Comparison of attitudes towards school lunch by elementary school children in Japan,Korea and Thailand

The attitudes of elementary school children towards school lunch among three Asian countries, namely Japan, Korea and Thailand, were compared. More school children in Japan felt that their teachers gave them advice during the school lunch programme. Japanese and Korean teachers advised their children to eat as much as possible of the lunch. Korean children may be a little more obedient with regard to heeding the advice. However, few teachers in Thailand gave the children advice over eating lunch, and the Thai children looked forward to and enjoyed the school lunch. The different responses between Thailand and other two countries may be attributed in part to the differences in the teachers' instruction in the programme. Elementary school teachers, especially in Thailand and Korea, have to take more classes in food and nutrition in universities or colleges, and positively take part in the school lunch programme.     

Food Manufacturers’ Sustainable Product Launch Strategy: Game Theory Approach

This article constructs a manufacturers’ sustainable food product launch game theory based model to understand the decision-making. The results based on derivations and simulations of the egg industry show that the lead manufacturer and the follower manufacturer have different launch criteria for sustainable products. The lead manufacturer decides to launch a sustainable product when the relative maximum willingness to pay for the sustainable product is higher than the relative cost and/or the absolute value of the maximum willingness to pay for the sustainable product is sufficiently higher than the absolute value of the cost of the sustainable product. The follower launches primarily based on the degree of substitution. When consumers perceive that the sustainable product is differentiated and distinguishable enough from the conventional product, the follower is more likely to launch a sustainable product. The simulation results show that egg manufacturers, both the leader and the follower, under both the worst and best case scenarios will launch sustainable egg products to increase their profit. Our results are supported by industry data, which shows that both national and store brand manufacturers have increasingly marketed sustainable eggs over the past few years.