Money Minute: Using Short Informational Videos to Address Financial Hardships Caused by the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a money crunch for some families. To help families struggling financially while capitalizing on clients’ newfound at-home time, University of Tennessee Extension consumer economics leadership team developed a series of money management videos called Money Minute. The primary purpose of the videos is to provide research-based financial education during this time of financial hardships. Filmed using Zoom, each video offers a piece of research-based information, a listing of additional resources, and a call to action. The video series has proved to be effective in reaching clientele with financial information in the midst of a pandemic, and the methods can be replicated or adapted by others.

Religion as a way of branding in the age of consumerism

Purpose – taking into account, that consumption of spirituality and more precisely brand religion in development of the market has been well acknowledged as well as it has been largely abandoned in secular consumer society. The aim of this paper is to explore the theoretical concept of this phenomenon and search for the answers in regards the symbolic brands and fiddled in religious rhetoric to build a narrative tradition for example the symbolic brand, and establish a community of loyal followers, which sticks strong. How do people adjust their religious and spiritual beliefs and practices in such a society? What are the limits to marketing and branding religious and spiritual goods and practices? Design/methodology/approach– the research implements a qualitative exploratory approach using cases of symbolic brands. It explores the causes of religious consumer society and the most common personal adjustments (quality expectations, syncretism, religious shopping) and organizational answers (marketing and branding strategies the theoretical concept of consumer ambiguity and its influence on affect. Our goal is not to test any theory, nor to apply the scheme to any particular phenomenon. Rather, we show that very different ideas and examples about, as branding of religion, quasi-religions, religious-secular competition could be combined into one conceptual scheme. Finding – the research demonstrates the limitations and difficulties for religious marketing and branding. In fact, religious marketing and branding may not be accepted by the organizations’ members and/or by the public in general. Finally, marketing and branding may stumble upon the difficulty that transcendent claims are increasingly difficult to sustain in modern societies. Research limitations/implications – it is acknowledged that the current research is limited by its exploratory nature, however, it highlights that consumer’s search of religion in brands should not always be viewed as negative and provides important insights into the consumption of spirituality and the pursue of the meaning in the life. Practical implications – First, consumption of spirituality in marketing has been poorly researched in recent times. The current research found that individuals did embrace the market in this area and enjoyed the symbolic meaning in branding inherent in many of the products/services on offer. Second, has been niggardly studied in societies in which brand community flourishes. The current research has contributed to this literature through findings, which reveal that we see that modernization creates rules according to which individuals have the right to choose, gives them the resources be able to make choices, and provides representations and values that legitimate religious consumer behavior or new open space for new believing systems. Originality/Value – the theme and the research are not very popular among marketing and sociology researchers and the dangerous of these specific belonging and loyalty to certain brand as religion- still not discovered what an output it will provide to society. Keywords: branding, religion, society, symbols, believes. JEL classification: Z12 - Religion D12 - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis

Food and Nutrition Economics

At the heart of most food, nutrition, and health decisions and concerns is an economic issue. Consequently, understanding some basic economics is imperative to evaluate the likely effectiveness of food and nutrition policies or interventions, especially those designed to operate through economic channels. Section I of the book provides the fundamentals of nutrition. Section II provides the fundamentals of consumer economics, from both the neo-classical and behavioral economics perspectives. Section III gives an overview of the US food system and the fundamentals of food production economics. Section IV gives the fundamentals of market analysis, including horizontally and vertically related markets. Section V gives an overview of cost effectiveness and cost benefit analysis of nutrition interventions. The general structure for most chapters is to first motivate the importance of the topic, present the economic approach to analysing the topic, intersperse the text with some examples and questions applying the concepts, and conclude with what has been found in the empirical literature related to the topic. A hypothetical conversation between a nutritionist and an economist runs throughout the book to help give the book a conversational feel and motivate and summarize each chapter.