Transformative Consumer Research is focused on finding ways to increase consumer, societal, and environmental well-being in a manner that can also be good for business. There is a growing group of professors, policy makers, business leaders, and consumer advocacy groups who are focused on this goal. Two pillars of individual and societal well-being are health and finances. Issues such as obesity, diabetes, tobacco addiction, poverty, and consumer debt are issues faced by consumers around the globe. The research I have conducted with scholars and business people around the world examines these two critical areas.

In the research I conducted with Martin Mende, Mary Jo Bitner, and Amy Ostrom, we examined the effects of customer co-production and consumer literacy in the contexts of health and

finances1.

Customer coproduction is defined as a consumer's active participation in the production and delivery of a service, such as a consumer organizing her tax documents and meeting with a tax advisor. We are interested in consumer literacy because consumers with lower literacy are often in a vulnerable position due to barriers to using information that can help serve their best interests. In one study, we found that when patients with lower medical literacy took an active role in coproducing their healthcare experience, this improved their compliance with the physician's treatment plan. In another study, consumers with lower financial literacy were more likely to take the advice of a financial advisor when they coproduced more. In sum, this research found that lower literacy consumers can experience positive outcomes when they engage in higher levels of coproduction.

Access to nutritious food is central to good health. In another project with a large team of co-authors led by Lauren Block and Sonya Grier, we established the concept of Food

Well-Being2.

It is defined as the "positive psychological, physical, emotional, and social relationship with food at both the individual and societal levels." We uncovered five dimensions that can influence the extent to which a consumer has a healthy relationship with food, including: (a) food marketing, such as food advertisements, (b) food literacy, such as consumers' understanding nutrition labels, (c) food availability, for example, the prevalence of fast-food restaurants in poor neighborhoods, (d) food policies, such as school lunch guidelines, and (e) food socialization, the things we learn about food from our social environment.

With my co-authors Stephen Nowlis, Naomi Mandel, and Andrea Morales, we conducted several studies on how different types of food packaging (such as 100-calorie snack-packs), can influence how much a consumer

eats.3

We found that non-dieters responded to the packages as expected: they ate fewer calories from the mini-packs (smaller food morsels in smaller package) than from the regular version. However, dieters, who often have an emotional relationship with food, consumed more calories from mini-packs. When dieters engaged in "cooling off" techniques to reduce their emotional response, they were able to reduce their caloric intake. This research showed that packaging designs can affect different consumers, in this case non-dieters and dieters, in very different ways.

1 Mende, Martin, Maura L. Scott, Mary Jo Bitner, and Amy L. Ostrom, (2017) "Activating Customers for Better Coproduction Outcomes: The Interplay of Firm-Assigned Workload, Service Literacy, Eustress, and Organizational Support," Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 36 (1), 137-55.

2 Block, Lauren, Sonya Grier, Terry Childers, Brennan Davis, Jane Ebert, Shiriki Kumanyika, Russ Laczniak, Jane Machin, Carol Motley, Laura Peracchio, Simone Pettigrew, Maura L. Scott, and Mirjam van Ginkel Bieshaar (2011), "From Nutrients to Nurturance: A Conceptual Introduction to Food Well-Being," Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 30(1), 5-13.

3 Scott, Maura L., Stephen M. Nowlis, Naomi Mandel, and Andrea C. Morales (2008), "The Effect of Reduced Food Sizes and Packages on the Consumption Behavior of Restrained Eaters and Unrestrained Eaters," Journal of Consumer Research, 35(3), 391-405.

Food Well-Being includes five dimensions that can influence the extent to which a consumer has a healthy relationship with food. Choose one of the five dimensions. Find and summarize a news article that discusses how one of the five dimensions influences consumers' well-being. (This is the question)