Melamine, a nitrogen-rich chemical, has received much attention in recent years owing to a series of highly publicized food safety incidents. These include pet food recalls in North America in 2007 and the deaths of six infants and the illness of some 300,000 more in China in 2008 owing to the adulteration of milk, infant formula, and other milk-derived products. With contamination of human food and animal feed by melamine becoming a serious public health concern owing to its wide dissemination, there is an urgent need to understand why this scandal occurred and its consequences in depth. This review summarizes information relating to the manufacture, uses, occurrence and quantitative analysis of melamine and melamine analogues. Other sections deal with the unfolding of the melamine scandal and its aftermath, the toxicity and carcinogenicity of the compound and its analogues, interim safety measures and risk assessment.

Consumers' emotions play a salient role in consumers' buying process, their consumption behaviours, and their engagement with product/service offerings, owing to which, it has gained much attention in recent years as an area of inquiry. However, literature in this field/subject is theoretically fragmented. Therefore, to enhance the conceptual understanding, this study synthesizes extant literature, using a hybrid review approach. Herein, we attempt to integrate bibliometric analysis, along with the theories, contexts, characteristics, and methodology framework, while consolidating and classifying the domain knowledge, trends, and progress/citation analysis using the bibliometric approach. In the process, we reviewed 384 conceptual and empirical articles, published during the period 1967–2021. The idea was to identify key theories, constructs, research contexts, and methods, based on which, we propose a few potential research areas. Based on our thorough analysis, these areas include (1) consumer co‐creation, (2) consumer engagement, (3) service employee interactions, (4) consumer decision making, and (5) consumption experience.

PurposeThis study examines the impact of customer involvement (CI), technology strategy, firm internationalization and servitization on product and service innovation performance (SIP) in hybrid offerings. In addition, it investigates the moderating role of digitization and co-creation in the relationship mentioned above.Design/methodology/approachA research framework was developed through the lens of service-dominant (S-D) logic theory, and the proposed research hypotheses were empirically tested. Primary data were collected via the survey method, and structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.FindingsFindings of this study suggest that the S-D logic theory effectively explains CI and servitization in hybrid offerings. Furthermore, digitization is a crucial driver of SIP. Additionally, this paper finds that co-creation moderates between servitization and innovation performance of hybrid offerings.Practical implicationsBesides theoretical contributions, this study presents valuable insights to manage service networks during servitization.Originality/valueFirst, this work proposes a comprehensive framework of hybrid offerings' driving factors (i.e. CI, firm internationalization, technology strategy and servitization) and their impact on product and SIP. Second, it tests the moderating effects of digitalization and co-creation in the context of hybrid offerings.

PurposeThe concepts of showrooming and webrooming have been well researched but majorly from the marketing/economic perspectives. The present study explores the socio-psychological motivations and different types of satisfaction derived from “cross-shopping” behaviour namely, showrooming and webrooming in a developing nation.Design/methodology/approachThe study is exploratory and is conducted using an interpretive approach. The researchers conducted 52 in-depth interviews and the collected data were subjected to open and axial coding to generate the conceptual model.FindingsThe findings indicate various motivations of cross-shopping such a habit and the joy of discovery while novel aspects of satisfaction emerge such as process satisfaction and social satisfaction. The findings also revealed contextual moderators of the cross-shopping process.Research limitations/implicationsThe present study contributes to the domain of cross shopping behaviour by illustrating the social motivators behind the same and novel satisfaction outcomes because of the cross-shopping process.Practical implicationsThe present study has multiple implications that would enable managers to effectively utilize cross shopping behaviour such understanding of satisfaction beyond those derived from the product only.Originality/valueThis is one of the first studies to investigate consumer behaviour related to cross shopping based on psycho-social dimensions.

PurposeThis paper aims to illustrate the scope and challenges of using computer-aided content analysis in international marketing with the aim to capture consumer sentiments about COVID-19 from multi-lingual tweets.Design/methodology/approachThe study is based on some 35 million original COVID-19-related tweets. The study methodology illustrates the use of supervised machine learning and artificial neural network techniques to conduct extensive information extraction.FindingsThe authors identified more than two million tweets from six countries and categorized them into PESTEL (i.e. Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal) dimensions. The extracted consumer sentiments and associated emotions show substantial differences across countries. Our analyses highlight opportunities and challenges inherent in using multi-lingual online sentiment analysis in international marketing. Based on these insights, several future research directions are proposed.Originality/valueFirst, the authors contribute to methodology development in international marketing by providing a “use-case” for computer-aided text mining in a multi-lingual context. Second, the authors add to the knowledge on differences in COVID-19-related consumer sentiments in different countries. Third, the authors provide avenues for future research on the analysis of unstructured multi-media posts.