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Diffusion of fake news and pseudo-facts is becoming increasingly fast-paced and widespread, making it more difficult for the general public to separate reliable information from misleading content. The purpose of this article is to provide a more advanced understanding of the underlying processes that contribute to the spread of health- and beauty-related rumors and of the mechanisms that can mitigate the risks associated with the diffusion of fake news.

By adopting denialism as a conceptual lens, this article introduces a framework that aims to explain the mechanisms through which fake news and pseudo-facts propagate within the health and beauty industry. Three exemplary case studies situated within the context of the health and beauty industry reveal the persuasiveness of these principles and shed light on the diffusion of false and misleading information.

The following seven denialistic marketing tactics that contribute to diffusion of fake news can be identified: (1) promoting a socially accepted image; (2) associating brands with a healthy lifestyle; (3) use of experts; (4) working with celebrity influencers; (5) selectively using and omitting facts; (6) sponsoring research and pseudo-science; and (7)exploiting regulatory loopholes. Through a better understanding of how fake news spreads, brand managers can simultaneously improve the optics that surround their firms, promote sales organically and reinforce consumers’ trust toward the brand.

Within the wider context of the health and beauty industry, this article sets to explore the mechanisms through which fake news and pseudo-facts propagate and influence brands and consumers. The article offers several contributions not only to the emergent literature on fake news but also to the wider marketing and consumer behavior literature.

In response to the rapid growth of the cosmeceutical industry, this study aims to investigate young female consumers' confidence in cosmeceuticals and the perceived competency of cosmeceutical product advertising.

An online survey of 224 young female participants was recruited from an online national young consumer panel from Zoomerang. This group of participants mirrored the characteristics of the largest segment in the cosmeceutical market in the USA.

The results suggest that the perceived information utility of cosmeceutical product advertising is the most significant factor in engaging young female consumers' interests and desire to try cosmeceuticals. Moreover, young female consumers' self‐evaluation on body esteem, their perceived effectiveness of product claims, their interests in reading such advertising, and their attitudes toward advertising jointly affect their likelihood to take cosmeceutical products. Not surprisingly, self‐evaluation on body esteem predicted a negative influence on product purchase intention. As their self‐evaluation on body esteem increases, the likelihood to purchase cosmeceuticals decreases.

The study adds insights on a fast‐growing, but understudied, product category, cosmeceutical products, to the research stream and expands the knowledge on the information utility of cosmeceutical product advertising on young female consumers.

This paper aims to explore the factors influencing the purchasing patterns of eco-friendly cosmetics and beauty care products among female customers in Mauritius. It also investigates upon the relative significance of these factors in predicting the preference to buy and recommend eco-friendly cosmetics and beauty care products to others.

The paper applies the data reduction technique by using exploratory factor analysis on a sample of 150 female consumers and condenses a set of 35 attributes into a list of eight comprehensible factors influencing the purchasing patterns of eco-friendly and beauty care products among females in Mauritius. Multiple regression analysis was also conducted to investigate upon the importance of the eight dimensions in influencing the behavioural intentions of females to purchase eco-friendly products and their likeliness to engage in referral for eco-friendly products.

The factor analysis identified that the purchasing patterns for eco-friendly cosmetics and beauty care products is influenced by a combination of eight factors namely: “women lifestyles, self-image health and economic considerations”, “ethical consumerism among females”, “pharmacological essence of green cosmetics and beauty care products”, “visual appeal and physical cues in cosmetic stores”, “price-conscious decisions and effective promotion”, “belief on ethical claims in green messages”, “brand image and usage experience” and “sales representatives and social influences”. The results of the regression analysis have also suggested that the behavioural intention and referral of female customers is primarily derived from one predictor factor related to “women lifestyles, self-image, health and economic conditions”.

In terms of marketing strategies, cosmetic and beauty care organisations should promote greater ethical concerns among female customers through effective green advertising messages. Greater emphasis should be placed on the pharmacological essence of green advertising. Cosmetic executives should also focus on health-related benefits while marketing cosmetics and beauty care products.

The paper aims to fill up the significant gap in the literature on purchasing patterns for eco-friendly cosmetics and beauty care products among female customers. This study remains one of few research work designed to address different factors influencing the purchasing patterns for green cosmetics and beauty care products in the context of developing countries such as Mauritius. Yet, it would serve as a roadmap for cosmetics and beauty care companies to understand the factors impacting on purchasing patterns of eco-friendly cosmetics and beauty care products in similar contexts.

This paper aims to historicise the contemporary chlorophyll trend through the first academic study of its early marketing in Sweden (1950–1953). Using multimodal critical discourse analysis, it demonstrates how brands used advertisements to convince female consumers of chlorophyll’s necessity to fulfil certain aspirational goals.

In all, 150 advertisements for chlorophyll products were collected from the Swedish Historical Newspaper Archive, as well as 600 additional advertisements for the three most popular products (toothpaste/mouthwash, sanitary towels and soap) from 1940 to 1950 and from 1954 to 1964. Then, multimodal critical discourse analysis was used to investigate how the products were marketed before, during and after the chlorophyll trend, identifying the general themes and linguistic/semiotic structures of the advertisements.

This paper shows how the commercial use of chlorophyll offered a lucrative opportunity for marketers, acting as a “tabula rasa” on which they could use discourses of science, nature, idealised femininity and luxury to draw connections with health, modernity and beauty, despite the product having no real purpose or value.

Viewing this fad from a historical perspective emphasises how brands, marketers and influencers continue to capitalise on the anxieties of female consumers with promises around beauty, hygiene and health. It, thus, offers us critical distance to reflect on contemporary claims about chlorophyll’s health benefits to make informed choices.

This paper aims to challenge the assumption that brands of everyday products have only used lifestyle marketing in the past 30 years by conducting the first case study of the marketing practices of the Swedish toothpaste brand Stomatol (1910–1940). Through visual social semiotic analysis, it explores how the brand was a pioneer in lifestyle marketing, using discourses of modernity, beauty and the Swedish “way of life” to sell its toothpaste.

Two hundred Stomatol advertisements were collected from the Swedish Historical Newspaper Archive and analysed using visual social semiotics. The analysis considers how the idea of a cultural Swedishness centred around modernity and beauty developed between 1910 and 1940, and how both linguistic and semiotic resources were used to make these claims seem credible.

At a time when its main adversaries were capitalising upon science in their advertisements to construct authority and credibility, Stomatol instead targeted lifestyle. Modernity, beauty and the Swedish “way of life” were central themes of their marketing campaigns, yet the way these themes were articulated varied between 1910 and 1940 in accordance with changing popular discourse. This made Stomatol more competitive than other toothpaste brands because it was able to sell an experience rather than a product, turning it into Sweden’s most popular toothpaste.

This paper demonstrates the importance of case studies to challenge the assumption that toothpaste brands have only used lifestyle marketing in the past 30 years (a claim based on Anglocentrism). It also showcases the need to further investigate non-Anglo countries when conducting research into lifestyle marketing to build a more nuanced perspective on its origins and the supposed novelty of (largely) US practices. Thus, Stomatol makes an important case for Sweden as a trailblazer in lifestyle marketing.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing is split into seven sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Marketing strategy; Customer service; Sales management; Promotion; Product management; Marketing research/customer behavior; Sundry.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the proportions of health‐related content in non‐program time on Australian television, and how this relates to channel, product category, program genre and whether it is an advertisement or public service announcement (PSA).

Australian prime time television was recorded across three commercial television stations in Sydney. Non‐program content (NPC) was coded according to the channel, program genre, length of content and product advertised. In total, 44 hours of programming was recorded.

Not surprisingly, significant differences were found in the percentage of health‐related content between advertisements (22 percent) and PSAs (67 percent). Again unsurprisingly there was also a significant relationship between the product category and health‐related content (χ²=366.601, p=0.000), but also between health‐related content and program genre (χ²=20.594, p=0.024), particularly situation comedies (31 percent) and sport (15 percent). No difference was found in the percentage of health‐related content between the channels.

Differences existing in the amount of NPC across program genre suggest that viewers of programs with high rates of health‐related content in advertising may have higher exposure to product dependant health information.

Health information is examined in a general sample without focus on particular demographics or health topics and the role of program genre is investigated.

The purpose of this paper is to perform a preliminary examination of informational and transformational advertising appeals in contemporary advertisements for healthy and unhealthy foods.

Western (European) food advertisements published in Belgian food magazines were content analyzed to identify informational and transformational advertising appeals. Belgian food advertising was selected as an adequate representation of Western (European) food advertising because marketing in Belgium is permeated by international influences (cf. Belgian Federal Government). Advertisements were sampled from three magazines over a period of five years, from January 2009 to December 2013. The sample comprised 325 unique advertisements, including 159 for healthy foods and 166 for unhealthy foods.

The results of the content analysis indicated that healthy food advertisements in Belgium are mainly informational, whereas unhealthy food advertisements are mainly transformational.

This preliminary examination of informational and transformational advertising appeals in contemporary healthy food and unhealthy food advertisements shows that healthy food advertisements in Belgium are mainly informational, whereas the segment of consumers which is precarious – people low-involved with healthy food – are mainly attracted by transformational advertising appeals. The contrasting transformational strategy of unhealthy-food advertisements can provide inspiration for healthy food advertisers to help increase healthy food consumption.

The aim of this article is to explore how, and to what extent, American advertising and its consumerist messages infiltrated Irish society in the period 1922-1960.

The article is based on an analysis of primary and secondary sources.

The article argues that American advertising practices and messages influenced the advertising industry in Ireland. It also contributed to the technical, style and content of Irish advertising and informed the Irish woman's view of American consumerism. Finally, it suggests that Irish society was more open to external influences, which challenges the narrative of Ireland as a closed society before 1960.

The article is based on extensive original research and opens up a number of new areas of research relating to the history of consumerism and advertising in Ireland.

Under Saudi Vision 2030, there is a forthcoming raise of support to small- or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from the current 20 per cent of GDP to 35 per cent; thus, SMEs’ access to finance is becoming easier. At the same time, the cosmetics retail industry is expected to rapidly grow further in the next few years, on account of the already mounting demand and easy availability of cosmetics through online channels. The purpose of this study is to explore the use of beauty Instagram influencers in advertising as a tool to increase competitiveness for SMEs.

An exploratory research design was used and in-depth interviews were conducted to get a better understanding of female Saudi young adults’ perceptions with regards to trust towards Instagram influencers, electronic word of mouth (eWOM) and advertising.

SMEs can benefit greatly from eWOM in their quest for competitiveness. Therefore, when a beauty influencer on Instagram advertises a product to SMEs followers this leads to increased awareness and purchase intention. The findings indicated that the participants are quite sceptical when receiving reviews or promotion from beauty influencers on social media, as they rarely regard them as authentic. Moreover participants seem to trust influential beauty Instagrammers when they had a positive experience with the influencer before. Trust, honesty and authenticity were important factors that increase the impact of eWOM.

This paper offers an in-depth understanding of the use of Instagram advertising and eWOM in a rapidly developing industry and explores these as key communication pathways for modern SMEs in their effort to achieve resilience and competitiveness.