Marketing decision-making and anxiety: Integrative conceptual review and theory development

The nature of marketing decision-making is varied, complex and at times conflicting, creating a fertile ground for the development of anxiety. Compounding the importance of anxiety reduction in marketing decision-makers from a health and wellbeing perspective, is the fact that anxiety can harm creativity and innovation, and therefore marketing success. Yet, there is a surprising paucity of work examining marketing decision-making and anxiety. This paper addresses this issue and proposes a reverse causal ordering between decision-making and anxiety, by means of an Integrative Conceptual Review (ICR). The ICR brings together the fields of decision theory, goal orientation, anxiety, cognitive behavior reprogramming, and neurochemistry. A theory of how hybridized decision-making (the combination of utility maximization and satisficing) and shifts in goal orientation (toward internal locus of control and approach-orientations) can help reduce anxiety is advanced. This paper contributes to theory by positing a reverse causal order between decision-making and anxiety in a population that is typically ignored in anxiety literature, but key to sustainable performance. A mental health tripartite ecosystem involving marketing educators (universities), businesses and other organizations (employers), and legislating bodies (governments) is also proposed to help pre-empt anxiety in marketing decision-makers.