Consumption of addictive products, such as gambling, alcohol, tobacco, gaming, fast food, and illicit drugs, is an important public health and policy issue. Research identifies that political ideology influences positive consumer behaviors, but little is known about whether political ideology shapes negative consumer behavior. Through a ten-study multimethod investigation including a large correlational study, a field study, and eight online studies (including six experiments), the authors reveal the relationship between political ideology and consumer responses to addictive products. Results indicate that political conservatism, as opposed to liberalism, is associated with more favorable consumer attitudes, intentions, and behavior toward addictive products, due to a stronger sense of agency, which reduces perceptions of product danger. The findings show that the positive relationship between political conservatism, sense of agency, perceived product danger, and subsequent responses to addictive products can be attenuated through exposure to personally directed threat appeals (i.e., threat messages with second-person pronouns). This research advances political ideology research in marketing by demonstrating how political ideology shapes responses to addictive products and provides practical ways to shift its potential harmful effects.

AbstractA brand name is a fundamental component of a brand's identity. This research introduces a novel linguistic tool for brand name creation: phonesthemes—sound and spelling letter clusters that are associated with one dominant meaning. For instance, sn, one of over 140 phonesthemes in English, consistently appears in words related to the nose or breathing (sneeze, sniff, snort). Six experiments reveal positive effects of phonesthemic non‐word brand names (e.g., Glif; gl‐; e.g., glow, glimmer; meaning “light”) on consumer preference, attitude, purchase intent, and choice when the dominant meaning activated by the phonestheme is semantically congruent with the product category or product attribute (e.g., luminant car wax), due to enhanced processing fluency. Phonological (sound) and orthographic (spelling) priming are eliminated as alternative explanations for the phenomenon. This research advances psycholinguistic research in marketing and the emerging area of brand linguistics by broadening the focus beyond brand name phonology.