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Social marketing research trends in consumer psychology

July 2015
Recherche et Applications en Marketing (English Edition) 30(3)

July 2015
30(3)

DOI:10.1177/2051570715598732

Authors:

University of California, Irvine

This article discusses structural changes that have encouraged research in social marketing, including the Transformative Consumer Research movement. It also discusses substantive topics that are studied in social marketing including consumption and well-being, combatting threats to self, improving financial decision-making, and regulating the advertising of tobacco and other adult products. Recent methodological innovations in social marketing are identified, including the use of field studies that measure actual consumer behavior and that complement more controlled lab studies. Finally suggestions for junior social marketing scholars are provided, such as targeting journals that appreciate their specific research approach.

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RAM

The field of social marketing is growing dramatically

in size, scope, stature and impact due to a variety of

factors that I will discuss. In particular I will discuss

the structural changes that have facilitated research

in social marketing, important substantive topics and

theoretical advances, methodological innovations,

and suggestions for junior researchers to succeed.

For the past three years I have been Editor of the

Journal of Consumer Psychology or JCP (www.jour-

nals.elsevier.com/journal-of-consumer-psychology),

and I am intimately involved and up-to-date in this

area, and so I will focus on social marketing trends in

consumer psychology and JCP. However, outstand-

ing social marketing research is also being published

in journals such as the Journal of Public Policy and

Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal

of Marketing Research and Journal of Marketing;

and so I would urge readers to look at these journals,

e.g. the Journal of Consumer Research special issue

in October 2008.

Structural changes

Perhaps the most significant structural change that

has stimulated research in social marketing has been

the Transformative Consumer Research or TCR

movement, spearheaded by the Association for

Consumer Research (www.acrwebsite.org). The

TCR movement supports research that seeks to

improve well-being, employ rigorous theory and

methods, encourage paradigm diversity, highlight

social-cultural and situational contexts, partner with

consumers and caregivers, and disseminate findings

to stakeholders. Since 2006 TCR has provided annual

Social marketing research trends in

consumer psychology

Cornelia (Connie) Pechmann

The Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, USA

Abstract

This article discusses structural changes that have encouraged research in social marketing, including the

Transformative Consumer Research movement. It also discusses substantive topics that are studied in

social marketing including consumption and well-being, combatting threats to self, improving financial

decision-making, and regulating the advertising of tobacco and other adult products. Recent methodological

innovations in social marketing are identified, including the use of field studies that measure actual consumer

behavior and that complement more controlled lab studies. Finally suggestions for junior social marketing

scholars are provided, such as targeting journals that appreciate their specific research approach.

Keywords

Social marketing, consumerism, positive psychology, sustainable consumption

Corresponding author:

Cornelia (Connie) Pechmann, The Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine, CA 92617, USA.

Email: cpechman@uci.edu

0010.1177/2051570715598732Recherche et Applications en Marketing (English Edition)Pechmann

research-article2015

Expert Opinion

2 Recherche et Applications en Marketing (English Edition)

seed grants to support research, and biannually since

2007 TCR has held a conference that is typically dia-

logical in nature in which small workgroups collabo-

rate to come up with new research frameworks and

proposals. The 2013 TCR conference was in Lille,

France.

Another significant structural change has been

the proliferation of newer journals that publish

social marketing research. Recherche et Applications

en Marketing was founded quite recently in 1986,

and it has published this relevant special issue in

2015. Journal of Service Research (jsr.sagepub.

com), founded in 1998, will publish a special issue

on Transformative Services Research in August

2015. An article by Martin and Hill will discuss the

importance of providing financial services to

impoverished consumers to improve savings and

increase well-being. An article by Mende and Van

Doorn will discuss how financial counseling should

increase consumers’ involvement and foster copro-

duction in planning and implementation.

Many suitable journals for social marketing

research are outside the marketing field, such as the

Journal of Medical Internet Research or JMIR

(www.jmir.org). Founded in 1999, it publishes work

on social marketing and social media and it has a

high impact factor of about 5. A 2015 article by

Yonker et al. reviews research on using social media

to promote health among adolescents; and Rocheleau

et al. (2015) discusses Twitter accounts for smoking

cessation.

Substantive topics and

theoretical advances

Prevalent social marketing topics include financial

decision-making, corporate social responsibility,

charities, sustainability, literacy, experiential and

compensatory consumption, eating, drug use, exer-

cise, self-control, well-being, social norms and

social media. On well-being, for example, Guevarra

and Howell (2015) recently extended work showing

that life experiences enhance well-being more than

material possessions (Dunn et al. 2011). They find

that experiential products likewise enhance well-

being, similar to life experiences; but the underlying

process is different. Experiential products enhance

feelings of competence while life experiences

enhance feelings of social relatedness. This research

advances theory on experiences and well-being

while teaching us how to improve well-being.

As the above example may suggest, social mar-

keting researchers should strive to make novel and

significant theoretical contributions, in addition to

exploring new topics or showing that an existing

theory applies to a new topic. A mandate to make a

novel theoretical contribution may seem overly

challenging or limiting, but it is designed to enhance

the substantive contribution by broadening the

applicability of the findings beyond the specific

topic investigated. Although the substantive impor-

tance of a topic clearly matters, theoretical advances

also matter. There are at least two established

approaches that social marketing researchers can

use to make novel theoretical contributions as will

be discussed below.

Some researchers integrate different theories in

novel ways to provide useful insights. For instance

Han et al. (forthcoming) found evidence that threats

to the self that lower well-being involve two funda-

mentally different processes. Some threats (e.g.

poor academic performance) tend to elicit an

approach motivation and lead to problem-focused

coping, while other threats (e.g. social rejection)

tend to elicit an avoidance motivation and lead to

less productive emotion-focused coping. These dif-

ferential responses seem to be based on consumers’

lay beliefs, e.g. that they should work hard academi-

cally but give up if socially shunned. This work

integrates theories of approach and avoidance moti-

vation, problem and emotion focused coping, and

lay beliefs, and suggests combatting lay beliefs that

encourage avoidance.

Other researchers extend theories in novel and

important ways, often by elucidating underlying pro-

cesses and/or identifying moderators. For example

Hershfield and Roese (2015) studied the efficacy of

the 2009 US Credit Card Act, which mandates that

credit card statements list the monthly amount

needed to pay off the balance in three years. They

found that the three-year payoff amount often per-

versely reduced payments due to anchoring. They

also elucidated the underlying process: the anchor

signaled a normatively appropriate payment amount.

Moreover, they identified a moderator that nullified

the problematic effect: stating that the entire balance

Pechmann 3

could be paid off, because this suggested a norma-

tively appropriate range of payment amounts. In sum

this work extends theory on anchoring by showing

the mediating effects of norms, and it suggests that

the Credit Card Act could be counterproductive.

Other recent social marketing work questions

advertising policies regarding tobacco and alcohol

(Pezzuti et al., forthcoming). This work examines

the long-standing policy that mandates that adver-

tising models for adult-only products cannot look

like adolescents and must look 25 years or older to

protect adolescents. The findings suggest that ado-

lescent models are actually ineffective at promoting

adult-only products to other adolescents, while

25-year-old models are highly effective. This is

because an adult-only product serves as a contex-

tual cue that causes adolescents to react to their

inherent dissatisfaction with being too young to buy

adult-only products, causing them to diverge from

similar adolescent models and conform to dissimi-

lar 25 year old models. This work makes theoretical

contributions by studying self-concept discrepan-

cies related to adolescents’ age, and showing that

products can cue such discrepancies caused diver-

gence rather than conformity to similar others.

A recent review paper on food consumption quan-

tity and obesity (Wansink and Chandon, 2014) pre-

sents a novel theoretical framework that posits that

poor consumption monitoring and several normative,

emotional and sensory factors cause consumers to eat

too much. Poor consumption monitoring occurs for

several reasons, e.g. consumers overeat slightly with-

out being aware of it, visual and perceptual biases

cause consumers to underestimate package sizes

especially larger sizes, post-consumption food cues

are lacking, and distractions abound. Normative fac-

tors that cause overeating include social conformity,

health halos that cause overeating of food viewed as

healthy and large serving sizes that convey norma-

tively appropriate amounts. Emotional factors that

cause overeating include negative affect, stress and

cognitive depletion. Sensory factors that cause over-

eating include food palatability, hunger cues, indi-

vidual differences in cue response and self-regulation,

and ambient sound, scent, lighting and temperature.

In sum, numerous important substantive topics are

being studied in social marketing and theory is being

advanced.

Methodological innovations

Social marketing and marketing in general has expe-

rienced substantial methodological innovations.

Field studies that measure actual consumer behav-

ior, often in response to experimental manipulations,

are increasingly common and often appear alongside

complementary lab studies to show both internal and

external validity. In research on food, field studies of

eating have become the norm. Studies using online

panels or Mechanical Turk have virtually replaced

student subject pools, but typically are comple-

mented by field studies. Post-positive social market-

ing research that uses rich qualitative data, e.g. for

theory building, is now accepted in virtually all mar-

keting journals. For instance one theory-building

post-positive paper interviewed consumers about

the meanings of donated and damaged possessions

after a major natural disaster and built a framework

that identified three distinct meanings: possessions

as agents of the community, individual or opposition

(Baker and Hill, 2013).

Quantitative research still dominates in social mar-

keting but more sophisticated statistical approaches

have emerged, fundamentally changing data analysis.

These include spotlight and floodlight analysis for

interval predictor variables, and bootstrapping for

mediation testing regardless of variable type.

Disclosure requirements for reporting research are

also rising. JCP now requires a methodological details

appendix that includes instructions, stimuli, measures,

sample sizes, sample descriptions and full results.

Suggestions for junior

scholars

Junior scholars in social marketing should consider

joining the TCR movement, participating in the

biannual TCR conferences and submitting grant

proposals. They should also consider targeting at

least some of their research to journals other than

the very top ones in marketing. Many scholars

waste considerable time and effort trying to publish

in top marketing journals which have very high

demands regarding novel theoretical contributions;

and then they give up and never publish the research

anywhere. Scholars should look for journals that

will appreciate their specific research approach and

4 Recherche et Applications en Marketing (English Edition)

expeditiously publish there. Many excellent jour-

nals exist with a high impact factors, visibility and

rigor that may not be in marketing; and yet they

are suitable for social marketing work.

If targeting a top marketing journal, social mar-

keting scholars should try to ensure that their

research is designed from the onset to make novel

theoretical contributions. It is virtually impossible to

retrofit work once data has been collected; instead

the data should directly test the focal theory. Scholars

can make novel theoretical contributions by inte-

grating different theories; or by extending theories,

e.g. by elucidating underlying processes and/or

identifying moderators. It is often best if researchers

choose an important topic and then engage in pro-

grammatic research to build expertise.

Social marketing scholars should also strive to

use the most sophisticated and up-to-date methodo-

logical and statistical approaches because this is

increasingly required. Finally social marketing

scholars are advised to follow their hearts as well as

their minds in choosing research topics and con-

ducting research. Their hearts will tell them when

research is meaningful and will rarely be wrong.

The challenge will be to convey the meaningfulness

of the research to others but this just takes time,

patience and a suitable journal outlet.

References

Baker SM and Hill RP (2013) A community psychology

of object meanings: Identity negotiation during disas-

ter recovery. Journal of Consumer Psychology 23(3):

275–287.

Dunn EW, Gilbert DT and Wilson TD (2011) If money

doesn’t make you happy, then you probably aren’t

spending it right. Journal of Consumer Psychology,

21(2): 115–125.

Guevarra DA and Howell RT (2015) To have in order

to do: Exploring the effects of consuming experien-

tial products on well-being. Journal of Consumer

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Han DH, Duhachek A and Rucker DD (forthcoming)

Distinct threats, common remedies: How consumers

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Hershfield HE and Roese NJ (2015) Dual payoff scenario

warnings on credit card statements elicit suboptimal

payoff decisions. Journal of Consumer Psychology

25(1): 15–27.

Martin KD and Hill RP (forthcoming) Saving and well-

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of transformative services as a pathway to improved

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study on financial counseling. Journal of Service

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care. Journal of Medical Internet Research 17(1): e4.

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Article

Jul 2013

What do material goods intended for personal consumption mean to community? We use the extreme example of natural disaster recovery in a community to explore this question. Our work describes how members make sense of material objects that transition from private to public possessions (damaged goods) and public to private possessions (donated goods). By blending consumer and community psychology perspectives with our narratives, we employ a three-dimensional framework for analyzing object meanings: (I) material objects as agents of communitas (a shared sense of "we"), (2) material objects as agents of individualism (a focus on "me"), and (3) material objects as agents of opposition (the "we" that speaks for "me" and "us" versus "them"). This theoretical frame allows us to show how different conceptions of identity lead to conflicting meanings of objects within community, and to explain how and why object meanings shift as objects move across time and space from private to public and from scarcity to abundance. We also provide implications for coping with disasters that consider collective and individual identities as well as oppositional stances in between.

Distinct Threats, Common Remedies: How Consumers Cope with Psychological Threat

Article

Feb 2015

Research has consistently demonstrated that psychological threats to the self have a wide variety of consequences for consumer behavior. The present research introduces a novel perspective to this topic by proposing that psychologically distinct domains of threat may have a common underpinning in the coping strategies they evoke. Specifically, this paper presents the argument that distinct domains of threat can be linked to either approach motivations that foster more problem-focused coping or avoidance motivations that foster more emotion-focused coping. Multiple experiments offer systematic support for these propositions. Implications for both the psychological self-threat literature and the coping literature are discussed.

The Effects of Advertising Models for Age-restricted Products and Self-concept Discrepancy on Advertising Outcomes among Young Adolescents

Article

Jan 2015

Research on discrepancies between the actual self and ideal self has examined self-discrepancies in knowledge, skills and stature but age-based self-discrepancies have only recently received attention and so we studied this phenomenon in young adolescents. In three studies we identified a product-category contextual cue that apparently caused adolescents to respond to an existing age-based self-discrepancy. Specifically we found that when the contextual cue was advertising for an age-restricted product, adolescents conformed to dissimilar young adult advertising models and diverged from similar adolescent models. This indicated that the contextual cue caused them to respond to an age-based self-discrepancy and use a product associated with the ideal self rather than the actual self. Importantly, this response was stronger among adolescents that were more dissatisfied with their age. With advertising for an age-unrestricted product, adolescents conformed to adolescent advertising models and diverged from young adult models. Industry policies for age-restricted products assume that similarity drives influence and therefore mandate that advertising models be young adults rather than adolescents. Our findings suggest this assumption is invalid for age-restricted products.

To have in order to do: Exploring the effects of consuming experiential products on well-being

Article

Jan 2015
J CONSUM PSYCHOL

The experience recommendation—if you want to be happier, buy life experiences instead of material items—is supported in empirical research. However, this evidence is primarily based on the dichotomous comparison of material items and life experiences. The goal of this article is to examine the effects of consuming experiential products––purchases that fall between material items and life experiences––on well-being. Study 1 and Study 2 demonstrate that experiential products provide similar levels of well-being compared to life experiences and more well-being than material items. Study 3 replicates this finding for purchases that turn out well. In addition, Study 3 shows experiential products, when compared to life experiences, lead to more feelings of competence but less feelings of relatedness, which explains why these two purchases result in similar levels of well-being. We discuss why experiential products and life experiences lead to psychological need satisfaction and how our results support the Positive-Activity Model, Self-Determination Theory, and Holbrook and Hirschman’s hedonic consumption framework.

Dual payoff scenario warnings on credit card statements elicit suboptimal payoff decisions

Article

Jul 2014
J CONSUM PSYCHOL

U.S. Federal regulation from 2009 requires credit card companies to convey information regarding payoff scenarios, i.e., details such as total amount paid and time to pay off when only a minimum payment is made (over time). Across seven studies, the present research shows that consumers who were given a dual payoff scenario (i.e., how much is paid in total based on the minimum payment and also based on a 3-year payoff window) on credit card statements recommended lower payments than those given a single payoff scenario (when the 3-year payment amount was less than what they would have paid otherwise), and were less likely to pay off the balance in full. The effect is driven by a tendency of consumers to infer that the 3-year payment amount is the most appropriate. The dual-scenario effect is minimized by an intervention that draws attention away from the 3-year payment amount. Theoretical and public policy implications are considered.

If Money Doesn't Make You Happy, Then You Probably Aren't Spending It Right

Article

Apr 2011

The relationship between money and happiness is surprisingly weak, which may stem in part from the way people spend it. Drawing on empirical research, we propose eight principles designed to help consumers get more happiness for their money. Specifically, we suggest that consumers should (1) buy more experiences and fewer material goods; (2) use their money to benefit others rather than themselves; (3) buy many small pleasures rather than fewer large ones; (4) eschew extended warranties and other forms of overpriced insurance; (5) delay consumption; (6) consider how peripheral features of their purchases may affect their day-to-day lives; (7) beware of comparison shopping; and (8) pay close attention to the happiness of others.

Social marketing research trends in consumer psychology

Abstract

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