Responsibilization, or the shift of functions and risks from providers and producers to consumers, has become an increasingly common policy in service systems and marketplaces (e.g., financial, health, governmental). Because responsibilization is often considered synonymous with consumer agency and well-being, the authors take a transformative service research perspective and draw on resource integration literature to investigate whether responsibilization is truly associated with well-being. The authors focus on expert services, for which responsibilization concerns are particularly salient, and question whether this expanding policy is in the public interest. In the process, they develop a conceptualization of resource integration under responsibilization that includes three levels of actors (consumer, provider, and service system), the identification of structural tensions to resource integration, and three categories of resource-integration practices (access, appropriation, and management) necessary to negotiate responsibilization. The findings have important implications for health care providers, public and institutional policy makers, and other service systems, all of which must pay more active attention to the challenges consumers face in negotiating responsibilization and the resulting well-being outcomes.

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A growing number of consumers are seeking to make a difference through experiences involving interaction and collaboration with organizations that offer charitable service opportunities. These experiences are noteworthy in not only their catalyzing influence on the organization and the beneficiary customer, but also the personal transformation in the volunteer. The authors introduce a phenomenon called transformative charity experiences (TCEs), a triadic framework highlighting an avenue of personal consumer well-being through the transformative effect of service interactions with key stakeholders. Building upon conceptual models proposed in Transformative Services Research and insights from their own embedded charity experiences, the authors introduce how service co-creation from three entities (charity, volunteer, and community) can lead to a transformative effect for the volunteer. An exploratory field study in an international setting provides insights into how the proposed framework accounts for TCEs. Implications and future directions for charitable services research are presented.

The marketing and public policy field has a long history of examining consumer decision making under conditions of abundance, but less effort has been dedicated to learning about restrictions to choice, especially as imposed by institutional forces. To help fill this gap in the literature, the authors offer an ethnographic investigation of a maximum security prison conducted over an 18-month period using participatory action research. This environment is a total control institution where depersonalization and commoditization of the 4,000 men in its charge regularly occur. The findings reveal a complex relationship between these processes and various psychological reactions and resulting behaviors that are acted out within and outside the prison's licit and illicit marketplaces. The article closes with a discussion of theoretical implications of consumer constraint and a presentation of public policy implications.

Addiction does not begin with the harmful effects of being dependent on a particular consumption behaviour such as smoking, alcohol, or illegal drugs. Instead it starts with everyday seemingly benign behaviours that, through psychological, biophysical, and/or environmental triggers, can become harmful and morph into an addiction. We develop a framework based on harm and dependence that can help researchers better understand how consumers could become addicted to various types of everyday benign consumption behaviours (e.g., texting, shopping, plastic surgery, and other types of normally acceptable behaviours). Furthermore, the conceptual framework is based on expanding the concept of addiction to include the pre-addiction process with a focus on this continuum of benign to harmful behavioural consumption. This framework describes how consumers progress from a normal state of consumption into a state of addictive abuse and dependence. The framework discusses key issues and future research that can aid public policy researchers, practitioners, and marketers to better understand the entire pre-addiction process.