Research demonstrates that brands can influence children's food preferences and potentially contribute to unhealthy consumption patterns. This article extends this line of research by investigating the complex and interacting effects of food brand marketing on experienced taste. The empirical field in a remote Russian town enabled the assessment of branding effects when entering a newly established market. Examining the combination of various advertisement features with emotional brand elicitation, we derive hypotheses about the interplay of brands and advertisement components linked to the perceived taste of a fast food meal. In Novosibirsk, Russia, 778 children and adolescents aged 10-18 years were exposed to fast food advertisements with real and imaginary brand logos and varying advertising claims. The advertisements consisted of a warning, an exaggerated credence claim, or both. A subsequently offered fast food meal-a portion of French fries-was experimentally varied and prepared to be either healthier but less tasty and unsalted, or less healthy but tastier and salted. The findings verify strong and positive brand effects on children's taste satisfaction. Warnings in advertisements "worked" only for novel fast food brands by negatively affecting taste satisfaction, but increased taste satisfaction when applied in advertisements for established brands. Single credence claims did not improve the taste experience, but counteracted the negative effects of warnings for novel brands. Finally, the established brand influenced taste satisfaction positively when the fries were saltier. The findings reveal various opportunities for fast food marketing to artificially create taste satisfaction for potentially unhealthy food. Public health strategies that focus on advertising claim restrictions should be reconsidered in the context of possible evasion strategies of the food industry and counter-effects of warnings among strong fast food brands.

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Socio-economic security is a highly critical issue that is addressed by every country in the world. In order to counteract challenges and threats faced by Russia, the Economic Security Strategy of the Russian Federation has been formulated. The development of human capital was proclaimed as one of the key areas to be targeted by the state policy. In this regard, the primary task is to identify destabilizing factors of socio-economic security in the development of human capital, which determined the relevance of the article. The article analyzes the research approaches to defining the key features of socio-economic security and human capital. It highlights the main principles of the theory of human capital on the basis of which a systematic approach to the study of human capital is justified. The proposed approach aims to identify negative factors that weaken regional security. By adopting this approach to the data in hand, the socio-economic security of the Voronezh Region, the old-developed region of the Central Black Earth Region in Russia, has been assessed. The data used for the analysis were collected from the Federal State Statistics Service. The mapping of the results of socio-economic differentiation was carried out by methods of GIS-technology, in particular Quantum GIS 12. For the processing of the initial information, the of multivariate statistical and econometric analysis SPSS Statistic 20.0 was used. As a result, factors that will have a negative impact on the development of human capital in the foreseeable future have been identified, namely the deterioration of the demographic situation, in particular the aging of the population and its natural decline; the decline in the quality of education, imbalances in the labor market, declining living standards, and deteriorating public health. It is concluded that to overcome the critical situation in the sphere of human capital and to ensure socio-economic security, it is necessary to carry out preventive measures.

Regional socioeconomic planning requires assessing the local resource potential from the economic standpoint. The assessment must cover the tourism opportunities the region has, as domestic and inbound tourism is a national priority. This makes relevant any effort to improve the methodology for assessing the opportunities for tourism; the new methodology must provide not only quantitative, but also qualitative assessment for effective managerial decision-making in tourism. Despite numerous papers having been published on the topic over the last decade, objective assessment of tourism opportunities for strategic decision-making in socioeconomic development is a problem yet to be solved. The goal hereof is to create a method for comprehensive assessment of local tourism opportunities so as to choose the priorities of regional socioeconomic development. The paper overviews the existing approaches to the problem and presents the author's method as well as how it applies to Novosibirsk Oblast. The research builds upon Russian and international studies on evaluating single tourism opportunities as well as on comprehensive assessments. It will of use for regional and municipal governments in Russian regions, for tourism development agencies, as well as for anyone interested in regional tourism.

Until 2020, the tourism industry was characterized by a growth rate, the statistics highlight that globally 2019 was the tenth year with a consecutive annual growth. However, the Covid-19 pandemic marked a major turning point in the development of tourism, instead of tourism overdevelopment, the underdevelopment issues appeared in front pages of the industry news. The effects of the pandemic are intensified by the fact that tourism is a labour-intensive industry and that most companies in the sector are SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises). At this time, it is crucially important to look at sustainability issues, therefore the aim of this study is to analyse the social and economic dimensions of sustainability for tourism SMEs. Descriptive statistics as well as qualitative research methods were used to study the challenges posed by the pandemic, in-depth interviews were conducted with tourism SMEs from three different countries. The conclusions show the situation from an enterprise perspective in Russian Federation, Georgia and Latvia.

Enterprise cooperation has been analysed from many aspectsglobal competition, new innovations in technology advancements, tendencies of direct sales in tourism, increase of tourist experience; these are the main driving forces that are pushing traditional travel agencies out of the market and transforming the tourism intermediates into new open business model. Cooperation and networking creates ability to achieve goals that an enterprise is not capable of achieving on its own, thus giving rise to a new phenomenon referred to as collaborative advantage. Networking and collaboration in the tourism sector has gained importance particularly since these networks promote the spread of information and strengthens the connections between heterogeneous sectors of tourism industry, private and public companies, international partners, contribute to more sustainable tourism development that has greater actuality this year as the United Nations General Assembly announced 2017 as the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development. Research is based on qualitative research method of 5 case studies from each of two destinations Riga and Novosibirsk; using semi-structured interviews with company managers that allows interaction with each study object and gives advantage of collecting more detailed information, analysing motivation for involvement in cooperation. Article aims to investigate if there are cooperation peculiarities for the different types of travel agencies and tour-operator enterprises. Cooperation factors for analyses include cooperation importance, objectives, motives, trust, coordination, networking coverage, frequency and other important indications. Despite the fact that all examined tourism enterprises are involved in cooperation activities, in conclusion the study indicates the differences in cooperation habits, advantages and disadvantages of these studied tourism enterprises.

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