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Parenthood ushers in many situations with which individuals have little experience. Given today’s technology-integrated environment, parents can instantly gain support from a large audience using social media. This support often includes “sharenting,” or regularly using social media to share information about one’s child. Using consumer vulnerability and communications privacy management theory as theoretical foundations, the authors focus on mothers’ vulnerability and how it may translate into increased children’s consumer vulnerability. The in-depth interviews in Study 1 offer insights into mothers’ expressions of vulnerability and how these expressions can be linked to their motivations for sharing children’s personally identifiable information (PII) on social media. In Study 2, the authors observed mothers of young children participating in a Twitter chat hosted by a major children’s brand, examining expressions of mothers’ vulnerability, the extent to which they posted child PII, and the extent to which mothers both expressed vulnerability and posted child PII. The authors discuss public policy and managerial implications for this understudied dimension of children’s online privacy and our increasingly technology-integrated society.

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Purpose The present research aims to examine selfie-marketing from a consumer behavior perspective. Creating and sharing selfies are gaining popularity among millennials. The authors seek to understand how this popularity relates to classic research on narcissism and self-concept and to determine the effectiveness of selfie-marketing in visual user-generated content. Design/methodology/approach A mixed methods approach is used across two studies. Study 1’s qualitative exploration uses the grounded theory method by analyzing semi-structured interviews with millennials. The findings produce three research propositions. These propositions are further developed into testable hypotheses in Study 2’s quantitative investigation, featuring analysis of the variance of online survey data collected from millennials. Findings The findings suggest that narcissism positively relates to millennials’ attitudes toward and intent to participate in selfie-marketing on visual content-sharing apps. Results also demonstrate that millennials seek to use selfies to present their self-concepts differently in various visual content-sharing environments. Originality/value The present research is among the first to focus on the importance of self-presentation and narcissism in regard to consumers’ attitudes and behavioral responses toward selfie-marketing. For marketers, this underscores the importance of understanding the unique nature of user-generated visual content on social media.

This study examines the effect of consumer health-consciousness on attitude toward dietary supplements as well as consumer perceptions of supplement risks and benefits when compared to their prescription drug counterparts. The authors investigate three conditions (insomnia, depression, and high cholesterol) with both a prescription drug and dietary supplement regimen available. Results indicate that health consciousness is positively related to attitudes toward dietary supplements, which is positively related to perceived supplement benefits, but negatively associated with perceived supplement risks. Mediating effects of attitudes toward dietary supplements are also found. Moreover, familiarity with direct to consumer advertising (DTCA) moderates the relationship between health consciousness and attitude toward dietary supplements. Our findings suggest that knowledge may play a key role in attitude and perception formation and that both benefit and risk information about supplements should be provided to consumers so they can make informed decisions about their health.Over the past two decades, US consumers have been targeted with ever-increasing amounts of product information related to health-enhancing products and services. The broadened use of advertisements and other types of promotions in support of these offerings has drawn much greater scrutiny from a variety of regulatory, media, and consumer advocacy sources. As the level of scrutiny and content of regulatory directives differ markedly across product categories, consumers have become inundated with seemingly conflicting information about various types of healthcare goods and services. For example, consumers may be exposed to an ad touting the healthy heart benefits of MegaRed ® Omega 3

Purpose Online consumer reviews (OCRs) have emerged as a particularly important type of user-generated information about a brand because of their widespread adoption and influence on consumer decision-making. Much of the existing OCR research focuses on quantifiable OCR features such as star ratings and volume. More research that examines the influence of review elements, aside from numeric ratings, such as the verbatim text, particularly in services contexts is needed. The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of service failures on consumer arousal and emotions. Design/methodology/approach The authors present three behavioral experiments that manipulate service failure and linguistic elements of OCRs by using galvanic skin response, survey measures and automated facial expression analysis. Findings Negative OCRs lead to the greatest levels of arousal when consumers read OCRs. Service failure severity impacts anger, and referential cohesion, an observable property of text that helps a reader better understand ideas in the text, negatively moderates the relationship between service failure severity and anger. Originality/value The authors are among the first to empirically test the effect of emotional contagion in a user-generated content context, demonstrating that it can occur when consumers read such content, even if they did not experience the events being described. The research uses a self-report and physiological measures to assess consumer perceptions, arousal and emotions related to service failures, increasing the robustness of the literature. These findings contribute to the marketing literature on OCRs in service failures, physiological measures of consumers’ emotions, the negativity bias and emotional contagion in a user-generated content context.

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The popularity of social media among students and practitioners has encouraged marketing educators to find ways to incorporate social media into their classrooms. We offer results from an intercollegiate collaboration that provides an innovative learning environment through a social media education ecosystem. Participating students discuss current marketing topics with peers, marketing practitioners, and faculty to reinforce course concepts, improve learning perceptions, and increase professional communication skills and networking opportunities. An initial exploratory study provides a snapshot of Twitter analytics, illustrating the reach of students’ marketing-related discussions. Next, survey data collected from students show increased learning satisfaction and favorable behavioral intentions. Finally, tweets from the 12-week project were analyzed using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. Results suggest that participants improved their professional communication skills while using language that provokes greater cognitive processes. Implications for marketing educators and future directions for the project are also provided.