Special Issue on Food Portions and Marketing in Journal of Business Research

Special issue editors: Søren Askegaard, Chris Dubelaar, Stephen Holden, Natalina Zlatevska

Manuscript submission deadline: September 15, 2015

The Journal of Business Research invites original papers for a special issue concerning food portions and how they might be managed by food manufacturers, food handlers, marketers, and social marketers. “Food portions” includes quantity in a portion, recommended serving sizes, food partitioning (e.g., 100 calorie packs, individual bite-size packs), plate/container sizes, and additional considerations.

Food portions have implications for consumers, food marketers and public health policy. Consumers are increasingly seeking value for money and food marketers are responding with bigger sizes for lower per unit costs. However, bigger portion sizes are being criticized in view of the growing obesity crisis. Public health debates are increasingly expressing a demand for restraint – both by consumers and marketers. Food portion research is at a tipping point that encouraging us to also invite reflections, critical perspectives, and alternative approaches to portion size research–especially those that can suggest ways forward without sacrificing Pareto efficiency.

The special issue is an effort to explore perspectives that we think we know about how food portions affect consumption with a specific focus on how this knowledge might be used by consumers, food marketers, and public health bodies to encourage appropriate food volume consumption, and to generate commercial and social marketing that is responsive to the various competing interests. We are particularly interested in both the what (how does consumption change under different conditions) and the why (why do people eat the amount they do under different conditions). We are therefore interested in both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Some specific elements in need of exploring include:

1. The food itself:
   1. Healthy vs unhealthy
   2. Snack vs main
   3. Portion size vs serving size
   4. Partitioned vs contiguous
   5. Small vs large granules
   6. Tasty vs not
   7. Other food factors.
2. The environments/contexts in which food is consumed:
   1. Other people vs alone
   2. Other foods vs sole food
   3. Time of day
   4. Nice vs unpleasant environment
   5. Short time vs long time eating
   6. High vs low contrast
   7. Other environmental factors.
3. The person consuming the food:
   1. Underweight vs regular weight vs overweight vs obese
   2. Low vs high self esteem
   3. Food focus vs distracted
   4. Gender
   5. Age
   6. Restraints
   7. Other personal characteristics.
4. Configurations among any of the above dimensions.

Please submit manuscripts and enquiries for this special issue to all four of the special issue editors. Submissions must follow the Journal of Business manuscript guidelines (see

http://www.elsevier.com/journals/journal-of-business-research/0148-2963/guide-for-authors

for details). Thank you. Søren Askegaard: aske@sam.sdu.dk; Chris Dubelaar: cdubelaa@Bond.edu.au; Stephen Holden: sholden@Bond.edu.au; Natalina Zlatevska: nzlatevs@Bond.edu.au.

 

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