Despite significant policy efforts to encourage Americans to save for retirement, the U.S. retirement savings rates have declined for more than two decades. Current policies and programs are largely driven by three implicit theories of why people do and do not save: trait theory, life cycle, and education. The authors' purpose is not to identify a singular best theory but rather to demonstrate the need to expand the theories used to address the retirement savings problem. Toward that end, they empirically examine each traditional theory and simultaneously explore the additional power of complementary theories: future-self theory and imagery. The results show that variables grounded in trait theory, life cycle, and education are significantly related to retirement planning. Moreover, people who reported greater and more vivid imagery of a positive future retired self had engaged in more retirement preparation, accounting for a significant amount of variance beyond the traditional theories.

Sport events are increasingly used in the marketing of cities. Cities have justified the use of sport events as a component of their marketing mix on the basis of their power to attract event visitors, and to generate media exposure for the city. The exposure generated by an event is thought to build awareness of the host city as a desirable destination. The ability of sport events to attract visitation is well documented, but there has been little work examining the impact of event media. The purpose of this research was to determine the nature and extent of the television exposure generated for the city of San Antonio by hosting the 2002 NCAA Women's Final Four basketball tournament. The ESPN coverage of the tournament was content analyzed for any verbal mentions of San Antonio or its associated images, and for the variety and duration of San Antonio imagery that appeared in the ESPN broadcast coverage. Ten programs (11 hours and 46 minutes of coverage) were analyzed: (1) the Selection Show; (2) ESPN Sports Center broadcasts on the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of the tournament weekend; (3) pre-game show for each of the semi-final games and the championship game; (4) both semi-final games; and, (5) the national championship game. Over the 12 hours of coverage, "San Antonio" was mentioned 49 times and "the Alamodome" was mentioned 42 times. Further, "Alamo", "River Walk", and "Texas" were mentioned a combined total of six times. Two main categories of images appeared in the telecasts -images of San Antonio and of the NCAA Women's Final Four logo. Visual imagery of San Antonio appeared for a total of 209 seconds, with the dominant images being the cityscape, River Walk, Alamodome, and Alamo. The logo appeared in 13 distinct contexts for a total of 1,716 seconds. The dominant logo context was the center court logo. Overall, the findings question the value of the exposure generated by events as a tool for place marketing. However, three key findings have practical implications for potential ➤

The COVID-19 pandemic placed a heavy weight on a trilliondollar global pharmaceutical industry already struggling under the opioid crisis and pricing controversies. Although the drug development process typically takes ten or more years, the urgency of COVID-19 forced government regulators to shed tradition for flexibility. The race for effective treatments and care reveals knowledge gaps for marketing scholars to fill, enabling us to play a more positive role in future crises. We highlight three of these gaps: (1) confusion arising from off-label prescribing and emergency use authorization (EUA), (2) consumer access to testing, and (3) pharmaceutical supply chain issues.

This research examines how people choose among different public health insurance plans and assesses the factors that influence their choice. The authors explore two types of choice: active choice, in which consumers explicitly choose a plan, and passive/no choice, in which consumers take no action in choosing their plan. Using administrative and survey data for a sample of Medicaid recipients from a state that recently redesigned its Medicaid program, the authors identify what drives consumers’ choices using constructs loosely framed by classic motivation, opportunity, and ability models. The results show that when consumers engage in active decision making, there are few barriers to selecting a wellness-based health plan with greater prescription coverage. In addition, the findings suggest that it is important for informed people, such as health care professionals, to be involved in plan choice. Unexpectedly, Medicaid recipients who rely on word-of-mouth communication tend to avoid active choice.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed into law in 2010, is the latest in a long string of efforts to reform health care in the United States. In this article, we provide a brief background and explore key components of this law. We examine extant research on what is known about how insurance coverage impacts consumer well‐being and the role health and financial literacy play in achieving well‐being. We then introduce important research questions highlighting areas where little is known and where much opportunity lies to inform policy and improve consumer well‐being.

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Points out that research into the use of demographics as a segmentation variable has waned in favour of other variables, noting that research is sparse into links between membership of demographic segments and perceptions and reactions to marketing communications. Describes how, in many service sectors (e.g. airlines), the demographic profile of the consumer base has changed radically in recent years. Investigates differences between the perceptions and responses of demographic and product usage segments to the marketing communications of airlines, and demonstrates several key differences. Concludes that the importance of these segmentation bases appears to be undervalued in services, as findings indicate that changes in gender, age, culture, usage frequency, etc. affect perceptions of advertising, sales promotions and publicity ‐ with consequent effects on purchase behaviour.

Purpose Consumer confusion is an often discussed, but seldom investigated, construct central to marketing. This study aims to conceptualize consumer confusion as an intellectual emotion with cognitive and emotional components, and examine it in the context of qualified health claims and conflicting marketplace information. Design/methodology/approach A between-subjects experimental design is used to test the hypotheses. Findings Structural equation modeling suggests that weak science discussions and conflicting information on dietary supplements evoke consumer confusion. Confusion, in turn, impacts scientific certainty perceptions, product quality and firm credibility. Incorporating confusion measures in theoretical models significantly increases the amount of variance explained in consumer perceptions. Implications are offered for businesses, consumer behaviorists and public policymakers. Originality/value It is hard to think about many of marketing’s focal issues (e.g. trademark theory, disclosures and warnings, advertising deception, search and shopping behavior) without using the term confusion. While confusion is central to discussions of these domains, it has evaded focused attention and study. Indeed, no previous research in marketing has directly addressed the experience of consumer confusion per se. The current research fills a gap in the marketing literature by explicitly defining the construct of confusion and offering a measurement approach that is easily adapted to many business/consumer interactions. Furthermore, the authors demonstrate the role of confusion in the context of qualified health claims by showing how conflicting information between health claims, qualifiers and external information can create confusion, and in turn, lead to negative consumer perceptions.