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The ability of older adults to engage with information and communication technologies (ICT) is crucial in today’s more digital and connected world. Anxiety about and failure to adopt and engage with ICT is increasingly likely to be a barrier in daily living for older adults, potentially reducing their freedom as consumers, quality of life, independence, and wellbeing. It may also be a significant factor in social and economic exclusion. Drawing on consumer behaviour, ICT theories and frameworks, and a quantitative survey of 706 older Australian adults, this paper examines factors influencing anxiety in engaging with ICT. Our findings show that perceived anxiety was associated with increased subjective norms or when others placed pressure on older people to engage more with ICT and when older adults perceived increased risks associated with ICT engagement. Conversely, reduced levels of perceived anxiety were correlated with a positive attitude towards ICT and when older people had the technical and cognitive resources to adopt and engage with ICT. The results highlight the importance of building, renewing, and reinforcing digital competencies in older consumers. Understanding factors associated with ICT-related anxiety means that organisations will be better placed to develop campaigns, products, programmes, and policies for older consumers that actively reduce anxiety, increase their use of ICT, and reduce the digital divide.

Purpose This paper aims to examine how visual elements used in packaging design relate to diasporic consumer identity and influence aesthetic appreciation. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on social identity theory, research on aesthetic principles and using a mixed methods approach, two studies are conducted. Study 1 involves a qualitative exploration of the nature of diasporic consumer identity and its relation with visual design in packaging. Study 2 involves quantitative testing and calibration of this relationship and its subsequent influence on aesthetic appreciation. Findings Diasporic consumers from the Middle East appreciate hybrid visual designs and prefer packaging that strikes an optimum balance of visual elements (colour, shapes, patterns) from the heritage aspects of their ancestral homeland and more contemporary aspects from their culture of living. Preference for balance elicits an overall positive diasporic identity feeling that mediates the relationship with aesthetic appreciation of visual design in packaging. Research limitations/implications These findings offer new knowledge about the role of visual design in packaging in delivering symbolic value to diasporic consumers, evidencing how diasporic consumers’ dual identities shape aesthetic appreciation and preferences for hybrid visual designs. Practical implications Provides marketing practitioners and packaging designers with a concise and contextual directive for creating visual designs that appeal to a growing segment of diasporic consumers. Originality/value This research draws on social identity theory to uncover an aesthetic cultural precept – heritage, yet contemporary – that can inform the development of packaging designs targeting diasporic consumers.

Purpose This paper aims to investigate how and when visual referents in brand visual aesthetics (i.e. colours, shapes, patterns and materials) serve as design applications that enable consumer diasporic identity. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses an innovative methodology that triangulates 58 in-depth interviews with diasporic consumers, 9 interviews with brand managers and designers and a visual analysis of brands (food retailer, spices and nuts, skincare, hair and cosmetics, ice cream and wine) to provide a view of the phenomenon from multiple perspectives. Findings This study illustrates how and when particular applications and compositions of product and design referents support diasporic identity for Middle Eastern consumers living outside the Middle East. Specifically, it illustrates how the design applications of harmonising (applying separate ancestral homeland and culture of living product and design referents simultaneously), homaging (departing from the culture of living product and design referents with a subtle tribute to ancestral homeland culture) and heritaging (departing from the ancestral homeland culture product and design referents with slight updates to a culture of living style) can enable diasporic identity in particular social situations. Research limitations/implications Although applied to the Middle Eastern diaspora, this research opens up interesting avenues for future research that assesses diasporic consumers’ responses to brands seeking to use visual design to engage with this market. Moreover, future research should explore these design applications in relation to issues of cultural appreciation and appropriation. Practical implications The hybrid design compositions identified in this study can provide brand managers with practical tools for navigating the design process when targeting a diasporic segment. The design applications and their consequences are discussed while visually demonstrating how they can be crafted. Originality/value While previous research mainly focused on how consumption from the ancestral homeland occurred, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine how hybrid design compositions that combine a diaspora’s ancestral homeland culture and their culture of living simultaneously and to varying degrees resonate with diasporic consumers.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how visual aesthetic referents used in branding can help foster a transnational imagined community (TIC). The authors use brands embedded with Middle Eastern visual aesthetics as a research context. As such, the study aims to examine how Middle Eastern non-figurative art is used by non-Middle Eastern brands to foster an imagined Middle Easternness. Design/methodology/approach Through a critical visual analysis, the authors apply a visual social semiotic approach to Middle Eastern art canons to better understand the dimensions of transnational imagined communities. Findings The study finds and discusses six sub-dimensions of Middle Easternness, which compose two overarching dimensions of TIC, namely, temporal and spatial. These sub-dimensions provide brand managers and designers with six different ways to foster transnational imagined communities through the use of visual aesthetic referents in branding. Research limitations/implications This research identifies the specific visual sub-dimensions of brands that enable transnational communities to be imagined. Practical implications Understanding the visual aesthetic sub-dimensions in this study provides brand managers with practical tools that can help develop referents that foster transnational imagined communities in brand building to achieve competitive advantage and reach a transnational segment. Originality/value Prior studies have primarily focussed on how visual aesthetics help in understanding issues related to national identity. In contrast, this paper examines the use of visual aesthetics in branding from a transnational perspective.

As digital inclusion becomes a growing indicator of wellbeing in later life, the ability to understand older adults’ preferences for information and communication technologies (ICTs) and develop strategies to support their digital literacy is critical. The barriers older adults face include their perceived ICT risks and capacity to learn. Complexities, including ICT environmental stressors and societal norms, may require concerted engagement with older adults to achieve higher digital literacy competencies. This article describes the results of a series of co-design workshops to develop strategies for increased ICT competencies and reduced perceived risks among older adults. Engaging older Australians in three in-person workshops (each workshop consisting of 15 people), this study adapted the “Scenario Personarrative Method” to illustrate the experiences of people with technology and rich pictures of the strategies seniors employ. Through the enrichment of low-to-high-digital-literacy personas and mapping workshop participant responses to several scenarios, the workshops contextualized the different opportunities and barriers seniors may face, offering a useful approach toward collaborative strategy development. We argued that in using co-designed persona methods, scholars can develop more nuance in generating ICT risk strategies that are built with and for older adults. By allowing risks to be contextualized through this approach, we illustrated the novelty of adapting the Scenario Personarrative Method to provide insights into perceived barriers and to build skills, motivations, and strategies toward enhancing digital literacy.

This paper examines how culturally displaced brand owners help construct imagined worlds with their selection and use of brand visual aesthetics (BVA). Using the theoretical lens of habitus, we focus on the role of owners’ design-related decisions in this process and use brand owners of Middle Eastern origin as the research context. Through a multiple-case study with five distinct small-to-medium-sized enterprises in Australia, our research finds how habitus shapes an owner’s selection and use of BVA to help construct an imagined Middle Eastern identity through dimensions of autobiography, heritage, and aesthetic sensibility. These BVA dimensions are represented on a continuum of incremental and radical innovation in relation to the owner’s cultural origin. This research contributes to research on brands constructing imagined worlds by helping us better appreciate the role of a brand owner’s cultural origin in designing connections to markets and spaces with visual aesthetics in a brand.

This paper examines individual experiences of regional diaspora consumers and how they combine to produce a transnational consciousness and belongingness in the marketplace. In-depth interviews with Middle Eastern diaspora identify five emotions to construct a transnational imagined Middle Eastern world through three elements of re-enactment. Implications for marketing are discussed.