SPECIAL ISSUES

Measuring, recording, and visualizing a consumer's physiological, behavioral, and psychological features with the use of technologies is a growing phenomenon. Within academic literature and popular press, this phenomenon has been termed self-quantification, lifelogging, self-tracking, personal informatics, among others. This research conceptualizes consumer psycho-physiological quantification and explores the unique consumer journey with quantification practices. This research introduces a conceptual framework that accounts for distinct stages and aspects of consumer quantification at the acquisition/adoption, usage, and disposal stages of consumption. Adopting a novel theoretical perspective, the authors draw on objectification theory to examine the consequences of consumer psycho-physiological quantification and develop propositions that link it to self-objectification and consumer well-being. Finally, the authors outline evolving issues around the consumer quantification framework and identify a research agenda. Taken together, this research provides a foundation for future research into the unique facets of consumer psycho-physiological quantification and consequences for consumer well-being.

To uncover pathways for understanding and alleviating poverty, this paper offers an alternative approach for examining the real and unseen processes of destitution and in-work poverty which shape the lives of consumers. We apply a critical realist paradigm structured around three core tenets—stratified realities, complex causations and generative structures—to surface the nuanced complexities of these issues. A critical realist lens encourages impact by focusing on the deep causes of enduring social problems and provides transformative consumer research scholars with an integrative way to work toward transformative policy action.

Our research presents mindfulness as a potential intervention to mitigate financial vulnerability, defined as the ability to handle unexpected future financial setbacks. As potential interventions to mitigate consumer financial vulnerability, we provide a conceptual framework on how two types of mindfulness practices (i.e., non-judgmental awareness and openness to experience) can mitigate the subjective and objective financial vulnerability differently. We suggest ways to manipulate the two types of mindfulness and discuss the results of our initial pilot study, focusing on lower-income consumers. In addition, we propose fruitful avenues for future research and provide recommendations for managers and policymakers to better address consumer financial vulnerability and enhance consumer welfare via mindfulness practice.

Past research on transformative service experiences suggests that participating individuals may experience positive, as well as (unintended) negative well-being consequences. Most of this work has examined aspects of the service provider and the service experience as a causal factor, underemphasizing aspects of the participants in such experiences as a determinant. Implementing a longitudinal design in the context of a cross-country bike trip to benefit multiple sclerosis, the authors investigate how changes in participants' civic attitudes and skills, as well as perceived personal change and connection to the experience, may depend upon the participants' underlying values orientation. Emerging findings indicate that values associated with achievement and growth may lead to undesirable changes in civic attitudes, while values associated with external validation promote positive personal change and enhanced connection to the organization and cause. Implications for transformative service organizations and research limitations are discussed.

Adolescents experience vulnerability because their brains are not fully developed and they have limited knowledge and experience, inhibiting their ability to assess and mitigate risks. Drawing on literature from different disciplines, this paper develops a model that illustrates the dynamic nature of information and experience acquisition and ongoing risk and benefit assessment. New concepts are created to reflect better adolescent risk-related schema: fungibility, fog of vulnerability, and points of tension, all of which are useful in understanding how intentions and in-the-moment decisions are made in the context of vaping.

Societal well-being is challenged by the complexity and intangibility of the compromises inherent in digital exchanges. Increasingly these exchanges rely on technology, with competing priorities that challenge cooperation and communication among key parties involved. The authors examine the factors that drive tensions between consumers and organizations in digital exchanges, as well as how and why interest groups, lawmakers, and bureaucrats (also known as the “iron triangle”) try to mediate these exchanges through policy and regulation. By explicating the nature of these relationships, the authors illustrate various trade-offs faced by all parties and depict a novel, comprehensive framework to facilitate holistic assessment of the factors underlying these ubiquitous but complex digital relationships with vague ethical stewardship. This framework serves as a lens to help guide business and regulatory policymaking and as a platform for identifying future research opportunities.

The transformative consumer research (TCR) and transformative service research (TSR) movements seek to encourage, support, and publicize research benefiting consumer welfare. In this article, we introduce design thinking (DT) as a rigorous, effective, and creative problem-solving process well-suited to tackle the multi-dimensional problems TCR/TSR researchers address. A scoping review of TCR/TSR and DT literatures examining complex issues, such as health and well-being, inequality, and sustainability, reveals each orientation's theoretical and methodological strengths as well as its opportunities to more effectively catalyze positive change. Specifically, DT would benefit from the rigorous theoretical perspective brought by TCR/TSR researchers. In turn, transformative consumer and service researchers can find inspiration in the participatory ideation and prototyping techniques central to DT. The problem-solution-impact (PSI) research process model for transformative change draws from the strengths of the two traditions to creates a rigorous and relevant approach to addressing the world's most complex and dynamic problems.

The authors examined how the joint effect of brand experience type (ordinary vs. extraordinary) and COVID-19 threat on consumer happiness changed at different stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings from five studies, with the COVID-19 threat and lockdown status measured as well as manipulated, suggest that COVID-19 threat exerts converse moderating influences on the extraordinariness–happiness relationship under no lockdown and lockdown. Under lockdown, threat attenuates the effect of brand extraordinariness on happiness; extraordinary brand experiences bring more happiness than ordinary brand experiences when the perceived threat of COVID-19 is low, but consumers derive comparable happiness from extraordinary and ordinary experiences when perceived threat is high. Under no lockdown, threat amplifies the positive effect of extraordinariness on happiness. Consumers rarely experience a large-scale lockdown due to a pandemic, and this research advances understanding of how consumer happiness from a brand experience changes with the trajectory of a pandemic.