This paper contributes to the existing but scarce literature on customer-centric sustainability and measures consumers’ perceptions of fast-fashion brands regarding economic, environmental, and social sustainability. Furthermore, it aims to test the impact of each dimension of customer–brand relationships, specifically brand trust, affective brand commitment, and continuance brand commitment. A research model and nine hypotheses were tested through multiple linear regressions using a convenience sample of 228 Portuguese fast-fashion consumers. It also provides additional insights into how consumers’ perceptions of the three dimensions of sustainability might affect customer–brand relationships, namely brand trust and brand commitment. The results reveal a significant relationship between all dimensions of customer-centric sustainability and brand trust. Furthermore, economic sustainability and social sustainability were found to significantly predict effective brand commitment. Additionally, this study demonstrates that brand trust positively influences consumers’ intentions to maintain long-term relationships with fast-fashion brands. The implications of the results are discussed in detail, shedding light on the importance of incorporating customer-centric sustainability practices into brand management strategies within the fast-fashion industry. Further elaboration and discussion of the results can be found in this study.

This paper investigates how consumers use and understand nutrition information on food labels in their daily lives. Primary data were collected from a survey (1127 Portuguese consumers) and four focus groups exploring dissimilarities among consumer segments: a) nutrition-concerned adults; b) adults non-concerned with nutritional issues; c) young consumers, aged 15–18; d) less educated and older consumers. A mixed-methods approach was crucial to further understand consumers’ preferences for labels and to identify obstacles to their use. Data evidence that consumers prefer symbolic, coloured, and simple, FOP schemes and that ‘traffic light’ schemes are better understood and result in faster decision-making at points of sale. By collecting data on how different consumer segments search, understand, like, and use food labels, this paper provides rich guidelines to agri-food practitioners’ future actions, particularly retailers. It also reveals serious interpretation obstacles faced by consumers, which needs to be revisited by policy-makers on nutritional labelling and inform decisions on a national scheme. Lastly, it further strengthens existing models by setting that some influencing dimensions are related to the idiosyncratic nature of the subject (consumer) and others are related to the object itself (label format), neither of which has been explored in the literature.

Given the importance of volunteers as key assets of formal volunteering organizations, this paper explores the adoption and adequacy of Employee Brand Equity (EBE) models to understand volunteers’ contributions to Nonprofit Organization (NPO) brand equity. Methodologically this research embraces a mixed-methods approach by combining data from exploratory interviews with experts from the NPO context and from a survey to 227 Portuguese volunteers from 28 formal volunteering organizations. This paper adds to the literature by applying for the first time EBE dimensions to the context of formal volunteering institutions. Hence, it provides a first step to the development of a Volunteer Brand Equity Model, by characterizing each dimension and validating its importance in the context of NPOs. From a practitioners’ viewpoint, this paper calls attention to the importance of embracing internal marketing strategies to attract and retain volunteers in a sustainable way and provides a practical tool for Volunteer Brand Equity analysis in NPOs.

Information about the paper titled "TRANSITION TO HIGHER EDUCATION AS A LIFE UPGRADE" at IATED Digital Library

One of the main purposes of this paper is analysing the perception of Portuguese consumers - namely undergraduate students in Oporto - regarding corporate social responsibility (CSR). Considering consumer perceptions on CSR dimensions are limited to a national contingency, this research provides some results that bridge the research gap on the subject in Portugal. For this purpose, exploratory interviews have been conducted and such interviews have allowed the elaboration of a questionnaire directed to a sample of 824 students in 22 higher education institutions. Due to the analysis of the main results, it has been concluded that students had some knowledge and a multidimensional vision of CSR. After an exploratory and confirmatory factorial analysis, it has been found that the CSR concept is based on four dimensions: economic, environmental, employees and community. Concerning consumer support of CSR, such consumers prefer avoiding products from socially irresponsible companies to actually be willing to pay more for products from socially responsible ones.