Implications for Public Policy
P6 also suggests that hope may affect consumers’ vulnerability to product harm (Smith and Cooper-Martin 1997). Although the Spring 1995 Special Issue of Journal of Public Policy & Marketing indicates that medically underserved, poor, older, and rural consumers are more vulnerable to product harm, research has not considered that vulnerabilities may be tied to hope. That is, it is the consumers who yearn most for a goal-congruent outcome (e.g., the ones who are in-need) who are most likely to ignore, discount, or assume as unlikely risks from consumption.