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Due to the pressure of global competition, shortened product-life cycles and the increasing opportunity to imitate product designs or their elements, companies continuously focus on innovations as one of their main agenda in order to maintain their global or national competitiveness. Besides, these innovations are considered as an ultimate source of productivity improvement, the growth in sales volume, and the capability of a company in question to stay competitive on the global market (Liao, Hu, Chen, & Lin, 2015). Companies perceive the need to continuously adapt, develop, and innovate as an economic necessity that results from global market pressures. The enhancement of product design and quality, accessorial technological services, their accessibility and reliability are no longer only seen as a benefit but rather an ultimate condition for the sustainability of company competitiveness.

The world’s population continues to increase rapidly, and, within the next 30 years, more than half of all people will choose to live in large urban centers (Faria et al., 2018). This has led to a number of problems, such as congested people and transportation traffic and increased pollution that produces climate change. The concept of “smart” cities has emerged as a way to deal with these issues, in which these cities are defined as an ecosystem that seeks to improve citizens’ quality of life through a combination of technology, sustainability, and physical infrastructures (Estrada et al., 2018). Smart cities have to use new technologies ranging from the Internet of Things (IoT), which facilitates connections between everything, to home automation (i.e., the ease with which citizens can manage daily routines through their homes).

An important health financing issue facing Canada and other OECD countries (OECD, 2017) are the health consequences of obesity. Statistics Canada (2014) reports that 51.6% of adult Canadians were overweight or obese in 2009 compared to 53.6% in 2013. The proportion of Canadians who are overweight differs by sex, with 59.2% of Canadian males overweight in 2009 compared to 62% in 2013 and 43.9% of females overweight in 2009 compared to 45.1% in 2013. These increases have led to calls for policies to control obesity (see Clark et al., 2014). These rates of obesity are based on the body mass index (BMI) which is the ratio of weight (in kilograms) to the square of height (in meters). Cranfield (2007) uses the Canadian Community Heath Survey (CCHS) to examine the determinants of the body mass index (BMI) of Canadians.

The issue of base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) caused by multinational companies is a potential important impediment to tax collections. Because tax planning schemes utilized gaps and mismatches in tax rules to artificially shift profits to low or no-tax jurisdiction where there is insufficient of no economic activity (Hines, 2014; OECD, 2017). The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has estimated the general annual revenue loss of USD 100 to 240 billion due to the BEPS OECD (2017). Dharmapala and Riedel (2013) focused on tax motivated income shifting between parent companies and their affiliates. The parent companies have almost 60% affiliates established in low-tax jurisdictions. It resulted in profit shifting from the high-tax parent companies’ jurisdictions to the low-tax affiliates’ jurisdictions where the profit is taxed with the lower tax rate.

The market research institutes that measure the impact of advertising campaigns aggregate their results according to different criteria in order to provide clients with a normative Framework or framework of reference. In addition to the volume of advertising investment, one of the most common criteria is the industry or product category, due to its influence on effectiveness measures. The academic literature has likewise underscored the need to take into account a product category when assessing advertising effectiveness (Vakratsas & Ambler, 1999). The concepts of industry and product category have drawn attention from researchers because of their usefulness in defining business strategies. For example, the interest in dividing markets into subgroups based on industries and product categories is grounded in the possibility of conducting a more comprehensive and accurate analysis of the competition and competitive advantages.