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Internet advertising, while enabling unprecedented commercial reach, has become a pervasive vehicle for deceptive practices that inflict measurable harm on consumers. This study empirically investigates the structural relationships between internet advertising falsity and consumer harm by integrating analyses of the mediating role of consumer cognitive processes and the moderating role of consumer vulnerability within a unified structural framework. Survey data were collected from 600 adult consumers with online purchase experience in the Republic of Korea—an advanced digital economy characterized by exceptionally high mobile-commerce penetration, mature e-commerce infrastructure, and evolving digital consumer protection regulation—and analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) with AMOS 24.0, supplemented by Hayes’ PROCESS macro Model 59 for conditional process analysis. All 13 hypotheses were supported, although path magnitudes varied substantially across falsity dimensions and mediator pathways—with direct effects ranging from β = 0.156 (false scarcity) to β = 0.224 (performance exaggeration), and indirect effects dominated by the risk assessment distortion pathway. Among the four sub-dimensions of advertising falsity—factual misrepresentation, performance exaggeration, price deception, and false scarcity—performance exaggeration exerted the strongest direct effect on consumer harm. The three cognitive mediators—perceived advertising credibility, risk assessment distortion, and purchase decision pressure—all demonstrated significant partial mediation, with risk assessment distortion emerging as the most powerful indirect pathway. All four consumer vulnerability dimensions—digital literacy level, demographic vulnerability, prior victimization experience, and impulsive buying tendency—significantly moderated the falsity–harm relationship, with low-digital-literacy consumers experiencing approximately 1.7 times the adverse effect of high-literacy counterparts. Moderated mediation analysis revealed that the conditional indirect effect for the high-vulnerability group was approximately 2.3 times that of the low-vulnerability group, confirming that the cognitive harm mechanism intensifies systematically for vulnerable consumers. These findings advance consumer vulnerability theory in the digital context and offer evidence-based implications for consumer protection policy, platform governance, and digital literacy education.

The advent of the metaverse has unveiled new promises for the retailing industry, yet little empirical research has explored the factors influencing consumer adoption intention in this context. This study aims to fill this gap by employing an integrated model of UTAUT 2 - “The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2”, and Dual-factor Theory to investigate both barriers and enablers in metaverse commerce adoption. Using a sample size of 567 respondents, the data analysis method employed in this study is Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with Partial Least Squares (PLS). The results reveal the driving factors affecting consumer adoption intention in metaverse commerce. The study identifies perceived technological, regulatory, and cyber risks as significant barriers to consumer adoption intention in metaverse commerce. Conversely, the findings highlight the importance of performance and effort expectancy, perceived herd behaviour, hedonic motivation, and consumer innovativeness as key enablers driving consumer adoption intention in metaverse commerce. Interestingly, subjective norms were found to have an insignificant effect in this context. This research contributes to understanding consumer behaviour in the emerging field of metaverse commerce and provides valuable insights for practitioners and policymakers. The identified barriers and enablers can guide strategic decision-making, allowing businesses to address consumer concerns and capitalize on the factors that drive adoption intention in this novel environment. Future research avenues could explore additional factors and delve deeper into the dynamics of consumer behaviour within the metaverse.

Automation is transforming many consumption domains, including everyday activities such as cooking or driving, as well as recreational activities like fishing or cycling. Yet little research in marketing examines consumer preferences for automated products. Automation often provides obvious consumption benefits, but six studies spanning a variety of product categories show that automation may not be desirable when identity motives are important drivers of consumption. Using both correlational and experimental designs, these studies demonstrate that people who strongly identify with a particular social category resist automated features that hinder the attribution of identity-relevant consumption outcomes to themselves. The findings have substantial theoretical implications for research on identity and technology, as well as managerial implications for targeting, product innovation, and communication.

Across a variety of domains, consumers often choose to act as the designer of their own solution, sourcing the necessary components and assembling the parts to meet their specific goals. While thinking creatively is an integral part in the daily life of every consumer, surprisingly little research in marketing has examined the factors influencing such processes. In our research, we examine how input and time constraints influence the way in which consumers process information during a creative task and how those processes, in turn, influence the creativity of the solution. Paradoxically, we find that input constraints encourage more creative processing, provided the individual is not under significant time constraints.

Many have argued that digital technologies such as smartphones and social media are addictive. We develop an economic model of digital addiction and estimate it using a randomized experiment. Temporary incentives to reduce social media use have persistent effects, suggesting social media are habit forming. Allowing people to set limits on their future screen time substantially reduces use, suggesting self-control problems. Additional evidence suggests people are inattentive to habit formation and partially unaware of self-control problems. Looking at these facts through the lens of our model suggests that self-control problems cause 31 percent of social media use.

When a firm introduces a product with new features, some consumers may find it difficult to assess their valuations for these new attributes. Their purchase decisions made under such uncertainty may lead to postpurchase regret. It has been experimentally shown that consumers may anticipate their potential postpurchase regret and make their current choices to mitigate or minimize it. That is, a consumer’s anticipated regret can significantly impact his purchase decision. Given the trend that firms in various markets invoke regret to stimulate sales, this paper analytically explores whether and how anticipated regret affects competing firms’ profits and product innovation. Our analyses reveal that the presence of anticipated regret can increase or decrease firms’ profits, and foster or hinder product innovation depending on whether it makes the consumer segments more or less polarized; in other words, anticipated regret has a nonmonotonic effect on firms’ profits and the entrant’s optimal quality. Therefore, anticipated regret may sometimes create a win-win or a lose-lose situation for both firms. Regardless of whether the impact of anticipated regret on firms’ profits is positive or negative, the magnitude of that impact tends to be higher for the low-quality firm. This paper was accepted by J. Miguel Villas-Boas, marketing .

Six studies examine the influence of positive affect on self-control in intertemporal choice (consumers' willingness to wait for desired rewards) and the cognitive processes underlying this effect. Two studies measure participants' levels of thinking in two different ways, showing that positive affect can promote forward-looking, high-level thinking. Two studies using a delay-of-gratification paradigm demonstrate this forward-looking thinking and show it to be a mindful process. Participants in positive (vs. neutral) affect were more likely to choose a larger mail-in rebate over a smaller instant rebate when the reward differences were moderate (but not when they were small). Two studies demonstrate the impact of positive affect on intertemporal preference in another way, showing that participants in positive affect do not discount the value of delayed outcomes as much as people in neutral affect do (decreased present bias). Together, the results indicate that positive affect promotes cognitive flexibility and fosters a higher level of thinking and a more future-oriented time perspective, without obscuring practical considerations and other needed detail, including context and opportunity costs, when evaluating intertemporal options.

We present a model of stereotypes based on Kahneman and Tversky’s representativeness heuristic. A decision maker assesses a target group by overweighting its representative types, defined as the types that occur more frequently in that group than in a baseline reference group. Stereotypes formed this way contain a “kernel of truth”: they are rooted in true differences between groups. Because stereotypes focus on differences, they cause belief distortions, particularly when groups are similar. Stereotypes are also context dependent: beliefs about a group depend on the characteristics of the reference group. In line with our predictions, beliefs in the lab about abstract groups and beliefs in the field about political groups are context dependent and distorted in the direction of representative types.

One of the greatest challenges in education marketing is designing effective marketing messages, especially when targeting consumers with different cultural backgrounds. This research examines the impact of power distance belief (PDB) on the persuasiveness of affective appeal versus cognitive appeal in education marketing messages. The authors theorize that low-PDB consumers tend to prefer education products presented with affective appeal because of their process learning mindset, which focuses on self-discovery and self-development. By contrast, high-PDB consumers tend to prefer education products presented with cognitive appeal because of their outcome learning mindset, which focuses on acquiring skills and social/economic gains relevant to such skills. These effects were supported by converging results from four experiments, a field study, and a content analysis across 37 countries using a wide range of education products and services. This research contributes to the literature on PDB, education, and cross-cultural consumer behavior and provides guidelines for global education marketers.

PurposeIn the vast domain of e-commerce, the evaluation of products through user-generated content (UGC) has become a crucial factor in how consumers make decisions. This research investigates the application of dual process theory in online product evaluation, focusing on how the cognitive processes System 1 and System 2 shape consumer judgments and interact during the evaluation process.Design/methodology/approachGrounded in dual process theory, this research presents three distinct evaluation models that illustrate how consumers process UGC through both automatic (System 1) and deliberate (System 2) cognitive systems. The models incorporate various elements of UGC, including ratings, textual reviews and helpfulness votes, and are supported by empirical evidence showing how these elements impact evaluation outcomes.FindingsThis research highlights the role of cognitive systems in shaping the formation of evaluations. System 1 facilitates quick, intuitive judgments based on simple clues like average rating, rating distribution and helpfulness votes, while System 2 engages in more deliberate, analytical processing of textual information. These dual processes determine how consumers prioritize various aspects of UGC, ultimately influencing their final product evaluations. The findings emphasize the crucial role cognitive processes play in determining the impact of UGC on consumer decision-making.Originality/valueBy applying the dual process theory to online product evaluation, this study uncovers new insights into the cognitive mechanisms driving consumer behavior in digital commerce. The findings offer valuable implications for e-commerce platforms and marketers, highlighting how they can effectively leverage UGC to influence consumer evaluations and improve decision-making processes in a more targeted and effective way.