Ann M Mirabito

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Baylor University

Marketing scholars wield untapped potential to expand research into the wellbeing of consumers with mental illness beyond existing clinical and medical perspectives, enriching the field with unique insights into consumer behavior, market dynamics, and strategic interventions. This scoping review maps over 50 years of research at the intersection of...

In this chapter, we examine how the experiences of disadvantaged consumers, including ethnic and religious minorities, immigrants, and refugees, those with disabilities or chronic illness, and the low literate, shape psychological well-being. Disadvantaged consumers experience a higher risk of discrimination compared to the general population, resu...

The Transformative Consumer Research (TCR) and Transformative Service Research (TSR) movements seek to encourage, support, and publicize research benefiting consumer welfare. In this article, we introduce design thinking (DT) as a rigorous, effective, and creative problem‐solving process well‐suited to tackle the multi‐dimensional problems TCR/TSR...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to inspire research at the intersection of marketing and mental health. Marketing academics have much to offer – and much to learn from – research on consumer mental health. However, the context, terminology and setting may prove intimidating to marketing scholars unfamiliar with this vulnerable population. Here...

The shift from one-way to two-way communication in healthcare decision-making has heightened the need to understand the role of display formats including tables and graphs as decision aids. In this paper, we investigate cognitive and affective influences on decision-making involving display formats. We find that a display format’s impact on decisio...

While masks slow the transmission of COVID‐19, many resist wearing them. Extant public service messaging focuses on creating social norms around mask wearing. Drawing on protection motivation theory, we conduct a copy test to determine whether focusing on the physical risks or focusing on the social risks of contracting COVID‐19 is more persuasive...

Introduction Prepregnancy obesity and excessive gestational weight gain (GWG) pose health risks to woman and fetus, yet gestational weight management interventions are largely unsuccessful. Little research examines the perceptions of women with obesity about weight gain and exercise. Although women with obesity have different body habitus and life...

Individuals with mental disorders (MD) not only struggle with functional impairment; they must also manage the stigma accompanying their diagnosis. In this research we explore the role of the marketplace as a resource to help consumers cope with MD-related stressors. Coping efforts are actions taken to protect, maintain, or restore wellbeing. Howev...

Stigmas, or discredited personal attributes, emanate from social perceptions of physical characteristics, aspects of character, and "tribal" associations (e.g., race; Goffman 1963). Extant research has emphasized the perspective of the stigma target, with some scholars exploring how social institutions shape stigma. Yet the ways stakeholders within...

Commercial law in the United States is designed to facilitate private transactions, and thus to enforce the presumed intent of the parties, who generally are free to negotiate the terms they choose. But these contracts inevitably have gaps, both because the parties cannot anticipate every situation that might arise from their relationship, and beca...

Personal well-being of service employees and others is declining, yet well-being is likely to influence on-the-job productivity. Workplace wellness programming (WWP) is prevalent among service organizations, but is controversial with critics questioning the appropriateness and efficacy of employer involvement in personal health. To understand how e...

This research broadens the focus on the addiction process by examining the role of marketing cues in the “pre-addiction” phase of the consumption continuum that is broadly conceptualized to include behavior that may or may not result in addiction. If addictive behavior is to occur then dependence on that behavior occurs leading to negative or harmf...

Addiction does not begin with the harmful effects of being dependent on a particular consumption behaviour such as smoking, alcohol, or illegal drugs. Instead it starts with everyday seemingly benign behaviours that, through psychological, biophysical, and/or environmental triggers, can become harmful and morph into an addiction. We develop a frame...

A brief discussion about how some companies are establishing on-site clinics to provide health care to employees.

The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is intended to transform the U.S. health care system. Its success will require the transformation of consumers' views about health and their willingness to participate in healthful behaviors. Focusing on three barriers to consumers' engagement in healthful behaviors, the authors review the researc...

Progressive, well-managed, responsible companies are primed to become prevention partners with the medical community. The business community needs the medical community to integrate wellness into the workplace. However, the medical community also needs the business community. Payers compensate medical providers for diagnostic and treatment care. Em...

Employee wellness programs have often been viewed as a nice extra, not a strategic imperative. But the data show otherwise. The ROI on comprehensive, well-run employee wellness programs can be as high as 6 to 1.The most successful programs have six essential pillars: engaged leadership at multiple levels; strategic alignment with the company's iden...

The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is intended to transform the U.S. health care system. Its success will require the transformation of consumers' views about health and their willingness to participate in healthful behaviors. Focusing on three barriers to consumers' engagement in healthful behaviors, the authors review the researc...

Employee wellness programs have often been viewed as a nice extra, not a strategic imperative. But the data demonstrate otherwise, according to Berry, of Texas A&M University; Mirabito, of Baylor University; and Baun, of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Their research shows that the ROI on comprehensive, well-run employee wellness...

Critics of the American healthcare system recite a long list of problems, including rising out-of-pocket costs, inconvenient access, overuse of emergency departments, uncoordinated medical records, and declining numbers of primary care doctors. To address these issues, some new venues have evolved, such as retail and urgent care clinics; however, t...

Patient-centered medical homes (PCMHs) have been endorsed by primary and specialty care medical associations, payers, and patient groups as an innovative structure for transforming health care delivery. The cornerstone principle of the PCMH is the primary care physician's coordination of a patient's use of health care services, including visits to...

We report the results of the second phase of a multiphase qualitative investigation of the ways physicians, employers, and insurers can work together more effectively to provide better ambulatory care to employees and their dependents. This article focuses on ways physicians can develop more useful relationships among these groups. We used a ground...

The health care system in the United States is in crisis, and the implications for businesses and their employees are profound. As employers struggle with unrelenting double-digit health-insurance cost increases, some firms have decided to drop coverage entirely, and many others have shifted costs to employees. Meanwhile, the quality of the health...

Little is known about how people evaluate credence attributes, that is, those attributes which the consumer often cannot fully evaluate even after purchasing and consuming the product. And yet consumers struggle to evaluate quality in several important product categories dominated by credence attributes such as food safety, medical services, legal...