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INTEREST CATEGORY: CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
POSTING TYPE: Calls: Journals

Posted by: Shaheen Hosany

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Call for Papers

Understanding Consumer Psychology across Life Transitions

Submissions will be open on 15^th September 2026 for a final deadline of 15^th December 2026

Contemporary life is complex, defying age-related, linear pathways, traditionally structured around schooling, work, family and retirement (Elder 1994). Nowadays, people live longer, engage in regular career shifts due to job precarity or better opportunities, abide to norms like divorce, gender change and/or frequent relocation. Broader disruptions, like financial crises, technological innovations, sustainability pressures, interact with personal life events, to create short-term, extended and/or recurring transitions, involving uncertainties and vulnerabilities, requiring consumers to be resilient (Szmigin et al. 2020; Mende et al. 2024; Hosany et al. 2025). In this special issue, life events refer to identifiable change episodes (e.g., childbirth, divorce, relocation), with life transitions entailing the broader, often extended and non-linear periods of disruption, liminality, and adaptation that may unfold (see Moschis 2012).

Life transitions entail conflicting cues, changes to oneself, uncertain value, irreversibility and risk (Hechtlinger et al. 2024). They generate resource scarcity (Hosany & Hamilton 2023), disrupt routines, identities (Mimoun et al. 2025), dictate consumer responses to ads (Borenstein et al. 2025), influence retail patronage (Lee et al. 2001), reshaping how consumers perceive, evaluate, and consume (e.g. Noble & Walker 1997; Stammerjohan et al. 2007; Liu et al. 2024). Life transitions can be highly emotional (e.g. Yao et al. 2025), create situations of liminality (O’Loughlin et al. 2024), guiding how consumers interact with brands (Su et al. 2021), markets and service systems (Kelleher et al. 2020). Given their transformative potential, with enduring consequences that shape life trajectories, satisfaction and well-being, life transitions pose significant challenges.

To date, research on life transitions mainly focusses on a limited range of key life events predominantly, in first world countries (Yap & Kapitan 2017). As life courses become fragmented, the need for theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches that capture disruption, and adaptation become increasingly urgent (see also Moschis 2021). Transitions revolve around moments where individuals may be more receptive to learning, intervention, and institutional support, making them critical for academic and policy-focused investigation. Our special issue in Psychology & Marketing seeks to advance understanding of the psychological mechanisms through which life transitions impact cognition, emotion, identity, well-being, and influence marketing strategy. We welcome work that examines transitions as dynamic processes, explores heterogeneity in transitional experiences, and identifies boundary conditions (e.g., planned versus unplanned; positive versus negative transitions); duration and reversibility; resource slack; social support; and culturally embedded scripts that determine when marketing interventions help consumers adapt versus exacerbate vulnerability or harm.

This special issue aims to promote discussion, stimulate debate and advance knowledge on psychological research and actionable insights for marketers seeking to ethically engage consumers, promote well-being and transformative outcomes. We particularly encourage research examining underexplored transitions, populations, social and cultural contexts. We invite authors to submit conceptual, empirical, and methodological contributions relating to how consumers navigate change across the life course and welcome submissions that address, but are not limited to, the following:

• Psychological Processes During Life Transitions
  • What are the psychological consequences of experiencing multiple, concurrent, or sequential transitions? How do they influence marketing and consumption? What are the underlying psychological processes?
  • When and why do life transitions expand versus constrain identity, shape consumption practices, trajectories and marketplace interactions?
  • What forms of consumption foster resilience rather than dependency during life transitions?
  • How do consumers/consumer groups across socio-cultural contexts reimagine rituals, routines, habits, skills, creativity due to life transitions?
  • Do generations differ in perceptions and responses to life events and related transitions?
  • How do emotional dynamics manifest during different types of transitions?
  • How do transitions compare, e.g. does having children impact on life satisfaction and well-being in the same way as weddings, divorce or migration?
  • How do life transitions reshape individuals’ cognitive and motivational processes, leading them to favour earlier but smaller outcomes rather than larger, longer-term ones under conditions of resource constraint?
  • What novel psychological constructs/perspectives can be used to further develop the phenomenon of transitions?
  • How do life transitions shape the creation of memorable experiences?
• Liminality and Consumption
  • How do liminal states influence consumer judgment and decision-making during transitions?
  • What is the impact of transitions that precipitate and sustain liminality on consumer experiences and identity?
  • What roles do objects, possessions and brands play in stabilising, bridging, or transforming the self during liminal transitions?
  • What roles do marketing and consumption play post liminal transformation in reconstructing identity?
• Consumer Vulnerability and Well-Being
  • How are coping strategies, perceived control, and resilience conceptualised under conditions of heightened uncertainty, disruption, and overlapping societal challenges that increasingly characterise contemporary life transitions?
  • How do vulnerable consumers respond to life transitions?
  • In what ways do life transitions, value co-creation and well-being interact in shaping transformative outcomes?
  • How does socio-economic status influence consumer responses to life transitions?
• Services, Service Systems and Transitions
  • How do life transitions impact on leisure, travel and tourism?
  • How do innovative technologies (e.g. AI, robotics) support consumers during and post life transitions?
  • How can service design and front-line employees facilitate consumer transitions?
  • How do market structures and service systems buffer or exacerbate transition-related vulnerability?
• Marketing Strategy and Transitions
  • How do consumers respond to advertising appeals during and post transitions?
  • How can brands shape advertising strategy during times of change? (e.g. personalisation, message framing, targeting, timing, social media)
  • How can businesses frame brand extensions, pricing, and product strategy for consumers in transition?
  • What role does economic precarity play in shaping consumer behaviour due to transitions?
  • How can marketers use the power of storytelling, narratives and languages in interpreting life events and transitions? Do transitions favour utilitarian versus luxury purchases; planned versus impulse buys?
• Methodological Approaches
  • How can we ethically identify and study consumers in transitions? What ethical challenges do researchers encounter?
  • What indicators best capture transition onset, intensity, and resolution?
  • How can longitudinal, panel designs or innovative research methods capture pre-, during-, and post-transition phases, including their intensity, and duration?
  • How can researchers and marketers use digital trace or textual data (e.g., narratives, social media, service interactions) in interpreting life transitions?

Guest Editors

Dr. A. R. Shaheen Hosany
Hult International Business School
United Kingdom

Prof. Deirdre O’Loughlin
University of Limerick,
Ireland

Prof. Hong Xiao
Durham University
United Kingdom

Prof. Sheau-Fen Yap
Auckland University of Technology
New Zealand

Keywords

Life transitions, life events, liminality, consumer psychology

Supporting Event

We will hold a virtual supporting event to provide feedback on papers in progress on the 17^th June 2026, for authors who plan to submit to the SI. If you would like to participate, please submit a 200-word abstract by 31^stMay 2026 via email to shaheen.hosany@faculty.hult.edu. This event will be optional; authors do not need to participate to submit to the special issue.

Submission Guidelines

Submissions will be open on 15^th September 2026 for a final deadline of 15^th December 2026. To submit a manuscript, authors should follow the manuscript submission guidelines outlined in the ���Ǵ���Psychology & Marketing. Please select the correct special issue and include in the letter to the editor.

References