Heeding emotions or seeking challenges? Family support processes cultivate consumers' emotion- and problem-focused support-seeking

This research explores how families shape consumers' support-seeking from businesses' employees and other customers. Findings from a qualitative study of Weight Watchers uncover that some families trigger support-seeking focused on attenuating emotions arising from the source of stress (emotion-focused support-seeking), while other families foster support-seeking related to attenuating the cause(s) of stress itself (problem-focused support-seeking). Consumers' support-seeking reflects whether they experience their families' support as caring and responsive to their needs. As such, this research informs the substantive understanding of how consumers cope with consumption-induced stress. Theoretically, this research contributes to coping literature in marketing with its conceptualization of emotion- and problem-focused support-seeking. This work also contributes to marketing literature on social support, expanding and revising the literature's explanation about when and how support from primary sources (e.g., family) is related to consumers' support-seeking from businesses' employees and customers. Managerially, this work is relevant to businesses in consumer health domain. The key implication is that to enhance customer satisfaction and retention, businesses ought to improve the alignment between their services and consumers' support-seeking tendencies.