Would Travel Experiences or Possessions Make People Happier?

To inform consumption choices bring people greater happiness, it is necessary to identify the types of consumption with greater happiness-generating potential. Using an experimental design, this research demonstrates that tourism experiences tend to cultivate happiness better than possessions, by empirically testing a potential underlying mechanism of such superiority—tourism’s potential to cultivate eudaimonia (i.e., the more enduring form of happiness that accounts for the bigger picture beyond the self) without explicit eudaimonic motives. The mechanism can aid the identification of forms of consumption that maximize happiness. This research makes multi-faceted contributions to the tourism and consumption literature on eudaimonia and happiness promotion, including how its revealed potential in implicitly cultivating eudaimonia renders tourism a better consumption choice than material possessions for happiness maximization. Practically, the study suggests how tourism experiences can be designed and marketed to capitalize on the eudaimonic potential.

Mindful Sustainable Consumption and Sustainability Chatbots in Fast Fashion Retailing During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic and ecological crisis are paving the way for new consumption models based on customers’ conscious choices and the subsequent integration of sustainable policies into retailers’ business strategies. As a consequence, the current consumer trends suggest that more people are becoming aware of their consumption standards and their repercussion on the environment and society. Statistics demonstrate that, in their purchasing processes, these “mindful customers” now search for a sustainable, self-sufficient way of living in harmony with nature. This paper argues that artificial intelligence (AI) is able to facilitate this process in the marketplace. More specifically, mindfulness with the support of AI technologies could be a plausible way to activate sustainable consumption patterns for avoiding overconsumption. The life-changing ability of mindful consumption is reviewed in this paper across domains of sustainability. Using a comprehensive literature review, the paper first outlines the theoretical and conceptual foundations of the mindful sustainable consumption (MSC) approach that fills the literature gap that almost always separates mindful consumption from sustainability. Second, the new conceptual approach is applied through a strategic framework in the field of fast fashion retailing through the use of AI-powered chatbots. In particular, the study defines a new category of chatbots, named sustainability chatbots (SC), which could convey mindful and sustainable consumption choices. The paper highlights that the MSC approach combined with the support of SC could enable marketing managers to create the appropriate context for embedding sustainability into consumer behaviour and fast fashion retailers’ strategies from a value co-creation perspective.

Moral Entrepreneurialism for the Hamburger: Strategies for Marketing a Contested Fast Food

Recent research has extended the concept of moral entrepreneurialism to corporate actors. We build on this research to investigate how corporations succeed in this effort by uncovering the strategies and tools they employ as moral entrepreneurs. To do so, we examine the corporate discourse of three prominent fast-food firms to identify how they present hamburgers as good food, in a context where beef is increasingly criticized as morally suspect. Based on a discourse analysis of corporate communications and marketing campaigns, we identify three distinct discursive strategies for managing meat criticisms: (1) global managerialism (McDonald’s); (2) aestheticized simplicity (A&W); and (3) nostalgic, personalized appeals (Wendy’s). These strategies are realized through the use of informational tools to shape what customers think and know about beef, and affective tools to influence how customers feel about beef. Together, these corporate strategies speak to the skilful ability of corporate actors to respond to socio-environmental criticisms. Our case shows how fast-food market actors are able to incorporate critique and offer messages that seek to allow people to feel good about eating beef. This case is relevant to understanding the tools that corporations use to be effective moral entrepreneurs. It also provides a deeper understanding of marketing discourse at the nexus of social problems and consumption choices.

Biofortification of tomatoes in Italy: Status and level of knowledge

Biofortification is a strategy to reduce micronutrient deficiency in humans by fortifying food through natural processes, agronomic practices and genetic modification. In this study, we seek to shed light on what consumers understand by the term 'biofortified products' and thus to understand their level of knowledge about these products, as well as the reasons that dictate their purchasing choices and the relationship between consumption choices and lifestyles. The analysis focuses on vegetables and, in particular, on tomatoes with a high lycopene content. Research shows that consumers of biofortified food products are generally confused and uninformed, even though they show a high willingness to pay. This confusion seems to result, moreover, from the lack of a clear definition of a biofortified product, as well as from the lack of clear information on the specifics of biofortified products and the benefits they can bring. The future of biofortified products can, therefore, be improved by the creation of clear standards and reference definitions and better information and transparency that would benefit the consumer.

The consumer’s demand functions defined to study contingent consumption plans

Given two probability distributions expressing returns on two single risky assets of a portfolio, we innovatively define two consumer’s demand functions connected with two contingent consumption plans. This thing is possible whenever we coherently summarize every probability distribution being chosen by the consumer. Since prevision choices are consumption choices being made by the consumer inside of a metric space, we show that prevision choices can be studied by means of the standard economic model of consumer behavior. Such a model implies that we consider all coherent previsions of a joint distribution. They are decomposed inside of a metric space. Such a space coincides with the consumer’s consumption space. In this paper, we do not consider a joint distribution only. It follows that we innovatively define a stand-alone and double risky asset. Different summary measures of it characterizing consumption choices being made by the consumer can then be studied inside of a linear space over $${\mathbb {R}}$$ R . We show that it is possible to obtain different summary measures of probability distributions by using two different quadratic metrics. In this paper, our results are based on a particular approach to the origin of the variability of probability distributions. We realize that it is not standardized, but it always depends on the state of information and knowledge of the consumer.

Exposing lifestyles: transactive solar architecture

Architecture is capable of increasing the energy consciousness of its occupants through the development of spaces that promote active participation with solar energy systems. Current architectural practice maximizes neither the availability of solar energy nor the potential of solar technologies, failing to recognize critical social elements of renewable energy and address an increasing disconnect between individual energy use and energy source. Through an architectural response, this thesis explores the role of active solar technologies in mediating between occupants, internal and external environments, and energy consumption patterns. The development of an inteactive, energy gathering, animated façade, challenges the perceived 'value' of energy, forcing occupants to measure consumption choices against desires for daylight, views, and the ability to generate income. A transactive environment that makes occupants' lifestyles explicit on a building's façade ensure individuals achieve a heightened sense of energy awareness requiring them to engage their architecture and question overyday energy decisions.

Exposing lifestyles: transactive solar architecture

Architecture is capable of increasing the energy consciousness of its occupants through the development of spaces that promote active participation with solar energy systems. Current architectural practice maximizes neither the availability of solar energy nor the potential of solar technologies, failing to recognize critical social elements of renewable energy and address an increasing disconnect between individual energy use and energy source. Through an architectural response, this thesis explores the role of active solar technologies in mediating between occupants, internal and external environments, and energy consumption patterns. The development of an inteactive, energy gathering, animated façade, challenges the perceived 'value' of energy, forcing occupants to measure consumption choices against desires for daylight, views, and the ability to generate income. A transactive environment that makes occupants' lifestyles explicit on a building's façade ensure individuals achieve a heightened sense of energy awareness requiring them to engage their architecture and question overyday energy decisions.

Challenging the Status Quo through Social Influence: Changes in Sustainable Consumption through the Influence of Social Networks

This study examines the influence of social network members (versus strangers) on sustainable food consumption choices to investigate how social influence can challenge the status quo in unsustainable consumption practices. We hypothesized that changes to individual consumption practices could be achieved by revealing ‘invisible’ descriptive and injunctive social norms. We further hypothesized that it matters who reveals these norms, meaning that social network members expressing their norms will have a stronger influence on other’s consumption choices than if these norms are expressed by strangers. We tested these hypotheses in a field experiment (N = 134), where participants discussed previous sustainable food consumption (revealing descriptive norms) and its importance (revealing injunctive norms) with either a stranger or social network member. We measured actual sustainable food consumption through the extent to which participants chose organic over non-organic consumables during the debrief. Findings showed that revealed injunctive norms significantly influenced food consumption, more so than revealed descriptive norms. We also found that this influence was stronger for social network members compared to strangers. Implications and further research directions in relation to how social networks can be used to evoke sustainable social change are discussed.

Generational Responsibility in Consumption as a Response to Global Economic Crises

The rise of Asian and the stagnation of Western middle classes over the last thirty years have resulted in gradual convergence of income of large parts of the world’s population. Recent global crises—the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic—have led to a decline in income and increase in income uncertainty. Rise in consumption of lower quality goods of shorter durability and an overall decline in demand and economic activity resulted as challenges to the global economy. In this paper, we argue that generational responsibility in consumption can be an environmentally sustainable response to crises which enables the economies to overcome the crisis of confidence and reaffirms community ties. As an element of long-term orientation in consumption, generational responsibility is a cultural phenomenon dependent on solidarity within family and the wider community. It is characterized by consideration of consequences of consumption choices on the environment, and the abundance of savings and the usability of goods to be inherited by future generations. For companies, willing to revisit their traditional business models and incorporate principles of sustainability in their competitive strategies, promotion of generational responsibility can become a new source of competitive advantage and a driver of economic recovery.