Shoppers often encounter in-store disruptions that can undermine the shopping experience. This research examines how self-service technologies in physical retail stores can support customers in these moments by increasing perceived control and decision comfort. We further examine the moderating role of technology self-efficacy, with stronger benefits observed among customers with greater confidence in their ability to use technology. Across five studies, we demonstrate that using self-service technology to resolve in-store shopping disruptions increases perceived control, which in turn enhances decision comfort, and that this effect is stronger when technology self-efficacy is higher. Implications for theory, retail practice, and future research are provided.

Adults’ social network ties serve multiple functions and play prominently in quitting smoking. We examined three types of adults’ egocentric social networks, including family, friends, and friends online to investigate how two network characteristics with major relevance to health behavior, network size and tie closeness, related to the emotional and confidant support and to pro- and anti-smoking social influence these ties may transmit. We also examine whether the social support and social influence constructs related to smoking abstinence. We utilized baseline and 7-day abstinence survey data from 123 adult current smokers attempting to quit prior to the start of a randomized controlled quit-smoking trial of a social support intervention for quitting smoking on Twitter. To examine study relationships, we estimated Negative Binomial Regression models and Logistic Regression models. For all networks, network size and tie closeness related positively to most of the social support and social influence constructs, with tie closeness related most strongly, especially for online friends. Family pro-smoking social influence related negatively to smoking abstinence, and there were marginally negative relationships for family emotional support and family confidant support. Online friend emotional support had a marginally positive relationship with smoking abstinence. Overall, our findings indicated the importance of the social support and social influence functions of each type of network tie, with larger networks and closer ties related to higher levels of social support and social influence. Moreover, family network pro-smoking social influence may compromise abstinence while emotional support from online friend network ties may reinforce it.

AIMS:The aim of this study is to identify cannabis products according to their appeal among young adults and measure product sales trends. DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS:This was a retrospective comparative study using point-of-sale data from licensed recreational cannabis retailers that include buyer age with birth year entered by retailers, set in California, USA. Cannabis purchases by young adults (aged 21-24, GenZ) were compared with older adults (age 25+) over 4 years (2018-21). MEASUREMENTS:Sales for six cannabis product categories were analyzed using a commercial data set with imputations and a raw data set. Age-appeal metrics were dollar and unit sales to young adults, and dollar and unit share ratios (young adults/older adults), where a share ratio of 100 denotes age-appeal comparability. A product category was considered more young-adult appealing than others if its mean on a metric was at least one standard deviation above the grand mean across all product categories. FINDINGS:Flower (cannabis plant material) and vapor pen appealed to young adults based on absolute dollar sales, dominating young-adult spending compared with other cannabis products (37.24 and 31.83%, respectively). Vapor pen and concentrate appealed to young adults based on dollar share ratios of 152, meaning these products comprised a 52% greater share of young-adult cannabis spending relative to older-adult spending (31.83/20.97% and 10.47/6.88%, respectively). Less appealing to young adults were pre-roll, edible/beverage and absorbable products (tincture/sublingual, capsule and topical). Flower showed the largest dollar sales growth (B = +$3.50 million/month), next to vapor pen (B = +$1.55 million/month). Vapor pen tied for highest growth in the percent of product dollars from the largest package size (B = +0.85%/month) and showed the steepest price decline (B = -0.53 price per gram/month). CONCLUSIONS:In California, USA, from 2018 to 2021, relative to older adults, young adults spent a greater share of their cannabis dollars on vapor pen and concentrate (products with high potency of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol).

Conservatives are often blamed for spreading misinformation, but it is unclear whether certain situations trigger them and, if so, why. The authors examine situations that are politically polarized, meaning the topic and/or its framing conveys conflict, discord, or disagreement between the two main political parties (conservatives and liberals). The authors study whether conservatives react to polarized situations by spreading ingroup-skewed political misinformation that is objectively inaccurate but not necessarily understood to be false and whether liberals are less reactive. Using a multimethod approach, the authors conduct six studies, including analyses of statements by public figures and speeches by U.S. presidents, as well as controlled experiments. The results indicate that in polarized situations, conservatives' need for ingroup dominance is elevated, so they convey more misinformation than liberals. In less polarized situations, conservatives' need for ingroup dominance is tempered, reducing their misinformation conveyance. These findings suggest that misinformation should not be blamed solely on the individual trait of conservativism, as polarized situations exaggerate conservative motives and behaviors. While news media, social media, political figures, and others may be incentivized to emphasize political polarization to gain audiences and bolster engagement, the resulting misinformation harms truth, trust, and democracy. Possible remedies include improved fact-checking and media literacy education.

Our special issue on young consumers introduces readers to a research area that has been part of the consumer behavior field for over 50 years. We provide an overview of topics and findings from past to present that have appeared in marketing and consumer journals. We also identify current research issues and gaps and invite readers to contribute to the field. Throughout our discussion, we introduce the 10 articles in this special issue, whose topics include neuroscience insights into youth risk behaviors, the effects of social media on youth, social activism among young people, strategies for encouraging them to eat healthier food, parenting strategies and youth smoking, how gambling advertising affects youth, their need for marketplace literacy, and the importance of studying the lived experiences of youth in poverty. These articles include empirical findings and identify opportunities for future research that can positively impact the lives of children and adolescents.

Purpose Circumstances such as pandemics can cause individuals to fall into a state of need, so they turn to donation services for assistance. However, donation services can be designed based on supply-side considerations, e.g. efficiency or inventory control, which restrict consumer choice without necessarily considering how consumer vulnerabilities like low financial or interpersonal power might cause them to react to such restrictions. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to examine service designs that limit the choices consumers are given in terms of either the allowable quantity or assortment variety and examine effects on consumer perceptions of justice and satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach Three experiments are reported, including one manipulating the service design of an actual food pantry. Findings When consumers have low financial or interpersonal power, meaning their initial state of control is low, and they encounter a donation service that provides limited (vs. expanded) choice that drops control even lower, they perceive the situation as unjust and report lower satisfaction. Practical implications Donation service providers should strive to design services that allow for expanded consumer choice and use interpersonal processes that empower beneficiaries so they perceive the service experience as just and satisfying. Collecting feedback from beneficiaries is also recommended. Originality/value While researchers have started to look at the service experiences of vulnerable populations, they have focused primarily on financial service designs. The authors look at donation service designs and identify problems with supply-side limits to choice quantity and assortment.

A market entrant often challenges the incumbent using creative imitation: The entrant creatively combines imitated aspects of the original with its own innovative characteristics to create a distinct offering. Using lab and field experiments to examine creative imitation in China, we find the effects of creative imitations on the originals depend on the creative imitation’s quality. We explore the underlying mechanisms, and show that including a low-quality creative imitation in the retail choice set increases satisfaction with and choice of the original, while a moderate-quality creative imitation does the opposite. Moreover, creative imitation affects consumers’ satisfaction with the original by influencing whether their experience with the original verifies their expectations. Our paper reveals creative imitation effects to help incumbent firms effectively address them.

Introduction: The 2019 outbreak of e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury (EVALI) is believed to have been caused by vitamin E acetate, an additive used in some cannabis vaporizer products. Previous studies have primarily focused on changes in sales of electronic nicotine delivery systems following the initial advisory issued by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on August 17, 2019. The present study is intended to examine variation by age groups in sales of regulated cannabis vape products in the state of California before, during, and after the outbreak. Methods: Weekly sales revenue of cannabis vape products (from January 1, 2018, to December 31, 2020) was obtained from a sample of recreational cannabis retailers licensed in California. An interrupted time series analysis, using AutoRegressive, Integrated, Moving Average methods, was employed to estimate changes in the sales and market share of cannabis vape products in the weeks following the CDC advisory. Results: The total volume of regulated cannabis vape product sales increased substantially over the 3-year study period (2018-2020). Sales and market share of cannabis vape products, however, declined in both young and older adults immediately following the advisory, rebounding to pre-EVALI levels only for the young adults. For sales, the potential EVALI effect following the CDC's advisory equates to an 8.0% and 2.2% decline below expected levels in the older and young adults, respectively. Conclusions: The differential age effect on sales may reflect concerns regarding health effects of cannabis vaping products and greater awareness of the outbreak among older adults. Findings highlight the importance of informing consumers about health risks associated with using cannabis vape products acquired from regulated versus illicit sources.

Purpose We aimed to better understand hesitancy to use nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) to quit smoking. Design We content coded and analyzed NRT-related posts in online quit smoking support groups to understand NRT-use hesitancy and to examine associations with health outcomes. Setting NRT posts were analyzed in unmoderated social-media support groups with free NRT. Sample Adults who smoked daily (n = 438) and posted about NRT were studied, 339 of whom reported on NRT usage and 403 reported on smoking abstinence. Measures Surveys at 1-month post-quit date assessed NRT usage and smoking abstinence. Analysis Relationships among NRT posts, NRT usage and smoking abstinence were analyzed using GEE models accounting for support group and covariates. Results Nearly all (96.17%) participants reported using the study-provided NRT once, most (70.21%) used NRT during the past week, but less than half (45.72%) used NRT daily for the full month as recommended. Nearly two-thirds (65.34%) of NRT posts were negative. Posts reflecting dislike or no longer needing NRT were associated with a lower likelihood of using NRT in the past week at least once (B = −.66, P = .005 and B = −.37, P = .045), use occasions (B = −1.86, P = .018 and B = −1.10, P = .016) and used daily for full month (B = −.56, P = .044 and B = −.53, P = .009). Posts related to the effectiveness of NRT related to past-week NRT used at least once (B = .15, P = .023), used daily for full month (B = .25, P = .001), and smoking abstinence (B = .27, P = .002). Conclusion Strategies are needed to address dislike of NRT and strengthen perceptions of NRT efficacy, especially on social media where posts may be amplified.

US schools have fast-food restaurants nearby, encouraging student patronage, unhealthy consumption, and weight gain. Geographers have developed an activity space framework which suggests this nearby location effect will be moderated by whether people perceive the location as their activity space. Therefore, we study whether students perceive a fast-food restaurant near school as their activity space, and whether social marketing messages can change that perception. We conducted six studies: a secondary data analysis with 5986 students, a field experiment with 188 students, and four lab experiments with 188, 251, 178, and 379 students. We find that students who strongly identify with their student community patronize a fast-food restaurant near school (vs. farther away) because they view it as their activity space, while students who weakly identify do not. For example, in our field experiment, 44% vs. 7% of students who strongly identified with the student community patronized the near versus farther restaurant, while only 28% versus 19% of students who weakly identified patronized the near and farther restaurants comparably. We also find that to deter the strong identifiers, messages should convey that patronage is a social liability, e.g., portray student activism against fast food. We show that standard health messages do not change perceptions of restaurants as social activity spaces. Thus, to combat the problem of fast-food restaurants near schools causing unhealthy consumption, policy and educational interventions should focus on students who strongly identify with their student community and find ways to weaken their perceptions that fast-food restaurants near schools are their activity spaces.

Online support groups offer low-cost and accessible health and mental health support, but low engagement challenges their effectiveness. To encourage engagement and provide evidence-based responses appropriate to participants’ needs, we propose an intent detection model for online support groups based on state-of-the-art natural language processing methods. Such a model enables a chatbot that can increase interactions and improve discussion quality. Posts in social media are often short and noisy, especially in group chat. Furthermore, many intents lack data, overlap and/or have specific priorities. We create a human-annotated dataset of posts with intent labels from 45 three-month online support groups for quitting smoking. We then train and examine models to predict the intent behind each post. To reduce the effect of noisy and sparse data, we fine-tune a massive pretrained language model. Also, to represent the unique relationships between intents, we design customized loss functions for training. Empirical evaluations show significant performance improvements with the proposed method; our best model obtains 95.5% accuracy. We also use a fine-grained set of intents and obtain higher accuracy compared to prior models on online health forums and communities. Accurate detection of fine-grained intents opens up new opportunities to improve online self-help support groups.

Buddies, serving as in-group influencers to aid demographically similar cobuddies, are extensively used in face-to-face support groups to enhance positive social influence. The authors examine the efficacy of buddies in online support groups and investigate underlying mediating processes using social network analysis. They observe what happens when members of support groups for quitting smoking, including members who are relatively active and less active in the group, after a few days are called on to be buddies and assigned to specific cobuddies. The findings indicate that, consistent with normative expectations for buddies, members form especially strong ties with their designated cobuddies. The more active buddies are in the group, the stronger the ties they form with their cobuddies and, in turn, their cobuddies form stronger ties with group members overall, which then relates to cobuddy goal attainment. The findings suggest that interactive marketers should consider using buddies in online support groups but observe activity levels before making buddy assignments, because positive outcomes are contingent on buddies being active in the group. Marketers should also ensure that online support group members post to everyone, not just their buddies, because ties formed among group members as a whole are crucial for goal attainment.

For 40 years, the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing (JPP&M) has provided a forum within the marketing discipline for scholarship on the impact of public policies and actions on marketers, consumers, and society. It seeks articles that offer insightful and thoughtful analyses of public policies that affect the marketing profession and the marketplace. Martin and Scott’s (2021, p. 2) editorial stresses the opportunity for JPP&M to be the journal for topics that “make a difference,” defined as “something that helps people or makes the world a better place.” This positioning situates JPP&M as an excellent outlet for articles that reflect the principles espoused by the growing emphasis in marketing academia on Responsible Research in Business and Marketing (RRBM). The seven RRBM principles are unapologetically ambitious, asking for both basic and applied contributions with sound methodologies that value multidisciplinary collaboration, stakeholder involvement, impact on numerous stakeholders, and broad dissemination (RRBM 2021). These principles overlap and intersect with the goals of JPP&M and challenge marketing researchers, educators, and practitioners to think boldly, broadly, and globally with a shared vision of inspiring, encouraging, and supporting credible, useful, and inclusive research. Together, JPP&M and RRBM seek research that can make a positive difference for consumers and stakeholders and pave the way, one article at a time, for societal well-being and a better world. Making a positive difference implies a shift to a dual focus in which corporate and marketing strategies need to consider corporate and shareholder well-being, as well as consumer, environmental, and societal impact, for the benefit of both companies and the world at large (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 2013). The Transformative Consumer Research movement has embraced this focus, envisioning “Marketing as a Force for Good” (Mende and Scott 2021). Our hope is for RRBM principles to be applied more broadly beyond the TCR community to researchers in consumer behavior as well as marketing strategy. Businesses can no longer focus solely on shareholder value and profitability given the increasing consumer demand for socially responsible practices concerning employee welfare, equality, environmental impact, and community contributions. Marketing researchers must broaden their perspective to consider marketing‘s impacts on a variety of stakeholders and societal well-being. Although several marketing journals have had special issues on topics related to RRBM (e.g., Journal of Marketing’s Better Marketing for a Better World, Journal of Consumer Psychology’s Consumer Psychology for the Greater Good, Journal of Marketing Research’s Mitigation in Marketing), JPP&M has consistently published articles that embody the principles of RRBM. As such, it is not surprising that five of the articles recognized by the AMA-EBSCO-RRBMAnnual Award for Responsible Research in Marketing in its inaugural year (2019) were published in JPP&M, with two additional JPP&M articles receiving this award in 2020. Although each award-winning JPP&M article fulfills several of the RRBM principles, we highlight one principle per article in this commentary. In the inaugural year of the award, the JPP&M article by Catlin, Pechmann, and Brass (2015) was one of only two distinguished winners, and it demonstrates commitment to RRBM Principle 1: benefit both consumer welfare and business. Guided by theory on naive consumer beliefs, the researchers

Online support groups offer social support and an outlet for expressing emotions when dealing with health-related challenges. This study examines whether automated text analysis of emotional expressions using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) can identify emotions related to abstinence expressed in online support groups for quitting smoking, suggesting promise for offering targeted mood management to members. The emotional expressions in 1 month of posts by members of 36 online support groups were related to abstinence at month end. Using the available LIWC dictionary, posts were scored for overall positive emotions, overall negative emotions, anxiety, anger, sadness, and an upbeat emotional tone. Greater expressions of negative emotions, and specifically anxiety, related to nonabstinence, while a more upbeat emotional tone related to abstinence. The results indicate that automated text analysis can identify emotions expressed in online support groups for quitting smoking and enable targeted delivery of mood management to group members.

This research studied difficult-to-pronounce product names which are prevalent in certain product categories. In study 1, consumers tried golf balls that varied in name pronounceability but were otherwise identical and, despite direct experience, concluded balls with difficult versus easy-to-pronounce names were less controllable and less preferable. In study 2, consumers were asked to look for a dog that was highly (less highly) controllable for an urban (rural) setting, and the dog with the difficult-to-pronounce name was viewed as less controllable because it seemed less familiar and was less preferred for the urban setting. Study 3 verified the effects of difficult-to-pronounce names on familiarity and controllability perceptions and found preference effects among those with high trait desire for control. Study 4 documented the prevalence of difficult-to-pronounce names on a popular ecommerce site for tires. Overall, our findings indicate managers should avoid using difficult-to-pronounce product names when consumers strongly desire product controllability.

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.

BackgroundCollege campuses have policies restricting smoking/vaping on campus. Previous studies involving mostly European-American students showed smoking prevalence declines following implementation of such policies.ObjectiveTo evaluate a social media campaign promotive of stronger campus support for an existing campus no-smoking/no-vaping policy where most (∼75%) of the undergraduates were non-European-American. A demographically comparable university served as a no-intervention control.ParticipantsTarget was 200 random intercept surveys at each university during fall 2016, spring 2017. Of 800 respondents, 681 were undergraduates.MethodsBaseline and post-intervention surveys assessed awareness of and support for campus-wide smoke-free/vape-free policies. Staged smoke-free/vape-free policy violations assessed students' propensity to intervene in support of the policy.ResultsRespondent support for the no-smoking/no-vaping policy did not change.ConclusionsThe social media campaign and Policy Ambassadors program did not increase support for the campus no-smoking/no-vaping policy. Most (∼90%) respondents agreed that the campus no-smoking/no-vaping policy was important for public health.

Background Existing smoking cessation treatments are challenged by low engagement and high relapse rates, suggesting the need for more innovative, accessible, and interactive treatment strategies. Twitter is a Web-based platform that allows people to communicate with each other throughout the day using their phone. Objective This study aims to leverage the social media platform of Twitter for fostering peer-to-peer support to decrease relapse with quitting smoking. Furthermore, the study will compare the effects of coed versus women-only groups on women’s success with quitting smoking. Methods The study design is a Web-based, three-arm randomized controlled trial with two treatment arms (a coed or women-only Twitter support group) and a control arm. Participants are recruited online and are randomized to one of the conditions. All participants will receive 8 weeks of combination nicotine replacement therapy (patches plus their choice of gum or lozenges), serial emails with links to Smokefree.gov quit guides, and instructions to record their quit date online (and to quit smoking on that date) on a date falling within a week of initiation of the study. Participants randomized to a treatment arm are placed in a fully automated Twitter support group (coed or women-only), paired with a buddy (matched on age, gender, location, and education), and encouraged to communicate with the group and buddy via daily tweeted discussion topics and daily automated feedback texts (a positive tweet if they tweet and an encouraging tweet if they miss tweeting). Recruited online from across the continental United States, the sample consists of 215 male and 745 female current cigarette smokers wanting to quit, aged between 21 and 59 years. Self-assessed follow-up surveys are completed online at 1, 3, and 6 months after the date they selected to quit smoking, with salivary cotinine validation at 3 and 6 months. The primary outcome is sustained biochemically confirmed abstinence at the 6-month follow-up. Results From November 2016 to September 2018, 960 participants in 36 groups were recruited for the randomized controlled trial, in addition to 20 participants in an initial pilot group. Data analysis will commence soon for the randomized controlled trial based on data from 896 of the 960 participants (93.3%), with 56 participants lost to follow-up and 8 dropouts. Conclusions This study combines the mobile platform of Twitter with a support group for quitting smoking. Findings will inform the efficacy of virtual peer-to-peer support groups for quitting smoking and potentially elucidate gender differences in quit rates found in prior research. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02823028; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02823028 International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID) DERR1-10.2196/16417

Millions of U.S. adults join online support groups to attain health goals, but the social ties they form are often too weak to provide the support they need. What impedes the strengthening of ties in such groups? We explore the role of demographic differences in causing the impediment and demographic self-disclosure in removing it. Using a field study of online quit-smoking groups complemented by three laboratory experiments, we find that members tend to hide demographic differences, concerned about poor social integration that will weaken their ties. However, the self-disclosures of demographic differences that naturally occur during group member discussions actually strengthen their ties, which in turn facilitates attainment of members' health goals. In other words, social ties in online groups are weak not because members are demographically different, but because they are reluctant to self-disclose their differences. If they do self-disclose, this breeds interpersonal connection, trumping any demographic differences among them. Data from both laboratory and field about two types of demographic difference-dyad-level dissimilarity and group-level minority status-provide convergent support for our findings.

Background Facebook’s advertising platform reaches most US households and has been used for health-related research recruitment. The platform allows for advertising segmentation by age, gender, and location; however, it does not explicitly allow for targeting by race or ethnicity to facilitate a diverse participant pool. Objective This study looked at the efficacy of zip code targeting in Facebook advertising to reach blacks/African Americans and Hispanics/Latinos who smoke daily for a quit-smoking web-based social media study. Methods We ran a general market campaign for 61 weeks using all continental US zip codes as a baseline. Concurrently, we ran 2 campaigns to reach black/African American and Hispanic-/Latino-identified adults, targeting zip codes ranked first by the percentage of households of the racial or ethnic group of interest and then by cigarette expenditure per household. We also ran a Spanish language campaign for 13 weeks, targeting all continental US zip codes but utilizing Facebook’s Spanish language targeting. The advertising images and language were common across campaigns. Costs were compared for advertisement clicks, queries, applications, and participants, and yields were compared for the final three outcomes. We examined outcomes before and after the Cambridge Analytica scandal that broke in March 2018. Finally, we examined 2 promoted Facebook features: lookalike audiences and audience network placement. Results Zip code targeting campaigns were effective for yielding the racial or ethnic groups of interest. The black-/African American–focused versus general market campaign increased black/African American weekly queries (mean 9.48, SD 5.69 vs general market mean 2.83, SD 2.05; P<.001) and applicants (mean 1.11, SD 1.21 vs general market mean 0.54, SD 0.58; P<.001). The Hispanic-/Latino-focused versus general market campaign increased Hispanic/Latino weekly queries (mean 3.10, SD 2.16 vs general market mean 0.71, SD 0.48; P<.001) and applicants (mean 0.36, SD 0.55 vs general market mean 0.10, SD 0.14; P=.001). Cost metrics did not differ between campaigns at generating participants (overall P=.54). Costs increased post- versus prescandal for the black-/African American–focused campaign for queries (mean US $8.51, SD 3.08 vs US $5.87, SD 1.89; P=.001) and applicants (mean US $59.64, SD 35.63 vs US $38.96, SD 28.31; P=.004) and for the Hispanic-/Latino-focused campaign for queries (mean US $9.24, SD 4.74 vs US $7.04, SD 3.39; P=.005) and applicants (mean US $61.19, SD 40.08 vs US $38.19, SD 21.20; P=.001). Conclusions Zip code targeting in Facebook advertising is an effective way to recruit diverse populations for health-based interventions. Audience network placement should be avoided. The Facebook lookalike audience may not be necessary for recruitment, with drawbacks including an unknown algorithm and unclear use of Facebook user data, and so public concerns around data privacy should be considered. Trial Registration ClinicalTrial.gov NCT02823028; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02823028