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The objective of this study is to investigate consumer motivations and purchase behaviors with respect to cookies with customized packaging and consumer interest in different types of customization in the Italian food industry.

The study was conducted by performing a quantitative analysis of 642 surveys collected via Google Forms. A repeated-measures ANOVA, univariate ANOVA, chi-squared test, correlation analysis and linear regression analysis were conducted using SPSS.

Customers buy cookies with customized packaging as personal gifts to someone they care about. The ability to insert their initials or a personalized phrase appears to increase customers’ positive attitudes toward buying cookies with customized packaging. Those interested in this type of customization are willing to pay more, regardless of the type of customization.

In the survey, only some types of customization not previously extracted from a focus group are explored, and the analysis covers only the food industry and does not take a cross-sectional approach. In addition, we specifically refer to the Italian market, which means that results cannot be generalized.

From a managerial perspective, our results highlight that food industry companies should take advantage of the opportunity to segment the demand for customized packaging with respect to consumers’ attitudes and their motivation toward food products.

From a theoretical perspective, this study analyzes consumer attitudes and behaviors toward purchasing cookies with customized packaging. From a managerial perspective, the results of the study highlight interesting courses of action for companies in the food industry that would like to use the tool of customization by intervening in terms of the packaging rather than the product itself.

This study is to propose a procedure to support decisions on which enablers should be employed to minimize the impact of barriers to implementing mass customization strategies in food companies.

Through interpretive structural modeling, the authors analyzed the relationships between barriers. Then, with an approach similar to the quality function deployment technique, commonly used in general product and process development, the authors clarified the relationships between barriers and enablers.

The results revealed 19 barriers and 17 enablers for implementing food mass customization. The analysis indicates that most of the barriers (16) present strong associations with each other. The barrier “products with non-customizable features” depends on the whole chain of associations and causes a minor impact on the other barriers. In turn, the barrier “ingredient incompatibility” causes impact over the whole chain, and its dependence on other barriers is very low.

The results were tested in a single Brazilian company in the food sector.

The findings can allow food manufacturing companies to focus their efforts on the improvement of enabling technologies, such as smart packaging, Internet of Things and additive manufacture.

This study would help food companies to improve their business and provide better products to society.

There are few recommendations in the literature to how to implement mass customization strategy in companies from the food sector. This study fills in this gap presenting a procedure to guide managerial staff to develop this promising approach for food companies.

Sets out to provide a selected bibliography or recent resources on library instruction and information literacy.

Introduces and annotates periodical articles, monographs, and exhibition catalogues examining library instruction and information literacy.

Provides information about each source, discusses the characteristics of current scholarship, and describes sources that contain unique scholarly contributions and quality reproductions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

The idea of adapting and designing services and products to serve “special” needs either for the public good or for commercial purposes is fundamentally an idea anchored in US history. At root, it is a simple idea, albeit expressed in widely varying vocabularies across disciplines and professions. In the parlance of social work, public education, and public librarianship, for example, the idea has been repeatedly advanced over the years as a well-meaning reaching out to meet the needs of subpopulations not readily addressed by available service designs. In the parlance of the commercial sector, the idea has focused on market segmentation, dividing the population into finer and finer subgroups for the purposes of marketing products and services. One of the most recent labels for these activities has been marketing to audience “niches” in which the audience is identified “… as a certain definable market segment with demographic characteristics that make it attractive to advertisers.” (Fejes and Lennon, 2000, p. 37).

Public libraries can help immigrants adjust to life in the USA, including maintaining health and well-being. The purpose of this study was to understand how immigrants use public libraries and how library staff provide health-related information and services for immigrant audiences.

This study used semistructured interviews with library staff (n = 9) and immigrant library patrons (n = 10), representing multiple first languages and countries of origin from two different library locations within a large public library system in a US mid-Atlantic city.

Staff reported offering many health-related programs and services, but only one of the 10 patron respondents had used them. Patrons more commonly used the library in ways indirectly related to health (e.g. learning English) than direct health-related services. Staff reported comfort interacting with immigrant patrons, but lacked consensus on navigating language barriers and determining community needs.

This qualitative study provides insights from a specific geographic and cultural setting. It focused on immigrants using the library and may have excluded vulnerable populations of immigrants who encounter barriers to using the library. Future research and practice should focus on how public libraries can better meet the health information needs of immigrant populations, including navigating controversial social and political topics, as well as emerging health-related information during a pandemic.

Public health practitioners often overlook public libraries as community collaborators. This research identifies that while there is important and essential work happening in public libraries to improve immigrant health, more can be done, especially in collaboration with public health professionals.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the involvement of libraries in health literacy programs and initiatives based on a review of the literature.

Four databases were searched for papers that described health literacy programs and initiatives within libraries.

Several themes of health literacy programs in libraries emerged: health literacy for older adults, underserved populations, the general public, healthcare professionals, and medical students, and patients. Collaborations between libraries and community organizations were frequently used.

Librarians may use this review to understand the history of health literacy efforts and libraries to inform future programming. This review will contextualize current research on health literacy and libraries.

Despite the currency and relevance of this topic, there are no literature reviews on health literacy and librarianship.

This study focuses on specifically women refugees' experiences of accessing information and how sociocultural barriers impact these experiences aiming to broaden the LIS literature of women refugees' information problems from sociocultural aspects. The socioculturally formed roles of a woman can impact the information practices of women refugees or cause certain information problems during the integration process. Hence, the research questions that drive this study are: What kind of information problems might women refugees face in a new host country? What kind of sociocultural barriers influence their information problems? How do they react toward these information problems?

The study is designed based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with eighteen refugee women living in Sweden. The study is a part of a larger study in which authors intend to explore the information practices and integration challenges of almost 20 or more refugee women living in Sweden.

Women refugees face information overload, difficulties in understanding new communication culture and lack of appropriate sources and networks in a new country. These information problems are influenced by sociocultural barriers such as the role of women, national culture of “collectivism”, small-world and lack of information literacy. Women react in certain ways such as, stressing, panicking, quitting the tasks, wasting time and making wrong decisions which negatively impact the integration process.

The research has its limitations as it is conducted with a small group of women refugees, belong to specific Middle Eastern culture and cannot be generalized. Another limitation is that the interviews are conducted in English language (with sufficient language skill). However, conducting interviews in their mother language would have been an advantage.

Practically, the study provides awareness for official and private organizations, volunteers and policymakers dealing with refugees. The stakeholders involved in the societal integration process of refugees, must consider that women refugees are more prone to information problems due to certain sociocultural influences (i.e. “being a woman” and national culture) and need a separate plan than the male refugees. For instance, by increasing and offering intercultural opportunities at workplaces or schools can encourage the wider social networking for women refugees. The programs aiming to reduce the sociocultural differences among women refugees and the Swedes are needed to be included in the integration policy.

The study intends to help the refugees society and the Swedish society overall by improving the integration plan.

The findings related to the information experiences of women refugees have potential implications for research where the value of information in the integration process is explored. The study meets the gap in previous literature by presenting the gender specific views on information problems from sociocultural aspects. The study also provides future directions to understand how women refugees deal with potential sociocultural barriers to information in a new country.