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.

This chapter covers the value-adding segments of television GVC’s programme-making phase. It is a phase dominated by artistic intent and creation, right from the birth of the concept to post-production, where colour grading, sound mixing, and editing are taking place. The segments are: facilities (support and services to TV content producers), content production (content creation), and distribution. This chapter traces the route content follows from creation to final production master. It provides an in-depth analysis of each segment of the programme-making phase and includes aggregation. It examines firm behaviour and explains why the search for scale plays such a determining role in the strategies of firms. It highlights three key trends that characterise the chain’s programme-making production network: internationalisation, consolidation, and vertical integration, emphasising that they occur in the wider context of industry segmentation. The chapter looks back at the formation of ten global TV studios (or TV production majors) and defines the role and nature of content aggregation in the TV GVC.

This chapter proposes a triadic framework that offers a fresh lens on recent advances in luxury consumption at three distinct levels. First, we review broad systemic forces shaping the contours of the “luxury space” which governs the extent to which certain types of items and practices become more (or less) tightly associated with status over time. Second, we discuss strategies and tactics that firms use to enter the luxury space and make their offerings more appealing within that space. Third, we turn to individual-level dynamics that guide how consumers engage in, internalize, and respond to luxury consumption. We then suggest that integrating these three levels of forces – systemic, firm-level, and individual-level – can inform future research on luxury consumption. While the bulk of research to date has examined how these forces influence individual consumers and their luxury consumption, we propose that focusing on how forces at different levels interact to shape one another may offer promising opportunities for future work in the area.

Netnography is a specific set of related data collection, analysis, ethical and representational research practices related to ethnography. Unlike ethnography, in netnography a significant amount of the data is collected in a naturalistic manner from researcher engagement with a digital experience, such as interacting with a virtual world or with others via social media communication. This chapter explains netnography and illustrates how it might be useful as a stand-alone method, or part of a multi-method approach, to help psychological consumer researchers investigate a range of important real-world phenomena.

Research on goals and motivation started almost a century ago and continues to thrive today. In this chapter, we distill the rich literature on consumer goals and motivation by presenting recent works against the backdrop of foundational theories. We start with a discussion of how consumers initiate goal pursuit. Next, we examine the factors that help consumers stay motivated in the face of internal and external obstacles, and what happens once consumers attain their goals. We then explore research on how consumers’ goal pursuit interacts with the surrounding social world. Finally, we suggest some broad areas for future inquiries on consumer goals and motivation.

The formation of a TV GVC was decades in the making. At the core of the historical process lies the industry’s global shift, which began into the last two decades of the twentieth century (the end of the broadcasting age) and accelerated in the new millennium (towards the streaming era). Documenting the latter part of this shift is the purpose of this chapter, which surveys the streaming landscape and focuses on the distinctive feature of the TV industry in the digital era: the rise of platforms. It contextualises the advent of streaming by raising the following question: is it an evolution or revolution in the history of screen entertainment? This chapter highlights the importance of scale, before introducing the concept of the platform to explain how it is achieved. It distinguishes three types of streaming platforms (internal, multisided, and transactional), which connect to three business models (SVoD, AVoD, and video-sharing).

Narrative transportation is the experience of becoming immersed in a story. Since Green and Brock (2000) introduced the idea that becoming transported into a story could lead to persuasion toward the story’s contents, a process known as narrative persuasion, numerous studies have explored the powerful effects stories can have on consumers. This chapter provides an overview of recent research related to stories, transportation, and persuasion, as well as a discussion of the pressing questions that remain.

This chapter examines the array of technologies that is transforming the global TV system. The first part is devoted to communications satellites, which fulfil multiple distribution functions for all kinds of rights holders, and the second turns to internet distribution. It covers the origins of video streaming before explaining how it works and why it is dethroning broadcasting and downloading as the most popular way of accessing content. The chapter examines the role of video coding formats, content delivery networks (CDNs), and cloud computing in video distribution. It concludes by highlighting the role of standards and standard-setting organisations, arguing that their international evolution mirrors that of the TV industry and emphasising the crucial role they play in digital value chains over which no one in particular has an oversight.

Television has become a digital value chain that with the advent of streaming has entered the digital economy. Scale is a necessity in this economy in which oligopolistic markets prevail. The technology and infrastructure are designed and deployed at scale, and a similar logic drives M&A activities among lead firms and suppliers alike (Chapters 3–9). Platforms too work best at scale, not least because of network effects that can be exploited to full tilt in a digital environment (Chapters 4 and 10).

In this introduction to the Cambridge Handbook of Consumer Psychology, the editors provide an overview of the chapters included in the Handbook as well as their rationale for editing a follow-up volume to the first edition, in light of post-COVID shifts in behavior, variance in methodological practices, and increasing complexity of consumer behavior.