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The article looks at the issue of whether and how work in the scholarly field of consumer research is relevant for various audiences. It notes concerns have been voiced about the content of the periodical failing to offer such relevance. It offers a framework for assessing different kinds of relevance that a consumer research study may have which includes considerations such as the targeted audience of the research question, the importance of the research topic, and whether the research results are actionable.

Digital advertising platforms have emerged as a widely utilized data source in consumer research; yet, the interpretation of such data remains a source of confusion for many researchers. This article aims to address this issue by offering a comprehensive and accessible review of four prominent data collection methods proposed in the marketing literature: "informal studies," "multiple-ad studies without holdout," "single-ad studies with holdout," and "multiple-ad studies with holdout." By outlining the strengths and limitations of each method, we aim to enhance understanding regarding the inferences that can and cannot be drawn from the collected data. Furthermore, we present seven recommendations to effectively leverage these tools for programmatic consumer research. These recommendations provide guidance on how to use these tools to obtain causal and non-causal evidence for the effects of marketing interventions, and the associated psychological processes, in a digital environment regulated by targeting algorithms. We also give recommendations for how to describe the testing tools and the data they generate and urge platforms to be more transparent on how these tools work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the changes made by the Academy of Marketing to better meet the needs of the academic community and shape the direction of the Academy. The annual conference introduced capacity building research workshops in 2018, which became even more important when the 2020 conference was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The article highlights 18 workshops that focused on reframing marketing priorities and explored various topics such as consumer research during the pandemic, digital assessments, sustainability in marketing, and virtual engagement. The article also mentions six papers in a special issue that examine the role of technology in marketing practices, teaching, and future imagining. The papers cover topics such as assessment strategies for work-ready graduates, online consumption of the arts, virtual community building, online religious engagement, entrepreneurial decision-making, and stakeholder co-creation of smart cities. The article concludes by encouraging readers to embrace the opportunities to advance marketing priorities through technology. [Extracted from the article]

Wicked problems pose both immediate and existential threats. Within this article we explore the underlying nature of wicked problems, including the social traps embedded in them. We deconstruct the ecosystem surrounding single‐use plastics to make key points regarding controversies and conflicting interests surrounding wicked problems. We propose that wicked problems may be reframed by unpacking the relationships between individuals and collectives and how social traps are understood in terms of time horizon, ownership, responsibility, and involvement. We argue that resolutions to social traps are paramount to resolving wicked problems in the case of single‐use plastics and to wicked problems more generally. We draw from marketing, psychology, public policy, and consumer research literature to suggest specific ways marketing can mitigate or perhaps eliminate the insidious dynamic of social traps and wicked problems, and in turn affect positive outcomes to enhance the short‐term and long‐term well‐being for many consumers and stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Embracing diversity and promoting inclusion is a critical challenge for marketers to meet the diverse consumers' needs and have a positive social impact. Despite increasing attention to diversity and inclusion, and calls to address inequalities, there appears to be a lack of a thorough understanding of diversity and inclusion in consumer research, and how marketing can effectively contribute to an inclusive and equity‐oriented society. Previous reviews and conceptual articles often focus on specific types of diversity or contexts. This study aims to provide a comprehensive examination of diversity and inclusion in consumer research through a systematic literature review of 52 articles combined with the theory, context, characteristics, and methodology (TCCM) framework. Our findings highlight that companies can actively foster inclusion and enhance equity through their policies, also by addressing stigmatization and marginalization. A conceptual framework outlines the impacts of these policies on individuals, society, and company performances, followed by a detailed research agenda for future studies. This article emphasizes the role of marketing in fostering inclusion but also stimulates practitioners to contribute through policies beyond representation and advertising, such as service and product design, and ensuring vulnerable consumers access to resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to systematically review the existing literature on the concept of consumer sovereignty. Design/methodology/approach: By leveraging a systematic literature review using a data-driven approach and quantitative methodology, this study provides an overview of the intellectual structure of consumer sovereignty research. Findings: We explored the main topics that researchers tackled in consumer sovereignty research. Furthermore, we identified the theoretical lenses used in these studies. Finally, we proposed a research agenda to advance the scholarly debate on consumer sovereignty. Research limitations/implications: Some limitations should be acknowledged. First, the study only studied and analyzed consumer sovereignty articles that were published in peer-reviewed academic journals. Second, our review comprised journals identified in Scopus. Third, in this study, we have taken into account only articles written in English. Practical implications: The authors expect the current review to significantly impact the identification of theories for the main trends in the academic analysis of consumer sovereignty and consumer behavior. Originality/value: This study is the first to provide an integrated view of the body of consumer sovereignty. This review provides a strong contribution to consumer sovereignty literature by recommending a new research agenda for the concept of consumer sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumers often receive and evaluate temporal information, such as the number of days it will take a package to arrive or the number of days a vacation will last. Across eight preregistered studies (N  =   4,758), we examine how using days-of-the-week information in descriptions of temporal intervals (e.g. "ordered on Monday, February 1, delivered on Saturday, February 6" vs. "ordered on February 1, delivered on February 6") affects consumers' duration perceptions. We propose that the days-of-the-week framing prompts people to rely on narrow-span implicit scales characterized by lower thresholds for magnitude categories. These implicit scales lead people to judge objectively equivalent temporal intervals to be longer, which in turn has downstream consequences for consumers' time-versus-money tradeoffs, work planning, and provider-switching decisions. This research adds to our understanding of how decision context can activate different implicit scales and how these scales shape consumer judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the mid-1980s, "experience" has become a central object of reflection for marketing as well as for semiotics, to the extent that meaning is always created during an experience. However, English and French literatures on experiential marketing often approach the concept of experience differently. This article argues that these divergences concern the thematic of the experience (i.e. shopping vs consuming), and that, more essentially, experience should be conceived as the common denominator of all marketing offerings, no matter if it is a product, a service, an event, a place ... Using the post-structural semiotic frameworks of the "interactional regimes" theory, the author proposes to consider four fundamental consumer experiences (domination, cooperation, emancipation, and harmonization), each of these related to the logic of a specific type of offering: "goods," "play," "work" and "existence." In considering these four macro-offerings, this paper aims to better grasp the interactional and semiotic stakes of consumer experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eye tracking plays a crucial role in consumer research. The aim of this work is to present the statuses of studies that used eye tracking as an instrument in consumer research to investigate food from a marketing perspective. For this purpose, a bibliometric review of 118 articles from the Business Source Premier and Web of Science Core Collection database was compiled. The bibliometric review provides information on publication trends, leading authors, collaborative networks, journals, institutions, countries, articles, keywords, and themes investigated. Publications in the research field have appeared since 2011, primarily in Europe, the United States, and Uruguay. Three areas of research streams were identified: (1) how consumers became aware of and chose food, (2) nutritional information and its impact, and (3) how food information and its visual attention led to certain consumer behavior. The bibliographic review summarized past research directions and, thus, identified possibilities for future research streams.

Individuals encounter a range of experiences in the marketplace, some of them entailing inarticulable multisensory consumption contexts. Current marketing and consumer research data collection tools and theoretical representations may not adequately reflect the complexity of such experiences. Thus, we developed an interdisciplinary approach to identifying multisensory consumption experiences that occur in contexts where feelings are 'unsayable' Through a study of families who donated the organs of a deceased loved one, we develop an art-centric methodology to uncover thoughts, experiences, and feelings that may not be accessible for individuals as they attempt to describe these profound multisensory experiences or their implications in lived experience. We conclude with implications for market and consumer research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose music with accompanying liner notes as an unconventional device to capture and present marketing and consumer culture. Music allows researchers to craft a holistic experience out of a combination of elements that are present in the studied phenomena. It is a meaningful complement to other modes of alternative investigations and representations that have flourished in marketing and consumer research lately. Together with academic liner notes, i.e. the textual material that complements the music, the production of music has the potential to somewhat disrupt the linear legacy of how research results are typically presented and offers different opportunities for dissemination, since it speaks directly to the human ear. Our main contribution is a song that showcases these issues: 'Alpen sind immer wunderschön' performed by Postmödern talking sans frontièrs avéc fromage [the song can be found on Apple Music and Spotify searching for the title and/or the artist name.]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eye tracking plays a crucial role in consumer research. The aim of this work is to present the statuses of studies that used eye tracking as an instrument in consumer research to investigate food from a marketing perspective. For this purpose, a bibliometric review of 118 articles from the Business Source Premier and Web of Science Core Collection database was compiled. The bibliometric review provides information on publication trends, leading authors, collaborative networks, journals, institutions, countries, articles, keywords, and themes investigated. Publications in the research field have appeared since 2011, primarily in Europe, the United States, and Uruguay. Three areas of research streams were identified: (1) how consumers became aware of and chose food, (2) nutritional information and its impact, and (3) how food information and its visual attention led to certain consumer behavior. The bibliographic review summarized past research directions and, thus, identified possibilities for future research streams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite increased attention being given to Indigenous rights, decolonization, and reconciliation in a broader business setting, the engagement of business, marketing, and consumer studies with Indigenous cultures and peoples is negligible. Although Indigenous and First Nations peoples have a significant position in the social sciences, there is no specific body of marketing or consumer knowledge that is dedicated to Indigenous knowledge and practices, even though there is a growing interest in more inclusive and transformative marketing. This paper reports on current research on Indigenous worldviews and marketing, with a continuum of Indigenous research being presented which is particularly informed by Māori experiences in Aotearoa New Zealand. Several appropriate research methods for advancing Indigenous knowledge are presented. The paper concludes by noting the potential contributions that Indigenous knowledge may provide and some of the challenges faced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article details the theoretical foundation of haptics in consumer research. We structure the review using a continuum from proximal touch‐based interactions to increasingly distal interactions through devices, imagery, or language use. We begin with a focus on product/object touch in marketing highlighting touch for haptic information, touch for haptic pleasure, and touch for nonhaptic functional reasons. We then elaborate on research considering work compensating for actual touch through various mechanisms including device‐mediated touch and imagery processing. Next, we examine interpersonal touch followed by a discussion on touch in sensory words and textual paralanguage. The authors note various avenues for future research in haptics with the aim to encourage research in consumer psychology and marketing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how the grammatical subject of a marketing claim affects persuasion. We refer to this phenomenon as the subject bias and introduce the distinction between users subjects (where product users are the grammatical subject of a sentence) and product subjects (where the product is the grammatical subject of the sentence). We find that users subjects can lead to an illusion of fit , where a reader believes that an offer provides a better fit for oneself than for other consumers, which, in turn, affects persuasion. Eight experiments, including a field study, provide support for the subject bias in different domains, ranging from online dating services to medical products, and uncover the underlying process along with its boundary conditions while ruling out alternative explanations. These findings advance the understanding of the antecedents and consequences of idiosyncratic fit and introduce a novel language effect in consumer research that has theoretical, methodological, and practical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumer research has demonstrated that narrative and analytical processing are different styles of information processing. However, an enduring question is when do consumers engage in narrative processing? We propose that consumers are more likely to engage in narrative processing when they face an experiential purchase decision rather than a material purchase decision. Narrative transportation, a consequence of narrative processing, thus becomes a critical element for persuasion in the context of experiences, more than in the context of material products. Additionally, factors that inhibit narrative thought, such as marketing communications that include an inconsistency or reduce character identification, lower narrative transportation and harm the evaluations of experiential purchase decisions but not material purchase decisions. Two preliminary studies plus three experiments offer support for our theorizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a bibliometric analysis of research on consumer buying behavior from 2018 to 2022. The study utilizes VOSviewer mapping analysis to analyze data from the Google Scholar database. The findings reveal a decline in interest in consumer buying behavior and identify five distinct subfields of inquiry. The article suggests that this research can be valuable for professionals, policymakers, and academics seeking to understand consumer purchasing habits and make informed decisions and policy initiatives. The study also highlights the top publishers and journals in this field and provides visualizations of the research landscape. However, it recommends expanding the sample size and utilizing additional databases for a more comprehensive analysis in future research. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses ownership from the perspective of developing a framework for consumer research on this subject, including regard to the role that ownership plays in marketing. An overview of consumer behavior associated with ownership, including human territoriality, is provided.

Consumer research often fails to have broad impact on members of the marketing discipline, on adjacent disciplines studying related phenomena, and on relevant stakeholders who stand to benefit from the knowledge created by rigorous research. The authors propose that impact is limited because consumer researchers have adhered to a set of implicit boundaries or defaults regarding what consumer researchers study, why they study it, and how they do so. The authors identify these boundaries and describe how they can be challenged. By detailing five impactful articles and identifying others, they show that boundary-breaking, marketing-relevant consumer research can influence relevant stakeholders including academics in marketing and allied disciplines as well as a wide range of marketplace actors (e.g., business practitioners, policy makers, the media, society). Drawing on these articles, the authors articulate what researchers can do to break boundaries and enhance the impact of their research. They also indicate why engaging in boundary-breaking work and enhancing the breadth of marketing's influence is good for both individual researchers and the fields of consumer research and marketing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Given the increased significance and rapid growth of an ageing population, this review paper aims to define the mature consumer segment chronologically to resolve definitional inconsistencies found in prior marketing communications literature, identify the current state of the marketing communications field in terms of mature consumer research and highlight future research directions on mature consumers for marketing communications academics and practitioners. Design/methodology/approach: A synthesis of existing marketing communication research on mature consumers (those aged 50+), published in top-tier journals since 1972, is provided. In total, 106 papers were identified in 21 marketing journals. Findings: Three existing research themes were identified: market segmentation of mature consumers (we ground this theme in three inter-related facets: chronological age, health [physical and neurological] and self-perception of age [also referred to as cognitive age]); attitudes and behaviours of mature consumers; and marketing to mature consumers. This paper also proposes several future research themes: further definition of mature consumers and widening the scope of examination; segmenting mature consumers to account for heterogeneity; information processing of mature consumers cannot use a one-size-fits-all approach; the influence of marketing mix elements on mature consumers; and alternative methodologies to better understand mature consumers. Research limitations/implications: Recognising the heterogeneity within the chronologically based mature consumer segment, this paper proposes an extended mature consumer definition which includes biological, psychological and social dimensions, as well as life events and life circumstances, rather than biological age alone. Practical implications: In practical terms, understanding information processing of mature consumers cannot use a one-size-fits-all approach and marketing mix elements may affect behaviour differently within this segment. This will require alternative methodologies to understand these processes fully. Originality/value: This synthesis of mature consumers research within the marketing communications field provides key research questions for future research to better understand this market segment and its implications for marketing communications, theory development and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The initial hype and fanfare from the Meta Platforms view of how the metaverse could be brought to life has evolved into an ongoing discussion of not only the metaverse's impact on users and organizations but also the societal and cultural implications of widespread usage. The potential of consumer interaction with brands within the metaverse has engendered significant debate within the marketing‐focused discourse on the key challenges and transformative opportunities for marketers. Drawing on insights from expert contributors, this study examines the marketing implications of the hypothetical widespread adoption of the metaverse. We identify new research directions and propose a new framework offering valuable contributions for academia, practice, and policy makers. Our future research agenda culminates in a checklist for researchers which clarifies how the metaverse can be beneficial to digital marketing and advertising, branding, services, value creation, and consumer wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumers increasingly turn to the marketplace in search of spiritual well-being. In this introduction to the special issue, we unpack the concept of consumer spirituality. We define consumer spirituality as the interrelated practices and processes engaged in when consuming market offerings (products, services, places) that yield 'spiritual utility'. The market offerings are purposely designed to quench consumers' thirst for meaningful encounters with one's inner self or a higher external power. We identify three vehicles – materiality, embodiment, and technology – that consumers engage with to access consumer spirituality. By unpacking the concept of consumer spirituality along three themes - (1) shaping markets for consumer spirituality, (2) the means for accessing consumer spirituality, and (3) making sense of and researching consumer spirituality - we provide a future research agenda to advance scholarly explorations of consumer spirituality and to facilitate a systematic development of this nascent body of literature in marketing and consumer research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumer autonomy is a fundamental topic for marketing ethics scholars. Nonetheless, autonomy's philosophical treatment may have compromised its conceptual clarity. After reviewing the relevant ethics literature on consumer autonomy, the benefits of formally defining consumer autonomy are illustrated, and a novel formalization is adapted from potential performance theory mathematics. The goal is to transfigure a hitherto amorphous topic via a mathematical formalization that defines true autonomy, actual autonomy, reliability of wills, and reliability of product choice. The crucial and surprising result: an action that decreases true autonomy can increase actual autonomy if that action engenders a sufficient increase in one or both types of reliability. Relating the insights from the formalization to the long-standing debates in consumer autonomy suggests fruitful avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]