From Happywashing to Happytalism: Fostering Youth Well-Being Through the HEAL Framework

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.