ABSTRACT Consumer empowerment (CEM) in the marketplace reflects the extent to which consumers can exercise informed control over their choices, interactions, and outcomes. In today's rapidly evolving, digitally enabled consumption landscape, these empowerment opportunities have expanded across physical, digital, and phygital environments. Despite substantial research over the past few decades, CEM findings remain scattered, underscoring the need for a comprehensive synthesis. This study conducted a hybrid review of 324 Scopus‐indexed (Q1 and Q2) articles on consumer empowerment from 2000 to 2025, following the PRISMA protocol. Employing bibliometric techniques (keyword co‐occurrence, cartographic mapping, and co‐citation analysis) alongside the ADO‐TCM framework, the study synthesizes existing findings into a consolidated conceptual map that illustrates the interconnected nature of CEM, its effects, and their micro‐ and macro‐level outcomes. The integrative model is therefore a structured visual synthesis of prior work, rather than a new standalone theory and is strictly derived from the ADO–TCM‐based coding of the included studies. Findings reveal that consumer empowerment influences firm performance both directly and indirectly. At the micro‐level, while CEM influences employee job (dis)satisfaction, commitment, firm's financial performance, firm recognition, and brand love/hate. At the macro‐level, CEM influences firm sustainability, boycotts, activism, anti‐consumption and evangelism. Based on the thematic insights, the study offered future research directions for CEM research focusing on information overload, consumer education, anti‐consumption and well‐being, phygital experience, sustainability, and interactivity as potent areas. Theoretical and methodological directions are also offered to advance CEM research further.
ABSTRACT Sustainability has become an increasingly important strategic priority in the luxury industry as consumers demand greater environmental and social responsibility from brands. At the same time, electronic word‐of‐mouth (eWOM) has emerged as a powerful influence on consumer perceptions and purchase decisions. Despite growing research on sustainable luxury and eWOM, these two streams of literature have largely developed independently, resulting in limited understanding of how sustainability initiatives shape consumer eWOM behavior in luxury contexts. To address this gap, this systematic literature review examines the sustainability–eWOM relationship through the Stimulus‐Organism‐Response (SOR) framework. Based on a review of 76 peer‐reviewed articles published between 2013 and 2025, the study identifies six key themes: Sustainability/Ethical Consumption, Socially Mediated Influence/eWOM, Consumer Motivation/Psychological Drivers, Luxury Product/Brand Attributes, Digitalization/Innovation, and Behavioral Outcomes/Purchase Intention. The findings show that sustainability initiatives influence eWOM through consumers' perceptions of authenticity, value alignment, and emotional responses. Credible and value‐congruent sustainability efforts encourage positive eWOM, whereas perceived greenwashing generates negative eWOM and weakens brand trust. By integrating sustainability and eWOM within a single SOR‐based framework, this review provides a consolidated understanding of how sustainability signals shape consumer communication in luxury markets and offers directions for future research on emotional appeals, cross‐cultural differences, and digital transparency.
ABSTRACT Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly embedded in everyday consumption, yet evidence on its longer‐term implications for consumer eudaimonic well‐being remains dispersed across disciplines and application contexts. This review integrates that literature to clarify the domains, theoretical explanations, and conditions through which AI shapes consumer well‐being. Following PRISMA and SPAR‐4‐SLR procedures, we reviewed research published from January 2010 to January 2026. From 6058 records, 480 studies across psychology, business, and human‐technology interaction met the inclusion criteria. The evidence is organised through psychological, social, and technological perspectives and identifies six interconnected domains: mental health, cognitive development, physical health, personal growth, autonomy and social connection. The resulting framework shows that AI‐related benefits and risks often extend across domains, with effects depending on design, use and context. The review extends consumer well‐being research through a cross‐domain account of findings reported across separate research streams and provides managers with a basis for evaluating AI design beyond efficiency and engagement outcomes.
ABSTRACT Dark patterns are interface design practices that intentionally steer users toward platform‐benefiting choices by exploiting cognitive biases, reducing user autonomy, and influencing consumer behavior. Despite increasing academic and regulatory attention, knowledge of how these practices shape consumer behavior on social media remains fragmented. This study presents a systematic literature review of 56 peer‐reviewed articles to synthesize the current state of knowledge and identify future research priorities. The review reveals that existing research has primarily examined how interface design, social cues, and platform architectures influence consumer engagement, privacy‐related decisions, purchasing behavior, and digital well‐being. While conceptual contributions dominate the field, empirical evidence remains limited and relies predominantly on self‐reported measures, with comparatively little research capturing actual consumer behavior. The review also identifies important gaps concerning construct operationalization, methodological diversity, and the use of real behavioral measures. By integrating the existing evidence from a consumer perspective, this study advances understanding of the psychological and behavioral mechanisms through which dark patterns operate and proposes a research agenda to inform more ethical platform design, stronger consumer protection, and improved digital well‐being.
ABSTRACT This study systematically synthesizes research on virtual influencers (VIs) in business through the lens of the theory‐context‐characteristics‐methodology (TCCM) framework. Following the SPAR‐4‐SLR protocol, a systematic search and screening process was conducted, combining a macro‐level performance analysis of the broader literature with an in‐depth TCCM‐based content analysis of a journal‐filtered subset. The findings reveal that the field is heavily anchored in parasocial interaction theory and the source credibility model, concentrates empirically on tourism and hospitality contexts, and relies predominantly on quantitative and experimental methods. Limited integration exists between these established relational theories and emerging AI‐specific concerns, including algorithmic transparency, ethical risks, cultural variation, and long‐term consumer effects. This creates a central tension between social effectiveness and artificiality risk. The review contributes a structured knowledge map and a theory‐driven future research agenda emphasizing integrative model building, broader contextual and cross‐cultural investigation, and methodological diversity. These insights provide a foundation for advancing context‐sensitive and ethically informed scholarship on VIs in business.
ABSTRACT This systematic review synthesizes existing research on how TikTok influences Gen Z consumer decision‐making. As the platform's popularity surges, its unique features—including the algorithm‐driven “For You” page, influencer marketing, and live streaming formats—form a distinctive ecosystem. Analysis based on the PRISMA framework reveals two core influence pathways: (1) Cognitive Trust, which encompasses how algorithmic recommendations drive product discovery and shape preferences, while influencer endorsements and authentic reviews establish rational trust and brand awareness; and (2) Affective Trust, which arises as immersive content fosters emotional resonance and a sense of presence, leveraging FoMO and instant gratification to prompt impulse purchases. Findings indicate TikTok has transcended social networking to become a powerful engine integrating entertainment, social interaction, and commerce, fundamentally reshaping the consumer journey from awareness to purchase.
ABSTRACT This study presents a systematic review of studies on consumer behavior in the gig economy. 32 documents obtained from Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar databases were analyzed and 17 studies were included in the review. The literature has only examined factors influencing consumer behavior within the context of the gig economy. There is no systematic literature review that includes comprehensive and multidimensional analysis techniques. The study is original in terms of examining the relationships and clustering tendencies between variables by using content analysis, bibliometric analysis and network analysis methods together and tries to fill this gap in the literature. As a result of the review carried out using SPAR‐4 SLR protocol, factors affecting consumer behavior in the gig economy were determined, interrelationships among these factors were explored through network analysis by VOSviewer and UCINET software. The study revealed that service quality and social impact were the most dominant factors, and also showed that some factors formed certain cluster structures and that only study attributes could affect the inclusion of a publication in an indexed journal/conference proceedings book. As a result of the study, the findings were discussed, theoretical and practical implications and future research directions were included.
ABSTRACT Imagination is a fundamental cognitive function in every human's mind. However, in consumer research, the elusive concept of customer imagination was neglected for a long time and has only gained greater attention in the last few years. Based on the bibliometric analysis of 217 articles guided by the PRISMA protocol, this review maps the evolution and intellectual structure of the concept using performance analysis, co‐word analysis, and science mapping. The findings reveal that the literature is concentrated in three distinct research streams: a foundational cognitive stream focused on mental imagery; an experiential and technology‐driven stream centered on immersive technologies such as AR, VR, and metaverse; and an emerging stream focused on new frontiers like AI. In most of these studies, customer imagination is viewed as a natural capacity to transform external marketing information into mental representations for envisioning future happenings, leading to customer decisions. The review also indicates a paucity of studies on domain‐specific conceptualization and the roles of customer imagination before, during, and after their consumption experience. It then proposes a future research agenda organized around four key themes: (1) advancing the conceptualization and measurement of the construct in the marketing domain; (2) examining its antecedents, consequences, and relationships with other marketing concepts; (3) exploring its dynamic role across the entire consumption journey; and (4) developing appropriate methodological approaches for studying customer imagination.
ABSTRACT As service robots move from factory floors to frontline service encounters, their success increasingly depends on the quality of customer‐robot interaction (CRI). Existing studies, however, remain fragmented and predominantly grounded in linear technology adoption models, offering limited insight into the dynamic and reciprocal nature of CRI over time. Addressing this gap, this systematic literature review synthesises 113 peer‐reviewed articles and makes two main contributions. First, it develops a reciprocal framework that conceptualises CRI as path‐dependent process in which drivers and barriers shape experiential responses, leading to attitudinal and behavioural outcomes that, in turn, recalibrate customer expectations through feedback loops. This framework advances prior one‐way technology adoption models (e.g., TAM/UTAUT) by focusing on the value creation through repeated interactions in robotic service encounters. Second, the review introduces a quadrant‐based model of robot‐task fit structured by task complexity and service goal orientations. Extending existing robot typologies, this model specifies when particular experiential mechanism dominate and how reciprocal feedback loops vary across four robot roles: mechanical, analytical, socially interactive, and empathetic. Together, these contributions offer a holistic and contingent understanding of CRI, generating actionable insights for future research developments and for the design of effective, human‐centric service robots.
ABSTRACT This study examines how emotionally framed investment messages generate enduring behavioral effects. Drawing on appraisal‐tendency insights and future self‐continuity theory, the study develops a longitudinal model and captures temporal relationships using three‐wave panel data from 714 investors. Our findings show a pronounced temporal carryover effect: early emotional responses continue to shape later affective states even after message framing changes, which indicates that emotion functions as a persistent input rather than a momentary reaction. These evolving emotional states further enhance future self‐continuity, which subsequently strengthens investment intention over time and demonstrates a temporally structured indirect pathway linking emotion to behavior. As exposure continues, the influence of emotion gradually shifts from affect‐driven reactions to identity‐based motivation, suggesting that persuasive effects become increasingly rooted in future‐oriented self‐concepts. By demonstrating that emotions accumulate and restructure how individuals relate their present and future selves, this research challenges static persuasion models and reconceptualizes emotion as a temporally evolving state variable, offering new insight into how sequential marketing messages cultivate lasting engagement.
ABSTRACT Counterfeit product consumption remains a growing concern for online retailers. Grounded in Expectation–Confirmation Theory (ECT), this study examines how dissonance experienced during the delivery lead time is associated with post‐purchase dissonance (PPD) and repurchase intention among consumers who knowingly purchased counterfeit goods and those who subsequently doubted product authenticity. Data from an online survey of 468 adults in five English‐speaking countries were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling. The results show that lead‐time product and emotional dissonance carry over into their corresponding post‐purchase forms. In turn, post‐purchase emotional dissonance is negatively associated with repurchase intention, whereas post‐purchase product dissonance has no significant direct effect. The evidence concerning attitudes towards counterfeits is more limited: favourable attitudes are associated with lower levels of some forms of dissonance, but these effects are partial and vary between aware and unaware buyers. By tracing dissonance from the waiting period to the post‐delivery stage, the study clarifies its temporal dynamics in online counterfeit purchases. It also highlights the importance of transparent product information, authenticity controls, and communication during delivery.
Virtual influencer (VI) has become a prominent and significant topic in the marketing literature. A thorough understanding of its influence on consumer behavior is still lacking, despite years of discussion in academic research and managerial practice. In order to address the inconsistency of findings in the literature, we thoroughly reviewed 117 papers from 31 different journals. We combine two approaches in this study, including a systematic review and similarity analysis using IRaMuTeQ software. This study undertakes a systematic literature review, employing the SPAR‐4‐SLR protocol as its guiding framework. Using the antecedents–decisions–outcomes (ADO) framework, this study delineates the established knowledge base on virtual influencer research. The theories, contexts, and methods (TCM) framework reveals how we know about virtual influencer literature. Moreover, this study seeks to identify pivotal research gaps in the current virtual influencer literature and recommend specific future research avenues. We used the integrated ADO‐TCM framework to synthesize the virtual influencer literature and provide a conceptual framework. The findings advance influencer marketing literature and provide underpinning future research directions capable of guiding forthcoming research and nurturing field maturation and help the field continue to evolve.
Supermarkets and related environments are not just places to buy groceries; they are complex environments filled with diverse stimuli that shape consumer behavior and decision‐making processes. Despite their increasing use as study settings, there remains a lack of comprehensive understanding regarding which supermarket‐type settings are currently utilized in consumer research and how they are employed to explore consumer behavior. In this systematic mapping review, we aim to address this gap by mapping and characterizing studies that used supermarket‐type settings to investigate consumer behavior in the food domain. We searched Web of Science, Scopus, and Medline using the PRISMA framework, identifying and analyzing 305 scientific articles. We identified the following settings: (a) physical real‐life supermarkets, (b) experimental online supermarkets, (c) real‐life online supermarkets, (d) laboratory supermarkets, (e) laboratory shelves, (f) virtual‐reality supermarkets, and (g) proxies for a supermarket. We report on several variables: study topics, observed behaviors, integrated surveys and technical tools, participants' awareness of being observed and the bindingness of consumer decisions, among others. Additionally, we identify key knowledge gaps, offering insights for guiding future investigations. They relate to study participation effects, the potential of virtual settings, the use of available technologies, the identification of unexplored research topics, how to improve the monitoring of decision effort and other hidden behaviors, and the importance of comparing supermarket settings. This mapping review thus serves as a valuable resource for researchers seeking to conduct intervention, observation, and meta‐analytical studies in consumer behavior within the food sector.
Masstige has emerged as a form of luxury that successfully appeals to a larger market without compromising its luxury image. This study conducts a systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis of 75 Scopus‐indexed articles published between 2007 and April 2025. The review synthesizes prevailing trends, theoretical foundations, methodological approaches, and research gaps in masstige marketing. The study applies the SPAR‐4‐SLR to ensure the rigor of the review process while using Theory, Context, Characteristics, Methodology (TCCM) for structuring insight, and S‐O‐R is applied to frame the implications for future research. Findings reveal that although masstige marketing has gained global recognition, empirical research remains predominantly concentrated in developing markets, where expanding middle‐class aspirations provide a fertile context for affordable luxury consumption. There is limited exploration of service sectors and cross‐cultural or cross‐national contexts. This review outlines key theoretical perspectives, such as masstige theory, and highlights emerging contexts, including B2B markets, the metaverse, and virtual reality. We propose a scope of future research on consumer psychology in immersive digital contexts and advocate the use of mixed methods, cross‐cultural studies, and AI‐based tools. Grounded in the Stimulus‐Organism‐Response (S‐O‐R) model, this review provides a basis for future researchers to advance both theory and practice in masstige marketing.
Scholarly interest in financial resilience has grown significantly over the past decade, yet the literature remains fragmented, marked by conceptual ambiguity and methodological inconsistencies. This integrative review critically synthesizes research on how consumers recover from financial shocks, bridging economic and psychological perspectives to advance a multidimensional understanding of financial resilience. Guided by the SPAR‐4‐SLR protocol, a literature search was conducted across Scopus, PsycINFO, and EconLit databases. The final sample comprises 112 documents published between 2011 and 2025. Analyses reveal persistent gaps in both conceptualization and measurement of the construct. Resilience is often conflated with related but distinct constructs, and the adoption of robust theoretical frameworks remains limited. Empirical studies predominantly emphasize economic resources (e.g., emergency savings, income, or liquidity), while neglecting non‐economic resources, such as social capital and psychological characteristics. Furthermore, existing measurement tools often fail to capture the multidimensional nature of financial resilience. To address these limitations, the study outlines directions for future research aimed at improving theoretical clarity and methodological robustness. It also proposes guidelines to reconceptualize financial resilience as a systemic and dynamic process embedded within broader social and psychological systems, and to develop context‐based frameworks.
Technology‐enabled consumer shopping behavior (TCSB) refers to how consumers behave during shopping by utilizing technology throughout their purchasing process, from finding products to making a purchase. It also encompasses how that use influences their choices and actions. It comprises three main keywords of the current study: “Digital Technology,” “Consumer Behavior,” and “Retail.” Technology has enabled consumers to use smart technologies that facilitate the shopping experience in the digital era. Despite its significance, much effort has not been put into assessing the expanding body of research in this area. Hence, this research aims to investigate how digital technology affects consumer behavior in the retail industry. One hundred fifty‐one articles were considered for review and produced by “Scientific Procedures and Rationales for Systematic Literature Reviews” (SPAR‐4‐SLR). This study offers a thorough understanding of the prevalent “Theory,” “Context” (sources and countries), “Characteristic” (variables and their connectivity), and “Method” (research techniques and analysis process), TCCM framework to identify promising directions for further study. The current study found that the technology acceptance model has frequently been used in many papers. Also, it was observed that further study is still needed to include the context of “underdeveloped countries” and “different cultures” in TCSB‐related studies. Furthermore, future research could shed light on the same industry and different product types in technology‐enabled shopping. A comprehensive recommendation with future scope for future researchers and retailers has been provided to understand the current scenario of technology‐enabled shopping.
ABSTRACT Innovation plays a significant role in improving economic and societal outcomes. However, its benefits are often undermined by a failure to adequately consider evolving consumer needs and the multifaceted nature of consumer vulnerability, raising ethical concerns. While product innovation generally targets consumer interests, service providers, including those in essential sectors such as finance, often rely on standardised consumer profiles that overlook the complexities of consumers' lived circumstances. Addressing this gap requires a deeper understanding of how financial product innovation engages with consumer vulnerability and the conditions under which it may lead to harmful outcomes. To explore this, we conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) examining how product innovation is discussed in relation to ethics and consumer vulnerability in the financial sector. Adopting the ethics of care framework as an analytical lens, we examine the intersection of ethics and consumer vulnerability in financial product innovation. Our findings suggest that institutions adopt various approaches to ethical (financial) product innovation, with varying degrees of attentiveness to consumer needs and vulnerability, responsibility, inclusivity, partnership and collaboration. By applying the ethics of care lens, this SLR contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between (financial) product innovation and consumer vulnerability, highlighting tensions and gaps in how innovation processes address consumer needs and identifying directions for future research.
Households account for over half of total food waste in Europe, with everyday food-management practices playing a central role in its generation. Targeted interventions at the consumption stage are therefore critical for reducing food waste and achieving Sustainable Development Goal 12.3. This study applies machine-learning techniques to identify the behavioral determinants of household food waste using survey data from 1536 Czech households. Among the tested models, Random Forest achieved the highest predictive accuracy (59.1%), enabling the classification of households based on waste-related behaviors. Households with minimal food waste typically practiced regular and planned shopping, relied on shopping lists, monitored food storage, understood expiration labels, and were price-sensitive. In contrast, factors such as purchase location, food appearance, or taste preferences showed no predictive value. These findings highlight that not all behavioral drivers contribute equally to household food waste. The results offer policy-relevant insights into designing interventions: promoting informed shopping, targeting less price-sensitive consumers, and improving storage knowledge are key leverage points. Beyond its methodological contribution, the study advances the conceptual understanding of household food waste by showing that waste behavior is structured primarily around planning capacity, perceived behavioral control, stock management, and routine food-management practices, whereas several commonly assumed factors have limited predictive relevance.
This research examines message strategies to motivate individuals to reduce food waste, focusing on whether and how framing effects depend on self-control resources as a boundary condition. Study 1 shows that loss-framed messages increased intentions to reduce food waste when self-control was low, but no framing effect emerged when self-control was high. Building on evidence that self-control is generally higher in the morning and declines by evening, Study 2 used time of day as a situational proxy for self-control resources. Results indicate that loss-framed messages were more effective in the evening, increasing willingness to purchase imperfect food, but no framing effect was observed in the morning. Study 3 replicated this pattern and found that loss-framed messages increased participants' motivation to seek information about reducing food waste in the evening, but not in the morning. Perceived severity of the negative consequences of food waste mediated this framing effect.
Nonprofit humanitarian imagery has long sparked ethical concerns, yet these critiques often overlook how such images are received by potential donors-even though donor support is essential to nonprofit success. Most work seeking to understand ethical imagery has been largely conceptual or focused on single image attributes. To understand holistically how potential donors perceive humanitarian imagery, we surveyed a large sample of U.S. residents (N = 1990) and asked them to evaluate 186 real images used by an international humanitarian aid nonprofit. The findings revealed clear patterns in what Western audiences consider ethical. Positive portrayals of children (such as smiling) led to higher ethical ratings, while images showing malnutrition diminished them. Photos featuring smiling aid workers (regardless of ethnicity) also boosted ethical perceptions. Some of these patterns echo existing scholarly critiques, such as concerns about depicting suffering, while others diverge from prior arguments, including positive portrayals of aid workers. Together, results suggest that donor perceptions of ethical imagery may not fully align with theoretical critiques, highlighting the need to integrate audience perspectives into ongoing ethical debates. To resonate ethically with potential donors, international nonprofits should consider moving away from negative stereotypes and instead highlighting the positive impact of their work. International nonprofits can use these findings to refine their image selection processes and inform their ethical guidelines.
