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Cautionary stories in which misbehavior results in negative outcomes are often used in public service announcements (PSAs) to promote behavioral change. These cautionary stories can either disclose or withhold their endings and the associated negative outcomes for the characters involved. In four experiments, we show that disclosing (vs. withholding) a story’s ending increases persuasion due to greater counterfactual thinking about alternative actions that could have prevented the negative outcomes. Integrating these findings within the Transportation-Imagery Model of narrative persuasion, we also show how dispositional levels of need for cognitive closure can amplify the effect of ending disclosure in a PSA. Our findings have important implications for both marketing communicators and policy makers who seek to improve the effectiveness of PSAs.

While prior research suggests a link between mindfulness and ethical decision-making, most of the evidence for this link is correlational and refers to self-focused ethical behaviors. The paucity of experimental evidence, coupled with a lack of clarity on what mechanisms underlie the effect, limits our understanding of whether and how mindfulness might foster other-focused ethical behaviors. In this research, we hypothesize that state mindfulness might promote other-focused ethical behaviors by increasing resourcefulness, which we define as a perceived state of resource abundance. Across four experimental studies, we report causal evidence for the effects of state mindfulness instantiated through brief mindful meditation exercises on other-focused ethical behaviors, including choice of fair-trade products (Study 1A), charitable giving (Study 1B), and volunteering (Study 1C and Study 2). Resourcefulness mediates the effects of mindfulness on other-focused ethical behaviors (Study 2). Our work answers the call for more experimental research on mindfulness and its important implications for ethical decision-making.

PurposeThis paper aims to propose LARPnography as a more holistic method to probe the emergence of plausible futures, drawing on embodied embedded cognition literature and the emerging consumer practice of live-action role-playing (LARP). Current research methods for probing the future of markets and society rely mainly on expert judgment (i.e. Delphi), imagery or simulation of possible futures (i.e. scenario and simulation) and perspective taking (i.e. role-playing). The predominant focus on cognitive abstraction limits the insights researchers can extract from more embodied, sensorial and experiential approaches.Design/methodology/approachLARPnography is a qualitative method seeking to immerse participants within a plausible future to better understand the social and market dynamics that may unfold therein. Through careful planning, design, casting and fieldwork, researchers create the preconditions to let participants experience what the future may be and gather critical insights from naturalistic observations and post-event interviews.Practical implicationsOwing to its interactive nature and processual focus, LARPnography is best suited to investigate the adoption and diffusion of innovation, market emergence phenomena and radical societal changes, including the rise of alternative societies.Originality/valueDifferent from previous foresight methods, LARPnography creates immersive and perceptually stimulating replicas of plausible futures that research participants can inhabit. The creation of a fictional yet socio-material world ensures that socially constructed meaning is enriched by phenomenological and visceral insights.

PurposeEffective communication of information is central to integrated care systems (ICS), particularly between providers and care-consumers. Drawing on communication theory, this paper aims to investigate whether and why source effects increase positive evaluations of health-related messages among care-consumers. Design/methodology/approachA preliminary online survey (N = 525) establishes the discriminant validity of the measures used in the main experimental study. The main study (N = 116) examines whether identical messages disclosed to be created by different sources (i.e. institutional, care-consumer, collaborative) lead to different message evaluations, and whether source credibility and similarity, and message authenticity, explain this process. FindingsIn comparison to any other source, messages disclosed to be co-created are evaluated more positively by care-consumers. This effect occurs through a parallel serial mediation carried over by perceptions of source credibility and source similarity (parallel, first serial-level mediators) and message authenticity (second serial-level mediator). Practical implicationsThe findings offer guidelines for leveraging source effects in ICS communication strategies, signaling how collaborative message sources increase the favorableness of health message evaluations. Originality/valueThis research demonstrates the efficacy of drawing on marketing communication theory to build ICS communication capacity by showing how re-configuring the declared source of informational content can increase positive evaluations of health-related messages. In so doing, this research extends existing literature on message authenticity by demonstrating its key underlying role in affecting message evaluations.

While environmental claims are increasingly used by companies to appeal consumers, they also attract greater scrutiny from independent parties interested in consumer protection. Consumers are now able to compare corporate environmental claims against external, often disconfirming, information to form their brand attitudes and purchase intentions. What remains unclear is how the level of information specificity of both the environmental claims and external disconfirming information interact to influence consumer reactions. Two experiments address this gap in the CSR communication literature. When specific (vs. vague) claims are countered by specific (vs. vague) external information, consumers report more negative brand attitudes and lower purchase intentions (Experiment 1). The effect is serially mediated by (1) skepticism toward the claims and (2) lack of corporate credibility (Experiment 2). We conclude by discussing strategies that firms can utilize to avoid information dilution and ensure that external disconfirming information percolates to consumers as specific.

Wicked consumption behavior, namely the inflated consumption of unhealthy commodities such as tobacco and soft drinks, constitutes a leading risk for noncommunicable diseases including cancer and diabetes. Despite the fatal impact of wicked consumption on societal welfare, both the social marketing literature and the public policy literature lack a systematic framework capturing the unfolding of the wicked consumption cycle and providing guidance on when and how to intervene upstream. Drawing on historical data on tobacco and soft drink consumption in the U.S., we propose a four-stage epidemic life cycle of wicked consumer behavior. The biological and habitual factors that make different types of wicked consumption appealing to consumers are reinforced by the marketing activities of the manufacturers. To overcome the strong resistance posed by habitual wicked consumption, we articulate a typology of upstream intervention parameters and provide guidance on when and how to intervene depending on the desired long-term equilibrium.

Business researchers use experimental methods extensively due to their high internal validity. However, controlled laboratory and crowdsourcing settings often introduce issues of artificiality, data contamination, and low managerial relevance of the dependent variables. Field experiments can overcome these issues but are traditionally time- and resource-consuming. This primer presents an alternative experimental setting to conduct online field experiments in a time- and cost-effective way. It does so by introducing the Facebook A/B split test functionality, which allows for random assignment of manipulated variables embedded in ecologically-valid stimuli. We compare and contrast this method against laboratory settings and Amazon Mechanical Turk in terms of design flexibility, managerial relevance, data quality control, and sample representativeness. We then provide an empirical demonstration of how to set up, pre-test, run, and analyze FBST experiments.

The growing relevance of improvisation for successful organizing calls for a better understanding of how individuals develop improvisation skills. While research has investigated the role of training and simulations, little is known about how individuals develop improvisation skills when formal training is not an option and how individual-level factors shape development trajectories. We explore these issues in a longitudinal qualitative analysis of live action role-playing. Our findings reveal a three-stage process of improvisation development shaped by the presence of task and social structures, which act as both constraints and resources. Moreover, our findings illuminate how collaborative and competitive orientations shape whether improvisers perceive these structures as a resource that they need to nurture and renew (i.e., collaborative) or to seize and exploit (i.e., competitive). We also show that individual orientations are not always enduring but can change over time, engendering four types of improvisation development trajectories. Our work provides a longitudinal account of how individual orientations shape the process of improvisation development. In so doing, we also explain why individuals who are skilled improvisers do not necessarily improvise effectively as a collective, and we reconcile different conceptualizations of improvisation.

Despite the emerging trend of adopting co-creative approaches in public and non-profit advertising, research has overlooked participatory approaches in non-commercial settings. This research extends current knowledge on consumer-generated advertising to communications fostering positive social change. The results of an experimental study show that the disclosure of consumer participation in the ad creation process results in positive ad evaluations and reduces positive attitudes towards unhealthy eating. The main effect of source disclosure on ad evaluations is mediated by sympathy towards the ad creator. In addition, floodlight analyses show that the main effect of source disclosure on ad evaluations and attitudes is amplified when the audience is highly involved with the advertised issue. Implications for theory, practice and public policy are discussed.