Journal of Interactive Marketing

The recent rise of consumer happiness research in marketing literature is noticeable. This article presents a systematic review of consumer happiness research from 1991 to 2020. From an initial pool of 600 articles on consumer happiness from 158 marketing journals in the ABS and ABDC lists, 71 articles were selected. The procedure was as follows: (1) search of articles, (2) quality assessment, (3) extraction of data from articles, and (4) thematic synthesis. The review concluded that the term “consumer happiness” does not have a standardized definition in the existing literature. However, happiness has been studied in a variety of contexts, and consumer research is one of these contexts. Further, the review concluded that consumer happiness research is largely segregated across three themes: marketing beyond satisfaction, marketing for health and mind, and digital felicity. Seven areas of future research on consumer happiness are also proposed. The authors present academic and managerial contributions with scholarly implications for the literature in the areas of consumer well-being, the role of marketing/interactive marketing, and the positive side of marketing. The authors also suggest that marketers not only seek consumers’ need fulfillment and satisfaction from their product or service consumption but also try to elicit hedonic associations with their products or services.

Consumers are increasingly expected to be active in managing their personal well-being. Agency, meaning individuals’ ability to reflect on their circumstances, effect change, and act independently, constitutes an important means for consumer well-being. To a growing extent, consumers are using smart technologies, such as wearable devices and applications, to better manage their well-being. However, how interactions with wearables improve and affect consumer agency for well-being is underexamined. The aim of this study is to explore how consumers use smart wearable technologies as resources for agency in managing their well-being. Drawing on psychological and sociological literature on agency as well as qualitative data from users of various wearable devices, the authors distinguish individual and contextual levels of agency, in which knowing and acting constitute two types of smart wearable technology use. From these dimensions, they conceptualize a framework with four types of technology use for well-being: (1) self-improvement, (2) justification, (3) adaptation, and (4) activism. The authors discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of this framework with the aim of improving consumer agency for well-being through smart technology.

With the progress of high technologies in payment systems, the usage rate of mobile payment is rapidly growing worldwide. However, whether mobile payment influences consumers’ choices between hedonic and utilitarian products, an important question in the field of consumer well-being research, has not been fully investigated. To address this research gap, the authors examine the influence of mobile payment and traditional payment methods (e.g., cash payment, card payment) on consumers’ preferences for hedonic products. They find that mobile payment triggers consumers’ hedonic mindset, which increases consumers’ preferences for hedonic products. The effect is moderated by mobile device type such that the effect is weaker for smart wearable (vs. mobile phone) payment because smart wearable devices are less associated with a hedonic mindset. This study offers novel insight into the effect of high technologies in payment systems, specifically mobile payment, on consumer well-being and calls for more investigation of the effects of mobile payment.

This study investigates how physical and psychological distance from one's surroundings may influence one's perception of connectedness with the servicescape and, ultimately, perception of value. It also examines the effect of consumers’ techno-psychological differences and interaction modes on this distance–closeness relationship. The researchers develop and test a conceptual framework of how personal cognitive traits and technological intervention may alter consumers’ perceived connectedness to the servicescape and influence their perceived value in different service settings. Via a quasi-experiment design in three service scenarios, this research shows a synthetical effect of contactless technology in the distancing setting that may work more effectively on high self-efficiency customers to change their perceived closeness to the servicescape and further change their evaluation of the service. The findings reveal the practical implications of social distancing for different types of consumers in service encounters during or after the COVID-19 pandemic.

The authors investigate subjective well-being in the context of e-sports (competitive video games). They adopt the theoretical lenses of virtual edgework theory, a recent adaptation of edgework theory from physical to digital contexts. Sports have long been used as a tool to improve subjective well-being. The research question is whether e-sports lead to well-being, as their physical sport counterparts do, and through what psychological mechanisms. The authors answer through a conceptual model of moderated mediation tested on hundreds of e-sports players. They also address the role of privacy concerns, as e-sports pose several potential threats to players’ privacy that could hinder players’ achievement of well-being. Findings suggest that virtual edgework provides a useful theoretical perspective for understanding consumers’ behavior in digital environments. They also show that e-sports can lead to well-being by achieving feelings of self-enhancement under the positive moderation of perceived control over the digital environment and the negative moderation of privacy concerns.

Food live streaming shopping, which features a host eating and promoting the products to viewers, has become a new form of food marketing. In three studies, the authors examine the impact of content, influencer, and channel factors of mukbang live streaming on consumers’ perceived value and subsequent impulse purchase and food consumption behavior. Study 1, an experiment with 216 participants, reveals that a non–autonomous sensory meridian response (non-ASMR) video in which the mukbanger talks to viewers while eating regular (i.e., nonjunk) food is more influential in enhancing the video's perceived value and increasing impulse purchase and consumption. Study 2, with 624 participants, introduces influencer factors into the experiment. It shows that a credible and parasocial influencer significantly affects consumers’ perceived value, regardless of the food featured, resulting in impulse purchase and consumption. Study 3, which excludes the content factors fully mediated by influencer factors, examines the impact of the live streaming influencer and the shopping platform on perceived value and food well-being. A cross-sectional survey of 630 respondents finds that channel factors (food product offerings and convenience) and influencer factors (credibility and parasocial relationship) significantly enhance consumers’ perceived value, leading to impulse purchase and overconsumption. The authors provide theoretical and practical implications to enrich future research and responsible business practices in online food marketing.

Mobile health (mHealth) apps have fundamentally changed the usage of smartphones in people's daily lives. In this context, sleep apps, the most popular mHealth apps, can track and enhance user well-being. Understanding the antecedents of the usage of sleep apps is of timely research interest. This study focuses on whether and how sleep apps influence Generation Z users’ well-being (as this generation represents a promising market segment for smart devices). More precisely, the authors enhance the technology acceptance model with the uses and gratifications theory, and they test the perceptions of a sleep app before and after use. Structural equation modeling shows that the sleep app positively influences perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, intention to use, real usage, and perceived well-being. Consumers rate higher levels of well-being and usefulness regarding the sleep app before use than after use. Perceived usefulness can enhance usage and, in turn, well-being. Privacy concerns and personality traits moderate the direct effects on well-being. Health app managers should understand the importance of the utilitarian benefits of disruptive technologies, which can be enhanced through empowerment (i.e., self-tracking, self-knowledge, and self-management) and well-being benefits. However, privacy concerns remain the primary reason for consumers’ reluctance toward mHealth apps.

This research investigates the role of subjective well-being in Gen Zers’ response to unethical situations that are encountered online versus offline. It empirically supports a model that incorporates moral reasoning effects and the aftermath of learning about the situation in either a first-person or third-person perspective. The findings suggest that Gen Zers are eager to show their values and participate in boycotts when facing an unethical situation. Subjective well-being plays an important role in activating versus inhibiting boycott behaviors as a response to unethical situations encountered both online and offline. Counterintuitively, Gen Zers are less likely to show support for a boycott when scoring high on well-being, since they are not willing to signal their commitment to gain social legitimacy. In fact, when coping with unethical situations, they are eager to display their true values and to enact the boycott rather than merely show support for it.

While much has been reported about the negative consequences of the pervasive presence of information and communications technologies in consumers’ everyday lives, the present research enriches the literature on problematic internet use by applying the cognitive-behavioral model in a consumer context, creating a bridge between marketing and psychology research, with novel insights and directions for future research. By means of a moderated mediation model tested on hundreds of consumers, the authors explore whether problematic internet use influences well-being through the mediation of prosocial consumer behavior and the moderation of online-social support. The results show that problematic internet use can indirectly affect individual well-being by affecting consumer choice. Managerial and theoretical implications are addressed.

Today, children's smartphone overuse and digital addiction are among parents’ top concerns. To address this issue, technology firms have developed services to help parents monitor their children's screen time. The literature on the impact of parental control tends to focus on the well-being of children, often overlooking the effects of parenting control on the well-being of parents themselves. This research investigates the psychological outcomes associated with delegating parental control to software. The authors conducted two surveys and three experiments among samples of parents in France and the United Kingdom. The results show that resorting to digitally assisted control improves anticipated well-being by decreasing role overload and increasing parental efficacy (Study 1). Moreover, product features play a critical role: software designs that promote children's autonomy (Study 2) or product autonomy (Study 3) tend to be less effective in improving parents’ anticipated well-being. Implications for technology companies are discussed.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, older consumers have increased their usage of social networking services (SNSs) to avoid social isolation, yet this behavior remains unexplored. Through selective optimization with compensation theory, the authors combine concepts from gerontology and marketing to investigate the following research question: How does older consumers’ usage of SNSs during the pandemic interrelate with the constructs of social well-being? The research draws on qualitative data collated during lockdown in the United Kingdom, including 14 semistructured interviews from participants age 65–80 and six months of netnographic data from an online forum geared toward older people. The findings reveal how older consumers leverage three strategies—selection, optimization, and compensation—to improve their use of SNSs and social interactions during lockdowns. Such behaviors in turn interrelate with the dimensions of social well-being: social acceptance, social integration, social contribution, social actualization, and social coherence. This research contributes to the marketing literature by (1) introducing a framework for transformative SNSs into transformative service research, (2) utilizing theory from gerontology studies to further understand the older consumer, and (3) enhancing the sparse understanding of older consumers’ use of SNSs. Future research directions and managerial implication are suggested for both marketers and developers of SNSs for aging consumers.

Artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine offers a unique opportunity to improve the global health system. However, consumers remain skeptical about AI's ability to accurately assess their medical condition. The five studies here provide insights into consumers’ reluctance to use AI-produced health care recommendations. Consumers are less willing to follow a medical recommendation from AI (vs. from a human) when the medical diagnosis provides health results that are good (i.e., symptoms do not require medical care) versus bad (i.e., symptoms are worrisome and may require urgent care) (Study 1a). The effect is mediated by consumers’ perception of diagnosis trustworthiness (Study 1b) and enhanced by consumers’ health anxiety score (Study 2). Providing social proof (e.g., number of satisfied customers recommending the service) reduces the negative effect of health anxiety on consumers’ trust in the medical diagnosis and increases their willingness to follow the AI's recommendations (Study 3a). The findings provide insights into the psychological drivers of acceptance of automated health care and suggest possible actions to overcome consumers’ reluctance to follow AI medical recommendations.