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This paper aims to establish if quantified self-data positively impact motivation in a goal pursuit across a broad cross-section of consumers and in multiple contexts; and to understand the underlying causal mechanism and identify boundary conditions.

Exploratory qualitative research helped direct the hypotheses development. Two quantitative experiments were then conducted via MTURK, involving 331 respondents, to test the hypotheses in two different personal goal areas (fitness and carbon footprint reduction).

Self-quantification has a significant and positive impact on anticipated motivation in both contexts studied. The mediated model provides insight into the psychological process underlying self-quantification’s motivational impact, which involves strengthening user perceptions regarding feedback meaningfulness, self-empowerment and goal focus. Age (>50) was found to be a boundary condition; however, distance to goal was not.

This paper focuses on initial (anticipated) motivation, which is the vital first step in behavior change. However, more work is needed to understand quantification’s long-term impact over the course of a behavior change process.

This research encourages firms to incorporate self-quantification features into products/services aimed at behavior change and helps firms better understand consumer-perceived benefits. It alerts firms regarding the extra effort needed to convince older consumers of these benefits.

This is the first study to confirm the “quantification effect” on motivation in multiple life areas and provide a causal model to explain how it works. It is also the first to highlight age as a boundary condition.

This paper aims to examine the factors leading to and resulting from procrastination under high price uncertainty and provide recommendations for how managers can reduce consumer procrastination, thus decreasing consumer regret, anger and retaliatory behaviors.

Hypothesized relationships were tested through two scenario-based experiments using student samples. Data was analyzed using general linear model, path analysis and Wald chi-square test.

Long time limits, price uncertainty and price consciousness, all increase the likelihood of procrastination. Prestige seeking reduces procrastination, but only when time limits are short. When one delays a purchase and later the price of the item gets increased or one makes a purchase and later the price gets further reduced, procrastination and purchase decision both equally can lead to anger, which then increases the probability of exit, voice or word of mouth (WOM); however, procrastination has a much stronger impact than deciding to purchase on self-responsibility and regret, which in turn increases negative WOM.

This paper provides a greater understanding of antecedents and consequences of procrastination as well as the drivers of retaliatory behavior. Further, the findings highlight differential consequences of consumer regret and anger on consumption behaviors.

This paper provides practical suggestions for reducing consumers’ procrastination through leveraging the effects of purchase time limit and price uncertainty in general, and more specifically, for prestige-seeker and price conscious consumers. The findings provide evidence for a silent path from procrastination to retaliation and highlight the importance of possible remedies or interventions by the companies to mitigate consumer emotions resulting from procrastination.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to apply temporal motivation theory in the context of consumer behavior under price uncertainty, and examine consequences of consumer procrastination in terms of thoughts, feelings and retaliatory behavior.

Young consumers are particularly vulnerable to the addictive nature of smart phone technology. This paper aims to investigate the smart phone addiction cycle and health outcomes of young and old consumers from the lens of consumers’ mindfulness traits.

Qualitative and quantitative studies reveal that the lack of mindfulness, measured as a mindless trait, is strongly associated with smart phone addictions and health and quality of life outcomes.

Differences in mindlessness and smart phone-generated health outcomes are found between younger and older consumers. The negative impact of mindlessness on quality of life was greater for younger adults than older adults.

This research establishes baseline effects between the mindless trait and smart phone addiction levels.

Paper suggests the marketing of mindfulness programs and the use of marketplace apps to combat addiction issues.

Smart phone addiction is a growing problem, and this paper contributes to the understanding of the problem and offers societal solutions for its resolution.

This is the first empirical paper to investigate the connection between a mindless trait and smart phone tendencies and resulting health outcomes.

The authors argue that privacy is integral to the well-being of consumers and an essential component in not only corporate social responsibility (CSR) but what they term uniquely as social media responsibility (SMR). A conceptual framework is proposed that delineates the privacy issues companies should pay attention to in artificial intelligence (AI)-fueled social media environments.

The authors review literature on privacy issues in social media and AI in the academic and practitioner literatures. Based on the review, arguments focus on the need for an SMR framework, proposing responsible use of consumer data that is attentive to consumers' privacy concerns.

Implications from the framework are a path forward for social media companies to treat consumer data more fairly in this new environment. The framework has implications for companies to reduce potential harms to consumers and consider addressing their power and responsibility. With social media and AI transforming consumer behavior so profoundly, there are a variety of short- and long-term social implications.

Since AI tools are becoming integral to social media company activities, this research addresses the changing responsibilities social media companies have in securing consumers' data and enabling consumers the agency to protect their privacy effectively. The authors propose an SMR framework based on CSR research and AI tools employed by social media companies.

The question over who “owns” and controls consumer data on the internet is emerging as an important issue as individuals increasingly share more of their personal information with marketers in return for services and benefits. This paper aims to examine how compensating consumers for their personal information affects their expectations for data ownership and privacy control.

The authors conduct two online scenario-based experiments with a sample of adult consumers. The results were analyzed using multivariate and univariate analysis of variance.

The findings show that receiving compensation, especially when it is a monetary reward, reduces consumer expectations for privacy protection. These effects depend on whether the information provided to marketers is perceived to be sensitive in nature.

While a number of privacy studies have investigated the effects of compensation on encouraging self-disclosure on the internet, there is a lack of research that examines the effect of compensation on privacy expectations. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first paper to test empirically the construct of information ownership in the context of privacy exchanges.

Rewards and safety cues are frequently used by online marketers to enhance privacy attitudes and to encourage self‐disclosure of personal information. The purpose of this paper is to study the relative effectiveness of these influence strategies and test the boundary condition of regulatory focus.

The authors conduct an online scenario‐based experiment with a sample of adult consumers. The results were analyzed using multivariate and univariate analysis of variance.

The findings show that the use of rewards and safety cues has varying effects on privacy attitudes and self‐disclosure, and that these effects depend on consumers' regulatory focus.

The relative effectiveness of rewards and safety cues for enhancing privacy attitudes and encouraging self‐disclosure is not clear from prior research, and boundary conditions have not been established. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to examine regulatory focus as a moderating variable in the relationship between online influence strategies and privacy outcomes.

Uses benefit needs to segment the online marketing market. Employs focus groups and a random sampling survey to search for consumer benefit needs and then segments the market by these benefits sought by customers. Shows that the various segments display significant differences in the benefits sought, lifestyles and demographics etc. Suggests that this work can assist marketing managers to focus on one or more segments that show salient consumer preferences for the benefits provided by their products or services.

This research aims to investigate the message strategies most likely to promote online “word-of-mouth” (WOM) activity for business-to-business (B2B)/business-to-consumer as well as product/service Facebook accounts.

Using content analysis and HLM, the authors measure the relationship between three types of message strategies and Facebook message “Likes” by analyzing 1,143 wall post messages of 193 Fortune 500 Facebook accounts.

Research findings suggest that B2B Facebook account posts are more effective if they include corporate brand names and avoid “hard sell” or explicitly commercial statements. Furthermore, results suggest that including emotional sentiments in Facebook posts is a particularly effective social media strategy for B2B and service marketers.

This study advances the knowledge of social media and online WOM behavior, as well as B2B and service advertising/communication literature, by relating message content to message popularity. In terms of managerial implications, this research provides explanations and support for the implementation of effective social media message strategies that are likely to promote WOM activity.

This paper aims to explore the interaction between consumer empowerment and social interactions as fundamental social media elements. It demonstrates their relationship in both experiential and informative social media setting where social media complements an offline consumer activity. The study aims to contribute to the literature on social media by demonstrating its complementary role on offline activities through these fundamental elements.

The paper reports three experimental designs that manipulate the empowering and the socializing elements of complementary activities to show their effects on both the complementary online and the complemented offline activities.

The paper presents three empirical studies that reveal the effects of two fundamental social media elements (i.e. empowerment and socialization) on consumers’ responses toward consumption episodes that consist of complementary online and complemented offline activities. It reveals that that these elements increase positive consumer responses toward both the online and the offline activities through psychological empowerment. However, the interaction between the elements changes with respect to specific empowerment types.

The paper contributes to the literature on social media by demonstrating its complementary role on offline activities through its empowering and socializing elements. It bridges research on consumer empowerment and socialization in a way that reveals their interaction beyond the extant definitions of empowerment resulting from enhanced communication among consumers. The paper also demonstrates the complementary role of social media on offline consumer behaviors through the effects of these two fundamental elements.The participants of the experimental studies are presented with hypothetical scenarios and asked about their behavioral intentions. Thus, future studies should address the research questions in real-world settings.

The paper includes implications for social media usage as a complementary activity to offline real-life consumer behavior through the effects of consumer empowerment and social interactions. Thus, it may benefit marketers seeking to optimize the empowering and socializing components of their social media strategies.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study how social media may affect real-life consumer behavior. It also identifies the interaction between the empowering and the socializing elements of social media offerings in both experiential and informative settings.