Advertising is oft described as the art of capitalism. This indispensable form of communication, in all its Technicolor glory, has the power to shape culture, conscience and commerce. Therein lies the (potential) rub. Advertising promotes consumption as the solution to all of life's problems. Consumers appear to benefit when conveyed information reduces ignorance and lowers transaction costs for legitimate needs. However, consumers may also be adversely affected when the persuasive influence on consumer behavior extends to the production of previously undiscovered wants or desires. The resultant veil of consumerism enables individuals to overlook the inevitable hollowness that underlies the pursuit of wellbeing through material goods and services. Academic research reinforcing the efficacy of advertising and highlighting its cautionary contours abounds across multiple disciplines. This begs the question, 'Does advertising, in fact, help or hinder consumer well-being (CWB)?' The authors conduct a systematic review of the literature between the years 1980 (the emergence of CWB as a formal construct in the marketing literature) and 2020 to establish the extent to which extant research has progressed in response to this broad question. Grounded theory supports a series of emergent themes, as well as inconspicuous gaps that require attention to move the field forward. A framework is developed, and research agenda proposed, to guide future study.

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Purpose Customers can be territorial, which results in reactive behaviors that can hurt firm profitability. This study aims to expand the typology of customer territorial responses previously identified in the environmental psychology and marketing literature. Design/methodology/approach The authors use a mixture of quantitative and qualitative approaches. The exploratory studies elicit and test a typology of consumer territorial responses using critical incident technique and factor analysis. Two surveys use the typology. Study 1 examines intrusiveness in grocery store settings. Study 2 expands the model with specialty store shoppers to examine how rapport, employee greed, entitlement and time pressure interact with intrusion pressure and relate to customer territorial responses. Findings The results indicate a new category of territorial responses – deferential verbalizations – and show relationships between intrusion pressure and deferential actions, retaliatory verbalizations, retaliatory actions and abandonment. The relationships are affected by the moderators, including rapport, which interacts with intrusion pressure to increase the likelihood of switching. Research limitations/implications Collecting data near closing time restricted observations and consumer time to participate using self-report data. The results should be replicated with other populations and service providers. Practical implications Managers should monitor customer treatment during closing time. The results indicate consumer responses to closing time cues not only impact their shopping trip but also affect whether they will patronize the store in the future. Originality/value The study provides an expanded typology of territorial responses, identifies moderating factors that may affect responses and links employee intrusiveness and territorial responses to store patronage.

Food insecurity and poor nutrition negatively affect consumer health and well-being. Trait hope is conceptualized as a powerful thought process that can facilitate change. However, it is unclear how trait hope, the sense that one can successfully plan and put forth energy to meet goals, influences food insecurity among impoverished consumers. The authors conducted an evaluative study using in-home surveys (n = 498) in seven distressed census tracts of a midsized southeastern U.S. city to understand how financial capability and trait hope, a cognitive process, interact to influence perceived access to fresh food among Black and Hispanic consumers that disproportionately face food insecurity. Trait hope positively moderated the relationship between financial capability and perceived access, which was related to lower food insecurity. The results, which indicated important differences related to race/ethnicity, suggest that interventions that improve financial capability and increase trait hope may improve efficacy of food and nutrition assistance programs.

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