Marketing Professor, Mindfulness Facilitator, and Coach for Wellbeing and Happiness,
helping people (especially women) put themselves first, one act of self-love at a time.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
My scholarship has pursued a clear, mission-driven question: How can marketplace actors—consumers, educators, firms, platforms, and policymakers—cultivate well-being, especially for youth and vulnerable communities, amid rising digital intensity and growing mental-health strain? My work sits at the intersection of consumer well-being, mindfulness-based interventions, and stakeholder-engaged research, and it is intentionally designed to move beyond diagnosing problems to developing and testing solutions. Across projects, I translate theory into actionable tools—interventions, frameworks, and measures—that can be implemented in real settings to reduce harm and improve quality of life. My research is intentionally impact oriented and speaks directly to urgent societal challenges. Digital overuse and platform intensity are increasingly linked to stress, self-regulation challenges, and mental-health strain, particularly among youth. At the same time, well-being burdens are not evenly distributed—vulnerable groups often face heightened pressures and fewer supportive resources. By focusing on mindfulness-based and stakeholder-engaged approaches, my research aims to generate insights that are both theoretically meaningful and practically useful, providing pathways for institutions and organizations to promote well-being in ways that are scalable, inclusive, and grounded in evidence. Importantly, my work also addresses the role of marketing and marketplace structures in shaping well-being outcomes—showing not only whether mindfulness matters, but how marketplace mechanisms and stakeholder roles can be designed to foster well-being more effectively.
Selected Publications
Peer-reviewed journal articles at the intersection of mindfulness, marketing, and wellbeing.
"From Happywashing to Happytalism: Fostering Youth Well-Being Through the HEAL Framework."
Campos Sousa, E. et al. (forthcoming, 2026). Journal of Public Policy & Marketing.
🔗 DOI pending (currently in press / online-first)
Youth are increasingly targeted by brands that position happiness as a marketable commodity, framing product appeals as means to make consumers happier. Because youth are developmentally vulnerable and immersed in digital environments, these practices raise pressing concerns for consumer welfare and public policy. We define such strategies as happywashing: misleading marketing communication practices that exploit the concept of happiness to push consumption. Repeated exposure to these appeals fosters materialism, intensifies social comparison, and diminishes subjective well-being. To address this problem, we build on happytalism , a paradigm that prioritizes well-being over material accumulation, to introduce the HEAL framework: Holistic emotional support, Empowering social support, Awareness-reframing support, and Lifestyle-changing support. Grounded in Social Cognitive Theory, HEAL proposes non-transactional brand initiatives that strengthen self-efficacy, emotional regulation, and social connection independent of purchase. By contrasting happywashing with happytalism, we contribute to Transformative Consumer Research by advancing theory on consumer well-being, offering actionable guidance for marketers to move beyond commodified happiness, and providing policymakers with conceptual foundations for regulating happiness claims. We argue that non-transactional engagement models can mitigate the harms of commodified happiness, enhance youth resilience in digital environments, and reorient marketing toward authentic individual and collective welfare.
"The Marketplace Happiness Framework for Transformative Consumer Research: Managing the Hedonic-Eudaimonic Happiness Tension." Garcia-Collart, T., Campos Sousa, E., Cruz, R. E., Scalco, L., Kumar, S., Holmes, D., Spry, A., Koçak, A., & Amaral, N. B. (forthcoming, 2026). Journal of Public Policy & Marketing.
🔗 DOI pending (in press)
Markets excel at producing short-term, individual happiness, yet they are structurally ill-equipped to ensure that such happiness translates into long-term, collective well-being. This tension reflects market incentives that reward short-term pleasure while diffusing long-term well-being and simultaneously undermine equity, sustainability, or social connections over time. In response, the World Happiness Foundation introduced the concept of "happytalism" to acknowledge the connection between personal and community well-being. Drawing on this concept, we introduce the Marketplace Happiness (MH) framework to understand, evaluate, and manage this tension by examining how consumers, brands and organizations, and policymakers can better align short-term pleasure with sustainable collective well-being. We further describe the operationalization of MH in empirically tractable ways, accounting for cultural differences and existing political realities worldwide, providing pathways for future research and implementation
"The Student-Led Digital Wellness Initiative: A Collaborative Approach to Increase Digital Wellness in High Schools."
Campos Sousa, E., & Garcia-Collart, T. (2025). Journal of the Association for Consumer Research.
🔗 https://doi.org/10.1086/738477
In response to growing concerns surrounding social media’s adverse effects on adolescent mental health, the goal of this project was the collaborative development of the Student-Led Digital Wellness Initiative (SDWI), a student-led program that integrates social media literacy and mindfulness in schools. Through a collaborative approach involving school administrators and students, this initiative empowers students to take an active role in shaping digital wellness strategies. By prioritizing collaboration at every stage, the SDWI adopts a student-led perspective that not only raises awareness of social media risks but also nurtures emotional resilience and well-being. We highlight how stakeholder collaboration is critical for developing and cocreating initiatives that are relevant, impactful, and sustainable. We emphasize that involving students in leadership roles results in programs better tailored to their needs, and likely more effective at driving meaningful, lasting change in schools, while promoting digital wellness through practical, sustainable solutions for high school communities.
"Mindful Social Media Usage: Insight and Impact from Co-Creating a Social Media Mindfulness Practice for Young Black Women." Chan, S., Bahl, S., Moore, K., van Solt, M., Cruz, R. E., Philp, M., Garcia-Collart, T., Campos Sousa, E., & Milne, G. R. (2025). European Journal of Marketing.
🔗 https://doi.org/10.1108/EJM-04-2024-0343
Purpose
This paper aims to identify key insights from the social media needs and experiences of target audience of young Black women (YBW) and apply principles of mindfulness to those insights to develop resources and practices to empower YBW to have a healthier relationship with social media.
Design/methodology/approach
Consumer behavior researchers, a mindfulness educator and nonprofit stakeholders collaborated to conduct in-depth interviews with YBW (aged 18–30) to understand their daily use, challenges and benefits of social media. The team conducted thematic analysis, which yielded six key themes used to develop a mindfulness-based social media usage handbook with six complementary modules tailored to YBW. The handbook was further refined based on feedback from the interviewees and nonprofit stakeholders.
Practical implications
The handbook helps YBW navigate social media more skillfully, with awareness and intention, and guides them toward achieving their online social media goals. Our team marketed our handbook to thousands of YBW on social media via our community partners and by contacting 500+ chapters of US college sororities for Black women. Our team continues to scale this initial impact by developing live and virtual workshops.
Social implications
Conducting in-depth interviews promoted self-awareness for interviewees and fostered their sense of agency about social media use. Qualitative findings revealed that social media behaviors and outcomes can lead to either positive or negative outcomes depending on user intention and awareness. These insights shaped the resulting Social Media Mindfulness Practice (SMMP) and handbook. Ongoing efforts to distribute these resources to YBW aim to create a lasting impact by fostering skills to build positive online experiences and communities that support their well-being.
Originality/value
This research contributes novel value by revealing research insights for YBW who are underrepresented in social media research; applying mindfulness principles to cultivate a healthier relationship with social media, rather than advocate an abstinence approach; and implementing a practical solution in the form of a handbook and forthcoming workshops to target audience.
"The Effect of Brief Mindfulness-Based Intervention on Patient Satisfaction and Loyalty After Waiting."
Campos Sousa, E., & Freire, L. (2023). Journal of Consumer Affairs.
🔗 https://doi.org/10.1111/joca.12488
This paper offers a novel, easy to execute, mindfulness-based solution to the waiting time problem at healthcare facilities in particular, with the potential to enhance consumers' experience within a waiting time scenario. Findings of four studies—one in-class experiment with undergraduates, one field study among adults in a doctor's office, one online experiment in the US, and one online experiment in Brazil—revealed that variations on a 5-min mindfulness-based intervention led to more positive perceptions and greater loyalty intentions towards the service. The findings confirm that offering mindfulness interventions to consumers while they are waiting may help reduce dissatisfaction and other negative outcomes that longer than expected waiting times might evoke.