisations found that they often lacked the required social capital capacity, economic and technological resources and the necessary skills to develop, implement and capitalise on innovations, thus limiting the more radical forms of innovations. IMPLICATIONS: To enhance the capacity of smaller organisations promoting nancial inclusion, there is significant potential to engage in more open, co-creational projects/partnerships to deliver greater social impact to vulnerable populations. CONTRIBUTION: We contribute to the under-researched literature on social innovation by highlighting the extent to which social innovation is given precedence within the sector promoting nancial inclusion. Given the contextual and organisational diversity of the sector, highlighting these behavioural practices and circumstances, enable researchers to theoretically advance social innovation theory further and provide more practice-based guidance for organisations to successfully shape social change.