Happiness in the Marketplace : A Study of Consumption, Consumers and Wellbeing

This book provides a systematic review and analysis of the literature on product-related, situational, organizational, and cultural factors influencing people’s happiness in the marketplace. The authors, senior experts in the field, make specific recommendations to design and implement consumer wellbeing strategies. These recommendations are for marketing executives to maximize their effectiveness and help consumers achieve optimal levels of happiness (overall happiness, consumer happiness, and consumption happiness), which in turn could enhance organizational return on investment through customer loyalty, repeat patronage, sales, and profit. The book reviews and integrates learnings from the research on happiness in several fields of study, namely, quality-of-life studies, marketing, consumer studies, social psychology, and behavioral economics, and is of interest to marketing executives and academics from various fields working on consumers and consumer wellbeing.

Dong-Jin Lee is Professor Emeritus at the School of Business, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. He received his Ph.D. in marketing from Virginia Tech and has published extensively in quality-of-life studies. Before joining Yonsei University (2003-present), he was on the marketing faculty of the University of Western Australia (1996-1999) and the State University of New York at Binghamton (2000-2002). He served as Vice President for Academic Affairs, Vice President for Publication, and Program Area Chair for the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS) in 1997-1999, 2007-2009, and 1997-1998, respectively; he was Director of Academic Affairs for Academy of Marketing Science in 2002-2004; he was Section Editor of Applied Research in Quality of Life (ARQOL) from 2009 to 2011; he was Associated Dean at Yonsei university from 2007-2010 and Dean of Sangnam Management Institute at Yonsei University from 2017 to 2019. He won The W. Bradford Wiley Memorial Research Award in 2001 and the best paper award from ARQOL in 2021 and in 2025. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Management Institute for Quality-of-Life Studies (MIQOLS).

M. Joseph Sirgy is a management psychologist (Ph.D., U/Massachusetts), the Virginia Tech Real Estate Professor Emeritus of Marketing at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (USA), and Extraordinary Professor at the Work-Well Research Unit at North-West University – Potchefstroom Campus (South Africa). He has published extensively in marketing, management, business ethics, and quality of life (QOL). He co-founded the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS) in 1995, served as its Executive Director/Treasurer from 1995 to 2011, and as development Co-Director (2011-present). In 1998, he received the Distinguished Fellow Award from ISQOLS. In 2003, ISQOLS honored him as the Distinguished QOL Researcher for research excellence and a record of lifetime achievement in QOL research. He also served as President of the Academy of Marketing Science (2002-04) from which he received the Distinguished Fellow Award in the early 1990’s and the Harold Berkman Service Award in 2007 (lifetime achievement award for serving the marketing professoriate). In the early 2000s, he helped co-found the Macromarketing Society and the Community Indicators Consortium and served as a board member of these two professional associations. He co-founded the journal, Applied Research in Quality of Life, the official journal of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, in 2005; and he has served as co-founding editor (1995-present). He also served editor of the QOL section in the Journal of Macromarketing (1995-2016). He has won numerous awards for his published papers, excellence in teaching and widespread contributions to research in quality of life, welbeing, and marketing research. He was the editor of ISQOLS/Springer book series on International Handbooks in QOL (2008-15), Community QOL Indicators: Best Cases (2004-15), Applied Research in QOL: Best Practices (2008-12). He is currently serving as co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Macromarketing (2020-present) and as editor of the Springer book series Human Well-Being and Policy Making (2015-present).