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 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.

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.

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.

This chapter discusses and delineates how consumption can act as a rank-signaling system. Specifically, we offer three propositions regarding the mechanics of rank-signaling systems as they relate to consumption. Our first proposition is that people use consumption – the purchase and display of goods and services – as a means to encode (i.e., signal) their social rank. Our second proposition is that consumers use others’ consumption as a means of decoding their social rank. Our third proposition is that people can learn, adjust, and update the signals they use – that is, recoding how they signal their social rank. We both review evidence in support of these propositions and introduce results from two recent studies that examine people’s awareness and use of these rank-signaling mechanics. Finally, we close with a discussion of directions we see as fruitful for future research at the intersection of consumption and rank signaling.

People regularly advocate on behalf of their attitudes. They post online reviews of hotels and restaurants, they recommend new apps and movies to friends, and they share their opinions on political candidates and social issues. What drives advocacy behavior? In this chapter, we review a fast-growing literature on the antecedents of advocacy – including attitude strength, compensatory motives, perceived efficacy, emotions, attitude framing, and more – and we consolidate this literature into a set of core insights. In addition, we discuss two promising directions for ongoing work. First, when people advocate, what do they say or do? Second, what other actions do people undertake to advance their views (e.g., censorship)? We review the nascent literature on these topics and chart new directions for research in this area.

The Law of Geographical Indications (GIs) is the branch of Intellectual Property Law that protects the names that are used to describe products that originate from a specific geographical area. Only 10–15 years ago, this was a narrow and obscure area, studied by a small number of scholars and practitioners.1 Today, instead, they have become a popular subject, discussed in more than a hundred publications every year.

Money spent globally on sports sponsorship is expected to rise to 90 billion USD by 2027.1 This is not surprising, as during the 2018 FIFA World Cup alone, FIFA’s sponsorship deals may have generated 1.65 billion USD.2 For the four-year cycle comprising of the PyeongChang Winter Games 2018 and the Tokyo Olympics 2020, corporations had shelled out around 300 million USD each to get the privilege of being International Olympic Committee’s (hereinafter IOC) global sponsors and using the Olympic marks and imagery for promoting their brands all over the world.3 The sponsorship contribution of the IOC’s top 14 global sponsors alone was in the vicinity of 2 billion USD for the four-year cycle and this is in addition to the money raised through TV contracts and other sponsors. In the four-year cycle from 2021–24, the IOC also aims to raise 3 billion USD through sponsorship deals.4 Evidently, sports events, such as the Olympics, are big business and sponsors often play a pivotal role in taking key decisions relating to sports events.5

Broadcasting organisations sit somewhat oddly in the context of intellectual property (IP) law. In terms of the history of legal protection of literary and artistic creativity, broadcasting is relatively new with commercial radio and television services only proliferating in the industrial world in the 1920s and 1930s respectively. At the same time, discussions on traditional radio and television broadcasting rightfully feel very outdated in the twenty-first century, as these services seem increasingly obsolete relative to discussions on copyright in the digital environment.