The present chapter proposes an organizing framework for understanding the effects of political ideology on consumer behavior. We first summarize how political ideology is conceptualized and operationalized in the literature. We then describe three levels at which political ideology shapes consumption decisions. At the individual level, the political ideology of consumers has wide-ranging effects on their acquisition, consumption, and divestment decisions. At the company level, the political ideology of companies with which consumers interact influences corporate political actions (such as lobbying) and activism (such as taking a stand on sociopolitical issues and events), with tangible implications for consumer behavior and company outcomes. At the system level, the political ideology of systems, reflected in the media, cultural, policy, and social environments that consumers and scholars navigate, has far-ranging implications for consumer decision-making, well-being, and even the body of knowledge generated on the topic of political ideology.

Contemporary consumer researchers are increasingly faced with studying and understanding complex market and consumption phenomena impacting not just a sole individual or household, but whole communities, countries, and societies. These intricate phenomena cannot be understood through positivist experimental approaches conducted in a lab, but rather using qualitative research methods and a broader sociocultural lens. This chapter provides a concise and synthesizing overview of the developments in consumer culture research from the last decade. Specifically, it first unpacks the role of consumer identities, emotions, communities, technology, brands, politics, time, and space in consumer culture. Next, it discusses the qualitative methods typically utilized to conduct this type of research. Finally, it concludes with specific future directions for scholars interested in pursuing consumer culture research.

A meta-analysis is a statistical analysis that combines and contrasts two or more studies of a common phenomenon. Its emphasis is on the quantification of the heterogeneity in effects across studies, the identification of moderators of this heterogeneity, and the quantification of the association between such moderators and effects. Given this, and in line with the growing appreciation for and embracement of heterogeneity in psychological research as not a nuisance but rather a boon for advancing theory, gauging generalizability, identifying moderators and boundary conditions, and assisting in future study planning, we make the assessment of heterogeneity the focus of this chapter. Specifically, we illustrate the assessment of heterogeneity as well as the advantages offered by contemporary approaches to meta-analysis relative to the traditional approach for the assessment of heterogeneity via two case studies. Following our case studies, we review several important considerations relevant to meta-analysis and then conclude with a brief summation.

With over 1,700 articles on the topic in the past five years alone, consumer identity is established as a critical psychological driver of behavior in the marketplace. This chapter reviews all identity research in the top 20 marketing journals from 2017 to 2022 and integrates it into a single unifying framework: the Multiple-Identity Network. This integration answers several fundamental questions: What is consumer identity? What is the psychological structure of identity? How do consumers manage multiple identities within their self-concept (e.g., race, gender)? Key takeaways include the importance of brands and other marketplace actors in shaping stereotypes that define identities, psychological relationships between identities (e.g., dissimilarities), and balancing needs across multiple identities (e.g., status vs. belonging needs). Further topics include intersectionality, social hierarchy, stigma, marginalization, diversity marketing, target marketing, autonomy, self–brand connection, and online brand communities.

Online platforms such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), CloudResearch, and Prolific have become a common source of data for behavioral researchers and consumer psychologists alike. This chapter reviews contemporary issues associated with online panel research, discussing first how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the extent to which researchers use online panels and the workers participating on certain online panels. The chapter explores how factors like a TikTok video can impact who uses these online panels and why. A longitudinal study of researcher perceptions and data quality practices finds that many practices do not align with current recommendations. The authors provide several recommendations for researchers to conduct high-quality behavioral research online, including the use of appropriate prescreens before data collection, data analysis preregistration practices, and avoiding post-screens after data collection that are not preregistered. Finally, the authors recommend researchers thoroughly report details on recruitment, restrictions, completion rates, and any differences in dropout rates across conditions.

This chapter reviews the myriad ways in which consumers use compensatory consumption strategies to address self-discrepancies. First, we review the existing literature on compensatory consumption. Specifically, we discuss the role of self-discrepancies in triggering compensatory consumption, review the compensatory consumption strategies consumers can use to cope with such self-discrepancies, and discuss their effectiveness. Next, we address consumer tensions and mispredictions regarding whether and when to pursue compensatory consumption. We conclude with a discussion of future opportunities for research on this topic.

Consumption is inherently a social activity. Interpersonal influences derive from exposure to others’ communications and actions and can affect the motivations, thoughts, emotions, or behaviors of a given focal consumer. Such influences arise from direct interaction between two or more individuals or from indirect exposure to other individual(s), such as via social media, social norms, or thinking about others. This chapter highlights and integrates the large body of interpersonal influence research from approximately the last five years (published between 2014 and 2021) using an organizing framework built around the customer journey. We also offer thoughts on where we see opportunities for moving interpersonal influences research in new directions.

This chapter assesses how consumer research defines a “field experiment,” takes a look at trends in field experimentation in consumer research journals, explores the advantages and shortcomings of field experimentation, and assesses the status and value of open science practices for field experiments. These assessments render four insights. First, the field of consumer research does not have a consensus on the definition of field experiments, though an established taxonomy helps us determine the extent to which any given field experiment differs from traditional lab settings. Second, about 7 ercent of the published papers in one of the top consumer psychology journals include some form of field experiment – a small but growing proportion. Third, although field experimentation can be useful for providing evidence of external validity and estimating real-world effect sizes, no single lab or field study offers complete generalizable insight. Instead, each well-designed, high-powered study adds to the collection of findings that converge to advance our understanding. Finally, open science practices are useful for bridging scientific findings in field experiments with real-life applications.

Access represents an alternative mode of consumption to ownership that may be market mediated in which no transfer of ownership takes place. We review the last ten years of marketing research on this topic and discuss access as coexisting with ownership on a continuum. Access provides distinct benefits anchored in its temporariness and freedom from the financial, social, and emotional burdens of ownership. Our review highlights individual- as well as firm-level antecedents of access. We identify four key paradoxical consequences of access-based consumption: more consumption/less attachment; “mine”/not “mine”; prosocial/pro-status signaling; and empowerment/exploitation. We conclude with future research agenda.

Consumers are placing increasing importance on morality in the perceived costs and benefits of a marketplace transaction. This chapter considers the moral decisions consumers make, focusing on three key areas of marketplace morality: (1) how company morality or immorality influences consumer perceptions and decisions, (2) how consumers’ morality is expressed in their prosocial and sustainable decisions, and (3) how consumers’ immorality influences companies and other consumers. Finally, we identify areas for future research that we hope will lead to advancement of the literature on marketplace morality.

Research in consumer research has rightfully been criticized for p-hacking, hypothesizing after the results are known, and other practices that lead to overestimation of the reliability and replicability of published results. Remediation has centered on more closely approximating the ideal hypothetico-deductive (i.e., confirmatory) method. There has been a push toward forming, and registering, selective hypotheses before running experiments, testing only those hypotheses, and testing each hypothesis with a single, preplanned analysis. We argue that doing better confirmatory experiments is not the (whole) solution and that HARKing and running multiple analyses are not the problem per se. The problem is that we misrepresent exploratory research as confirmatory. Forcing exploratory research into a hypothetico-deductive straitjacket leads to bad hypothesis testing. The straitjacket also leads to bad exploration, crowding out essential, good exploration that deserves space in our journals. We propose a recipe for more honest consumer research, in which authors report exploratory studies meant to generate hypotheses followed by truly confirmatory studies that test those hypotheses.

Although religion is an important part of daily life for many consumers, only limited research has examined how it functions in consumer settings. This chapter proposes an organizing framework for understanding the intersection between religion and consumer behavior. We first define key constructs related to religion, before discussing common methodological paradigms for studying religion in consumer spaces. We then review prior research on religion and consumer behavior along two dimensions: (1) how consumption shapes the experience of religion, and (2) how religion shapes the consumption process. We close with a discussion of open questions related to religion and consumption, and directions for future research.

Research in consumer psychology is essential for developing a deep understanding of how consumers make financial decisions as well as for creating solutions to improve this process. Fortunately, there has been substantial growth in research in this area among consumer behavior and behavioral economics scholars in recent years, including in areas such as budgeting, spending, saving, investing, and borrowing and repaying credit card debt. The aim of the current chapter is to provide an overview of some of the most exciting developments in this area over the last decade that advance our understanding of the psychology underlying financial decisions. Key concepts we examine as influencing financial decisions include categorization, goals and motivation, choice architecture and nudges, social context, wealth perceptions, financial literacy, financial well-being and financial scarcity. In addition, we provide a call to action and roadmap for future research in the area.

This chapter situates the distinctive nature of dignity within the marketplace and offers tractable ways for scholars to integrate it in consumer research. We first shed light on the theoretical and practical power of dignity as grounded in psychology, examining it on different levels: intrapersonal, interpersonal, and cultural. We then begin to conceptualize the construct of consumer dignity and propose three specific levers by which it may be affirmed or denied: recognition, agency, and equality. Finally, we present emerging evidence to illustrate the operation of these levers and discuss how consumer dignity might be applied to build inclusive firms, organizations, and societies.