This study examines anxiety in decision-making within digital environments, with a particular focus on social media usage. It explores three types of digital anxiety: fear of missing out (FoMO), fear of better options (FoBO), and fear of doing anything (FoDA). This study employs self-determination and self-control theories as conceptual frameworks to interpret how these anxieties shape anxiety in decision-making. A quantitative analysis of 543 social media users using partial least squares structural equation modeling reveals how social media triggers these anxieties and their impact on anxiety in decision-making. While FoMO and FoBO significantly affect anxiety in decision-making, FoDA does not have a significant direct effect. These anxieties influence not only emotional well-being but also economic decisions, providing new insights into marketing and consumer psychology research. This study expands the theoretical framework of digital anxiety by demonstrating how the frustration of basic psychological needs and erosion of self-control impair consumers’ decision-making abilities. This study offers theoretical implications for understanding motivation in saturated digital contexts and provides practical recommendations for designing emotionally sustainable marketing strategies. These findings highlight the need for further research in this field.
This study investigates how avatar identification in metaverse games shapes players’ future intention to use their avatars, focusing on game enjoyment as the underlying psychological mechanism. Drawing upon self-congruity theory and flow theory, we posited that when gamers perceive their avatars as extensions of themselves, they experience heightened enjoyment during gameplay, which in turn fosters their future avatar use intention. A retrospective survey was conducted to collect participants’ past experiences in metaverse games. The data were collected from 218 adult gamers, and the research hypotheses were tested using PROCESS Macro. Results revealed that avatar identification had a significant positive effect on intention to use the avatar in the future, and this relationship was partially mediated by game enjoyment. Specifically, stronger identification increased enjoyment, which subsequently enhanced future usage intention. These findings highlight that identification not only directly strengthens loyalty toward avatars but also indirectly operates through intrinsic enjoyment. Our findings extend theoretical understanding of identity-based motivation and flow in virtual environments. They also offer practical insights for metaverse developers seeking to design immersive and self-expressive experiences that promote sustained user engagement.
As population ageing reshapes consumer markets, brands must respond to the functional and emotional expectations of older consumers. Drawing on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework, this study examines how Brand Accessibility (BA) influences Brand Trust (BT) directly and indirectly through Perceived Empathy (PE). Survey data were collected from 580 consumers aged 60 years and above in urban Japan and analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings demonstrate that BA positively influences PE and BT, while PE positively influences BT and partially mediates the relationship between BA and BT. These results suggest that accessible brand practices contribute to trust not only by reducing functional barriers but also by communicating care, inclusion and emotional reassurance. The study extends the literature on the Silver Economy and age-inclusive branding by identifying perceived empathy as an important psychological mechanism linking accessibility to trust in later-life consumption. The findings provide practical implications for brands seeking to develop accessible, empathetic and trustworthy consumer experiences in ageing societies.
A method’s “alternativeness” is not an intrinsic property of a technique but a perceived quality emerging from the fit between method, participant, and task. Building on this relational premise, we show that traditional qualitative methods become generative when their perceived unfamiliarity disrupts routine responding and, through defamiliarization, scaffolds imaginative reflection – provided participants retain an experiential anchor for the imaginative work required. Drawing on data from 68 international participants (interviews, focus groups, projective techniques), we examine this fit along three dimensions: perceived familiarity with the technique, the temporal focus of the task (present vs. future), and the interactional setting (individual vs. collective). Present-oriented tasks draw on expectations already anchored in routine experience, and both familiar and unfamiliar methods prove effective. Future-oriented tasks require imaginaries not deducible from the present, for which unfamiliar methods work best when anchored in lived experience and administered collectively, as social scaffolding sustains imaginative engagement. Generation Z serves as a revealing case, given the distance between their digital everyday and analogue research techniques, rather than as a boundary condition. The relational view repositions methodological innovation from whether a method is novel to when, and for whom, it becomes generative.
Over the past decade, brand activism has risen to prominence, catalysed by Nike’s ‘Dream Crazy’ campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick, which was a watershed moment in brands’ engagement with sociopolitical issues. As the practice moved from fringe to mainstream in the marketplace, its meaning and capacity to function as an authentic point-of-difference and driver of transformation have been debated at length. Brand activism research has developed robustly, including Daniel Korschun’s influential scholarship and editorial leadership, which foregrounded marketing’s role in political engagement. Key themes include definitional foundations, authenticity, consumer factors (e.g., political identity), and firm factors (e.g., financial performance). This body of work has become substantive enough to warrant significant consolidation and mapping studies. What is missing, however, is a processual perspective that would provide theorisation of how the field has grown, diffused and matured, and at times, lost force. Accordingly, we advance a lifecycle perspective of brand activism, mapping scholarship across several stages: emergence; contestation; normalisation; and backlash. Post-backlash, we conceive three possible pathways forward for the field: plateau, decline and renewal. We conclude by outlining a future research agenda, envisioning a hopeful and resilient renewal of brand activism.
