Healthful grocery shopping. Perceptions and barriers

While there is evidence of the factors influencing the healthfulness of consumers' food choice, little is known about how consumers perceive the healthfulness of their shopping. This study aimed to explore consumers' perceptions of, and identify barriers to, conducting a healthful shop. Using a qualitative approach, consisting of an accompanied shop and post-shop telephone interview, 50 grocery shoppers were recruited. Results showed that consumers used three criteria to identify a healthful shop: (1) inclusion of healthful foods; (2) avoidance or restriction of particular foods; and (3) achieving a balance between healthful and unhealthful foods. Those who take a balanced approach employ a more holistic approach to their diet while those who avoid or include specific foods may be setting criteria to purchase only certain types of food. The effectiveness of any of these strategies in improving healthfulness is still unclear and requires further investigation. Two barriers to healthful shopping were: (i) lack of self-efficacy in choosing, preparing and cooking healthful foods and (ii) conflicting needs when satisfying self and others. This highlights the need for interventions targeted at building key food skills and for manufacturers to make healthful choices more appealing. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Loss-of-Mains Detection by Internet Based ROCOF

This paper considers the enhancement of loss-of-mains detection by use of a differential rate-of-change-of-frequency relay to reduce nuisance tripping and improve sensitivity to small excursions in frequency. The telecommunications media which might carry the differential ROCOF signal are reviewed with a focus on channel latency, bandwidth and security.

Internet Based Loss-of-Mains Detection for Distributed Generation

This paper discusses methods of using the Internet as a communications media between distributed generator sites to provide new forms of loss-of-mains protection. An analysis of the quality of the communications channels between several nodes on the network was carried out experimentally. It is shown that Internet connections in urban environments are already capable of providing real-time power system protection, whilst rural Internet connections are borderline suitable but could not yet be recommended as a primary method of protection. Two strategies of providing loss-of-mains across Internet protocol are considered, broadcast of a reference frequency or phasor representing the utility and an Internet based inter-tripping scheme.

Community Arts and Appropriate Internet Technology: Participation, Materiality, and the Ethics of Sustainability in the Digitally Networked Era

This thesis establishes appropriate internet technology as a matter of sustainability for the community arts field. It begins with a contextual review that historicises community art in relation to technological, cultural, and political change. It goes on to identify key challenges for the field resulting from the emerging socio-cultural significance of the internet and digital media technologies. A conceptual review of the literature positions these issues in relation to Internet Studies, integrating key concepts from Software Studies and the computational turn with approaches from the fields of ICT for Development (ICT4D), Critical Design, and Critical Making. Grounded in these intersecting literatures the thesis offers a new pragmatic ethics of appropriate internet technology: one involving an alternative philosophical platform from which suitable internet-based technologies can be designed and assembled by practitioners. I interrogate these ideas through an in-depth investigation of CuriousWorks, an Australian community arts organisation, focusing on their current internet practices. The thesis then reflects on some experimental interventions I designed as part of the study for the purpose of provoking shifts in the field of community arts. The research findings form the foundation of a series of recommendations offered to practitioners and policy makers that may guide their critical and creative uses of internet technologies in the future.

Let's talk about health: shoppers' discourse regarding health while food shopping

Objective: The present study aimed to examine the role of health in consumers’ food purchasing decisions through investigating the nature of people’s discourse regarding health while conducting their food shopping.

Design: The study employed the think-aloud technique as part of an accompanied shop. All mentions of health and terms relating to health were identified from the data set. Inductive thematic analysis was conducted to examine how health was talked about in relation to people’s food choice decisions.

Setting: Supermarkets in Dublin, Republic of Ireland and Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Subjects Participants: (n 50) were aged over 18 years and represented the main household shopper.

Results: Responsibility for others and the perceived need to illicit strict control to avoid ‘unhealthy’ food selections played a dominant role in how health was talked about during the accompanied shop. Consequently healthy shopping was viewed as difficult and effort was required to make the healthy choice, with shoppers relating to product-based inferences to support their decisions.

Conclusions: This qualitative exploration has provided evidence of a number of factors influencing the consideration of health during consumers’ food shopping. These results highlight opportunities for stakeholders such as public health bodies and the food industry to explore further ways to help enable consumers make healthy food choices.

Trading-up on unmet expectations? Evaluating consumers’ expectations in online premium grocery shopping logistics

Geography and retail store location are inherently bound together; this study links food retail changes to systemic logistics changes in an emerging market. Current logistic practices underplay demand-led models and online market evolution in large metropolises such as Istanbul, Rio de Janeiro, and Delhi. The later include raising income and education, access to a wide range of technologies, traffic and transport difficulties, lagging retail provision, changing family structure and roles, as well as changing food culture and taste. The study incorporates demand for premium products defined by Kapferer and Bastien, (2009b) as comprising a broad variety of higher quality and unique or distinctive products and brands including in grocery organic ranges, healthy options, allergy free selections, and international and gourmet/specialty products through an online grocery model (n=356) that integrates a novel view of home delivery (HD) in Istanbul. More importantly from a logistic perspective our model incorporates any products from any online vendors broadening the range beyond listed items found in any traditional online supermarkets. Data collected via phone survey and analysed via structural equation modelling (SEM) suggest that the offer of online premium products significantly affects consumers’ delivery logistics expectations. We discuss logistics operations and business management implications, identifying the emerging geography of logistic models which respond to consumers’ unmet expectations using multiple sourcing and consolidation points.

Transaction Frequency and Trust in Internet Buying Behaviour

Special Joint Issue - Irish Marketing Review and Journal of the Korean Academy of Marketing Science