Consumers make a multitude of food consumption decisions every day, and such decisions are influenced by internal motivations and external factors, consequential for health and well-being, and highly connected over time. To enhance our understanding of food decision making, we propose the Start-Stop Continuous-Time Food Framework. This novel framework (1) identifies and characterizes each eating episode through three key interrelated dimensions (when to start eating, what to eat, when to stop eating) and (2) depicts relationships between eating episodes over time through this framework. We propose ways to enhance the consideration of single eating episode approaches, while also advocating for a more "continuous-time" approach that facilitates the identification of food consumption patterns reflective of consumers' everyday choices. We specify a wide range of future research questions and promising avenues for applying our framework for helping consumers eat consistently with their goals, designing effective policies, and conducting impactful consumer food research.

Consumers’ portion size choices are important, as they can influence how much food is eaten and wasted. While previous research has focused on self-selected portion sizes, this research examines portion size choices for others. The authors demonstrate that consumers choose larger portion sizes for others than for themselves, across both healthy and unhealthy foods, and for a wide range of different others. Choosing larger portion sizes for others is problematic, as the authors show that it can contribute to increased food waste. Both process-consistent moderation and mediation show that one driver of choosing larger portion sizes for others is consumers’ desire to view themselves as being caring. Alternative accounts (e.g., predicting that others want to eat more than the self, greater consumption amount uncertainty for others than the self) are addressed. Finally, a process-consistent intervention that reframes the meaning of being caring as mitigating the burden of unwanted leftovers for others decreases portion size choices for others. Altogether, this research offers theoretical contributions to the literatures on food decision-making and choices for others and offers practical contributions by identifying a novel contributor to food waste in social contexts and thus a potential target for interventions aimed at mitigating food waste.

In many societies, attaining cultural ideals of physical attractiveness is desirable (e.g., being beautiful), but pursuing physical attractiveness is not (e.g., being vain). How do people address these paradoxical standards? We argue that people meet the standards to both appear slim and appear to have good values by disguising their true motives for ambiguous actions (i.e., diet and exercise): they project more virtuous health motives to others despite being actually driven by physical appearance motives. Five preregistered studies and two supplemental studies (N = 4,321) find evidence for this behavior and offer an intervention to increase the extent to which people are actually driven by health (vs. physical appearance) motives in private. Moreover, we find that this behavior is driven by the desire to be seen by others as having good values. Altogether, this research contributes to a better understanding of the distorted discourse surrounding health, diet, exercise, and appearance.

It is often said that much of consumption is “social” in nature, but what does this mean? This article proposes the social congruency framework for differentiating between different types of social consumption experiences—characterizing a consumption experience with respect to congruency with a social partner on up to three dimensions: what, where, and when. Utilizing this social congruency framework, we propose four different social consumption experiences: solo consumption with a social referent, asynchronous social consumption, synchronous social consumption, and shared consumption. We then leverage this framework to differentiate between different types of social consumption experiences and to explicate why this differentiation between different types of social consumption experiences matters in terms of how it can facilitate future research examining the nature of congruency within experiences as well as the antecedents and consequences across social consumption experiences.

What influences consumers to make product decisions alone versus with household partners? This research examines how consumers' preference for solo or joint decision-making with household partners varies between product acquisition and disposal stages. Ten preregistered studies demonstrate that for many household products, consumers are more likely to choose joint (vs. solo) decision-making with household partners for disposal than for acquisition. This asymmetry occurs because disposal (vs. acquisition) increases perceptions of the potential for infringement on a household partner's rights, which increases the desire for clarity about a partner's product valuation and thus the choice of joint (vs. solo) decision-making with one's partner. The authors identify three process-consistent boundary conditions wherein this acquisition-disposal asymmetry is mitigated: (1) when the product cannot be used by one's partner, (2) when considering decisions with nonhousehold members (e.g., noncohabitating close friends) instead of one's household partner, and (3) when the product's price exceeds the household's typical budgeted spending. Moreover, the authors discuss implications of this acquisition-disposal asymmetry for consumer well-being and marketing strategies, including its potential to cause delays in disposal decisions relative to acquisition decisions. This research sheds light on household decision dynamics and identifies a novel contributor to overaccumulation of household products.

BackgroundHealth-related social needs (HRSN), or unmet conditions that are important to maintain health (such as finances and transportation), contribute to vision health disparities. The purpose of this study is to identify the unmet HRSN of ophthalmology clinic patients.MethodsThis retrospective, cross-sectional study examined HRSN survey results from adult patients who checked in for a clinic visit at a tertiary academic eye centre from April 28, 2022, to March 31, 2023. Demographics and visual acuity were extracted from the electronic health record, and their reported HRSNs were evaluated using binary logistic regression.ResultsOf 1413 patients who completed the survey, 194 (13.7%) screened positive for at least one HRSN. The most frequently reported need was food insecurity (99/1303, 7.6%), followed by transportation (68/1340, 5.1%), housing instability (63/1305, 4.8%), financial insecurity (46/1293, 3.6%), and homelessness (10/1330, 0.8%). Patients with at least one reported HRSN were more likely to be Black compared to White (OR 4.03, 95% CI: 2.71-5.96), female compared to male (OR 1.88, 95% CI: 1.34-2.62), and younger than 65 years of age compared to 65 to 75 years (OR 2.35, 95% CI: 1.68-3.37) or older than 75 years (OR 4.62, 95% CI: 2.54-8.16). Presence of at least one HRSN was associated with visual impairment, with greater odds of best-corrected visual acuity worse than 20/40 in the group with HRSN compared to without HRSN (OR 1.55, 95% CI: 1.09-2.19).ConclusionIntegrating a screening questionnaire in ophthalmology clinics can uncover unaddressed HRSN, enabling resource allocation to mitigate vision health disparities.

PURPOSE:To assess the efficacy of electronic health record (EHR) messaging for re-engaging patients with ophthalmology care after a missed appointment. DESIGN:Prospective, randomized clinical trial. METHODS:The study setting was an academic ophthalmology department. The patient population comprised of return patients age 18 years or older with an appointment "no show," or missed appointment. Over 2 phases of recruitment, 362 patients with an active patient portal in the EHR were selected consecutively each business day. Patients were randomized using a web-based tool to receive a reminder to reschedule via a standard mailed letter only (control) or the mailed letter plus an electronic message through the EHR within 1 business day of the missed appointment (intervention). Reengagement with eye care was defined as attendance of a rescheduled appointment within 30 days of the no-show visit. Patient charts were reviewed for demographic and clinical data. RESULTS:The average age of recruited patients was 59.9 years, just under half of the sample was male (42.5%, 154/362), and most patients were White (56.9%, 206/362) or Black (36.2%, 131/362). Patients were most commonly recruited from the retina service (39.2%, 142/362) followed by the glaucoma service (29.3%, 106/362). Many patients in this study had previous no-show appointments, with an average no-show rate of 18.8% out of all scheduled visits across our health system. In total, 22.2% (42/189) of patients in the intervention group attended a follow-up appointment within 30 days of their no-show visit compared to 11.6% (20/173) of the control group (OR, 2.186; 95% CI, 1.225-3.898; P = .008). When including only the 74 patients in the intervention group who read the intervention message in the patient portal, 28.4% (21/74) attended a follow-up compared to 11.6% (20/173) of the control group (P = .001). CONCLUSIONS:EHR-based reminder messages sent within a business day of a missed appointment may promote re-engagement in ophthalmology care after appointment no-show.

Much marketing research focuses on what individual consumers need or want for consumption and how they satisfy these needs or wants themselves. However, consumers often give up money, time, or preferences to help others address their consumption needs and wants across the customer journey. The authors introduce the unifying construct of "consumption sacrifice," defined as the willing and intentional act of incurring a cost to the self-in money, time, or preferences-when making a consumption decision, with expected direct benefits to one's partner. The authors offer examples of consumption sacrifices along the customer journey and suggest that this construct offers a new lens through which to examine the existing literature on choices involving others. The authors put forward the view that sacrifices are often invisible to recipients-and thus underrecognized and underappreciated-failing to achieve their full potential. At the same time, different sacrifice motives (partner-focused, relationship-focused, self-focused) may affect the extent to which actors care about making sacrifices visible to recipients. Finally, the authors propose future research questions, including what leads consumers to perform more visible sacrifices, what drives the invisibility of sacrifices among recipients, and what are the consequences of performing and receiving invisible sacrifices.

Weight-based stigma is prevalent, increasing, and has many negative consequences. This research examines people's beliefs about what other people with heavy versus thin body types enjoy, in terms of food and activities. Predictions of others' enjoyment are important, as they can shape various downstream judgments, including beliefs about other people's likely goal pursuit success, and recommendations and choices for others. Six pre-registered experiments compare predictions of others' enjoyment of healthy and unhealthy foods and activities, based on whether others have heavy versus thin body types. These experiments show that whereas beliefs about what people with thin body types enjoy are flexible, beliefs about what people with heavy body types enjoy are narrow and inflexible. Specifically, if people with thin body types engage in counter-stereotypical unhealthy behavior, they are perceived to enjoy such behavior as much as people with heavy body types. By contrast, even if people with heavy body types engage in counter-stereotypical healthy behavior, they are perceived not to enjoy such behavior as much as people with thin body types. The potential wide-ranging implications of the belief that heavy people have narrower ranges of potential enjoyment are discussed.

Many consumers are caregivers and, as part of caregiving, frequently make food choices for their dependents. This research examines how food choices made for children influence the healthiness of parents' subsequent self-choices. Whereas prior work focuses on choices for the self (others) as based on self-needs (other-needs), the authors theorize when and why self-choices involve consideration of other-needs. Five studies, including a nursery school field study, test the effect of choosing healthy food for a child on the healthiness of parents' self-choices, focusing on the role of anticipating potentially sharing self-choices with one's child. Potential sharing increased parents' likelihood of making an unhealthy subsequent self-choice if they first made a healthy choice for their child. This effect was driven by parents' present-focused parenting concerns about whether one's child would eat and enjoy healthy options chosen for them. This effect was mitigated when parents instead had future-focused parenting concerns. Additionally, this effect was mitigated after making an initial choice for the child that was (1) unhealthy or (2) healthy but relatively liked by the child. This research contributes to understanding how choices for others shape choices for the self and offers important marketing and policy implications.

Brands and retailers often offer different aesthetic versions of the same base product that vary from visually simple to visually complex. How should managers price these different aesthetic versions of the same base product? This research provides insights for such decisions through uncovering a novel consumer lay belief about the relationship between visual complexity and production costs. Consumers associate simple (vs. complex) visual aesthetics with lower production costs when evaluating different aesthetic versions of a product. This lay belief occurs in joint evaluation mode but is mitigated in separate evaluation mode. An important downstream implication of this lay belief is that consumers’ willingness to pay is lower for visually simple (vs. complex) versions. This gap in willingness to pay occurs even when consumers like both product versions or aesthetics equally, and it is only eliminated when consumers like the visually simple version substantially more than the complex version. Finally, reducing the diagnosticity of the lay belief by disclosing information that the two versions took similar amounts of production time and effort reduces the gap in willingness to pay between visually simple (vs. complex) versions.

Social life abounds with occasions to form impressions of others during first encounters. Often, these first impressions are based on little initial information besides superficial visuals of other people’s appearance, including of their personal, easily controllable aesthetics (e.g., what clothing they wear, what video conferencing background they use). The present research asks (in non-romantic contexts): are people accurately calibrated for which personal aesthetics will increase others’ interpersonal attraction to them? This research examines people’s visual aesthetic preferences—for easily controllable minimalist or maximalist aesthetics—as a function of being in a social actor (vs. observer) role. Across five pre-registered experiments in different social settings, we found evidence of the “aesthetic signaling asymmetry,” wherein observers expressed lower interpersonal attraction to others when they displayed minimalist (vs. maximalist) personal aesthetics, compared to actors who indicated what they would display aesthetically when aiming to increase others’ interpersonal attraction to them. We find evidence compatible with a warmth-competence theoretical framework underlying these findings, wherein relative to actors, observers are more focused on warmth signals (which they infer are better conveyed by maximalist aesthetics) and less focused on competence signals (which they infer are better conveyed by minimalist aesthetics). This research thus offers contributions to the literatures on signaling and impression formation, as well as practical implications for people as they make personal aesthetic decisions.

Over the past several decades, scholars have highlighted the obligations and opportunities for marketing as a discipline to play a role in creating a better world — or risk becoming irrelevant for the largest problems facing consumers and society. This paper provides a framework to enhance the relevance and rigor of research in marketing that not only contributes new knowledge to science, but also makes a positive difference in the world. To that end, we urge authors and reviewers to foster cross-fertilization from different theoretical and methodological silos, bolster robustness through multiple methods, and expand the domain of research to explore different populations and cultures. In doing so, we hope to encourage further consideration of the role of marketing scholarship in providing a novel lens into potential solutions for societal concerns.

People often engage in shared consumption experiences with other people, including romantic partners, friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, and acquaintances. Although the field of consumer psychology has traditionally focused on the perspective of an individual consumer, researchers are increasingly recognizing the importance and relevance of studying shared consumption (also known as joint consumption, dyadic consumption, or group consumption). In this chapter, we first discuss common methodological paradigms for studying shared consumption, given that studying shared consumption poses unique methodological challenges relative to studying solitary consumption. We then discuss prior research on shared consumption, organizing our review around the potential benefits and potential costs involved in shared consumption as compared to solitary consumption. Finally, we delineate four main areas for future research on shared consumption that we view as particularly promising.

Companies vary on oft-publicized size metrics (number of employees, revenue). Do consumers prefer otherwise identical products made by larger or smaller companies? The answer hinges on whether consumers perceive the products as low-tech or high-tech. This prediction stems from a novel framework charting two lay theories regarding key resources companies utilize to provide value to consumers: employees and finances. In the intrinsic motivation lay theory, consumers believe that employees of larger (vs. smaller) companies are less intrinsically motivated. In the financial resources lay theory, consumers believe that larger (vs. smaller) companies have greater capacity to fund research and development. Critically, product type (low-tech vs. high-tech) differentially affects the accessibility of these two lay theories: For low-tech (vs. high-tech) products, the intrinsic motivation lay theory is more accessible, driving quality evaluations and choice in favor of smaller companies. For high-tech (vs. low-tech) products, the financial resources lay theory is more accessible, driving quality evaluations and choice in favor of larger companies. This research advances theory by reconciling conflicting findings regarding product quality inferences from company size metrics, with guidance for marketers to improve quality evaluations and choice shares by strategically supporting or challenging lay theories and shifting perceptions of company size or product type.

Purpose To assess the incidence, risk factors, and clinical consequences of loss to follow up (LTFU) among glaucoma patients at our institution over a 10-year period. Methods This retrospective study examined LTFU among a cohort of glaucoma patients with a clinical encounter in 2010. LTFU was defined as 52 weeks or more without an encounter and without alternative reason for discontinued care, such as discharge, documented move, or death. Baseline demographic and clinical characteristics were collected and compared between LTFU and non-LTFU groups using a logistic regression model to identify risk factors for LTFU. Odds ratios (ORs) are reported with 95% confidence intervals. Clinical outcomes were documented for LTFU patients who returned after a lapse in care. Results Among the 395 included patients, 132 (33%) were LTFU over the 10-year study period. Characteristics associated with LTFU in a logistic regression model included greater disease severity (OR = 1.03 [1.01-1.05], p = .023, for each worsening decibel of mean deviation) and in-state rather than out-of-state residence (OR = 2.76 [1.12-6.80], p = .027). Other potential risk factors that did not reach significance included male gender (OR = 1.39 [0.92-2.13], p = .124), Black race (OR = 1.40 [0.91-2.16] p = .123), and legal blindness (OR = 1.58 [0.91-2.76] p = .107). Among the 132 patients who were LTFU, only 23 (17%) later returned to care, two-thirds (15/23) of whom returned with disease progression or complication. Conclusion One-third of glaucoma patients became LTFU over a 10-year period, and LTFU may be associated with poor clinical outcomes. More research is needed to understand reasons for LTFU and to promote regular glaucoma care.

Multiple motivations drive consumers when obtaining and eating food, including taste, healthiness, fullness, price, convenience, waste avoidance, and social and cultural norms (Chandon, Haws, and Liu 2022; Glanz et al. 1998; Liu et al. 2015; Renner et al. 2012; Sproesser et al. 2018). The relative strength of these motivations can vary across consumers chronically (e.g., restrained eaters may prioritize weight management; Liu and Haws 2020) and situationally (e.g., consumers may prioritize fullness right before lunchtime). In addition, a global perspective is important: The relative prioritization of different eating motivations may vary across countries given different food-relevant challenges across regions. For example, in regions with extreme food scarcity due to droughts or war, consumers’ primary motivations are likely very different from those in regions where nonnutritious food is abundant (and often cheap and convenient, as in food deserts). Addressing these various consumer eating motivations is key to overall consumer well-being (Block et al. 2011) as well as to societal well-being (Scott and Vallen 2019). Importantly, the ability to address these motivational drivers can be shaped by public policies, both general policies (e.g., child tax subsidies) and food-specific policies. In this commentary, we focus on food-specific public policies (“food policies” hereinafter). We argue that food policies ought to consider the array of different consumer eating motivations, including both (1) how policies may affect perceptions of the ability of different food options to address various motivations and (2) the relative importance of different motivations. Notably, these motivations may vary over time and across situations (e.g., eating in vs. outside the home), individuals, groups, and countries. Ultimately, eating motivations are critical determinants of both consumer support of different policies and the policies’ effectiveness at promoting consumer and societal well-being (Scott and Vallen 2019). The REAL Food Policy Framework

People often engage in shared consumption experiences with other people, including romantic partners, friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, and acquaintances. Although the field of consumer psychology has traditionally focused on the perspective of an individual consumer, researchers are increasingly recognizing the importance and relevance of studying shared consumption (also known as joint consumption, dyadic consumption, or group consumption). In this chapter, we first discuss common methodological paradigms for studying shared consumption, given that studying shared consumption poses unique methodological challenges relative to studying solitary consumption. We then discuss prior research on shared consumption, organizing our review around the potential benefits and potential costs involved in shared consumption as compared to solitary consumption. Finally, we delineate four main areas for future research on shared consumption that we view as particularly promising.

We present a three-dimensional what, how long, and how often framework to discuss three main inferences about other people's preferences for repeated social interactions over time in terms of: (1) what to do together, (2) how long to spend together on each occasion, and (3) how often to spend time together. For each dimension, we discuss when and how people make inferences about other people's preferences, as well as the consequences of making incorrect inferences. The three dimensions are conceptually independent; however, decisions made on one dimension can sometimes affect decisions made on others. More research is needed on the interplay between multiple dimensions, including how inferences made about preferences and decisions on one dimension affect inferences about preferences and decisions on other dimensions.