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Higher education institutions (HEIs) have experienced severe cutbacks in funding over the past few years, with universities examining options for alternative funding streams, such as alumni funding. Identifying the factors influencing their alumni's intentions to invest in their alma mater can be of significant importance when establishing a sustainable revenue stream. Within this context, empirical research on the potential role of trust is scarce. This paper aims to deepen the analysis of the relationship between alumni trust and engagement as well as three outcomes, namely support, commitment, and attitude toward donation. A structural equation model was tested on two samples of US (n = 318) and Italian (n = 314) alumni. Although both countries are affluent and developed countries, the USA has an established tradition of alumni donations, which is not such a developed practice in Italy. For both countries, results confirm that engagement is an antecedent of trust, which in turn leads to the three investigated outcomes (support, commitment, and attitude toward donations). In contrast, the effect of commitment on attitude toward donations is significant only for the USA universities. The paper has interesting theoretical and managerial implications. From a theoretical point of view, the study aims to address a gap concerning the role of trust in the HE context. Managerially, the study has significant implications for universities that want to change alumni attitude toward donations.

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to respond to the call for exploring and empirically testing both antecedents and outcomes of brand addiction and compulsive buying behaviour. The focus of the study is on the food habits of young female consumers. Design/methodology/approach: To test the hypotheses, a survey design gathering cross-sectional primary data from 325 female Italian consumers and a structural equation modelling have been adopted. Findings: Findings show that brand addiction is positively influenced by consumer resilience, leading to increased life happiness and self-esteem, while compulsive buying behaviour is negatively influenced by consumer resilience and positively influenced by impulsivity. Compulsive buying is also associated with brand addiction and emotional overeating. Emotional overeating is additionally influenced by impulsivity and the control variables of enjoyment of food and loneliness. Moreover, loneliness has a negative impact on life happiness and self-esteem. Originality/value: The study applies the proposed theory by Mrad and Cui (2020) on the relationship between brand addiction and compulsive buying to food consumption. Furthermore, it expands on this research by investigating consumer characteristics as determinants and behavioural outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the primary attributes influencing consumers' implicit and explicit perceptions of food safety (FS). To achieve this objective, a mixed-method approach has been adopted, combining the Implicit Association Test with an online questionnaire survey based on a sample of 284 respondents. The results show that the sustainable attributes of production processes and the intangible and perceptible attributes of products are mostly associated, both implicitly and explicitly, to FS. However, significant differences emerged for some variables, especially regarding the 'country-of-origin', which showed only slightly association with the safety concept in the IAT but received the highest average score in the survey. Theoretically, the paper provides a comprehensive framework of the main attributes related to FS by analysing the differences between the consumers' implicit and explicit perceptions. From a managerial perspective, it identifies the most effective strategies the different actors in the production-food chain can adopt to convey FS to the market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examines specialized marketing capabilities' role in the early internationalization of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Emphasis is on sales and communication capabilities and on contrasting international new ventures (INV) from the mature economy of Italy and the posttransformation economy of Poland. Individual expert interviews, including a card-based game, and an entrepreneurial marketing conceptual framework were conducted with representatives of seven manufacturing INVs. The findings obtained through content analysis of interviews with CAQDAS software show how the main specialized marketing capabilities contribute to early expansion of INVs through an interaction with architectural marketing capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]