The marketplace provides rich sources of hope and invites us to the endless pursuit of happiness.

This conceptual article uses an appraisal theory perspective to define the construct of hope and describe its relevance to consumer behavior, marketing, and public policy in the domains of product evaluation and choice. Using the appraisal dimensions of hope, the authors identify a set of marketing tactics that are designed to stimulate hope. They posit that hope plays a moderating role in the relationship between well-known antecedent variables(e.g., involvement, expectations) on the one hand and evaluative judgments (e.g., attitudes, satisfaction) and consumer choices on the other hand. The authors advance specific propositions that describe the effects. Furthermore, they argue that the effects have implications for marketing and public policy. The article concludes with a call for additional research relevant to the study of hope.

Following on from The Why of Consumption, this book examines motivational factors in diverse consumption behaviours. In a world where consumption has become the defining phenomenon of human life and society, it addresses the effects of critical life events on consumption motives, and the sociological and intergenerational influences on consumer motives and preferences. Its cross-disciplinary approach brings together some of the leading scholars from diverse subject areas to examine the central question about consumption: ‘why?’. This is a unique and invaluable contribution to the area, and an essential asset for all those involved in researching, teaching or studying consumption and consumer behaviour.

This volume features cutting-edge and impactful articles from across Springer's diverse journals publishing program. In this curated collection, our editorial team has brought together highly-cited and downloaded articles on the topic of Consumer Behavior into one single resource. Moreover, this book enables readers to review a broad spectrum of quality research on a specialized topic, which we hope facilitates interdisciplinary and critical discussions of the topic at hand. As part of the Key Topics in Behavioral Sciences book series, this volume aims to serve as a quick reference for readers when writing or researching new topics or subject areas. Other topics in the series will include Psychological Research Methods, Health and Behavior, Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Sports Psychology, and Consumer Behavior. In the first section of the volume, articles focus on such topics as College Students, Financial Stress, Relative Income Hypothesis, Construal Level, Luxury Consumption, Luxury Consumption Tendency, Luxury Consumption Tendency Scale, and Scale Development. Next, the second section features research on Longitudinal Study, Materialism, Self-Esteem, Socioeconomic Status, Cvq-96, Mpai, Prevention, Social Media, Smartphone Use, Smartphone Addiction, University Students, Higher Education, and Virtues. Lastly in the final section of this collection, Electronic Word Of Mouth, Information-Task-Fit, Purchase Intention, Website Quality, Egoism, Evolution, Evolutionary Altruism, Mechanisms, Psychological Altruism, Meta-Analysis, Mturk, Online Panel Data, and Study Response are discussed.

This Handbook contains a unique collection of chapters written by the world's leading researchers in the dynamic field of consumer psychology. Although these researchers are housed in different academic departments (ie. marketing, psychology, advertising, communications) all have the common goal of attaining a better scientific understanding of cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses to products and services, the marketing of these products and services, and societal and ethical concerns associated with marketing processes. Consumer psychology is a discipline at the interface of marketing, advertising and psychology. The research in this area focuses on fundamental psychological processes as well as on issues associated with the use of theoretical principles in applied contexts. The Handbook presents state-of-the-art research as well as providing a place for authors to put forward suggestions for future research and practice. The Handbook is most appropriate for graduate level courses in marketing, psychology, communications, consumer behavior and advertising.

Bridging many disciplines, Hope and Despair is a major contribution to our knowledge of human behavior.