Impacts of Post-Truth Conditions on a Susceptible Market: The Case of Nicotine Vaping

The post-truth era is characterized by widespread mistrust, competing truth claims, and polarization that impact some markets to a greater degree than others. This study introduces the concept of post-truth markets as those which are highly susceptible to being impacted by post-truth conditions. Three research questions guide this study: Why are some markets susceptible to the impacts of post-truth conditions? What is the impact of post-truth conditions on susceptible markets? And, how do consumers navigate post-truth markets? Taking the nicotine vaping market as an exemplar of post-truth markets, this study uses critical discourse analysis to examine qualitative data, including archival data (legal, news media, industry, and advocacy texts), in-depth interviews with consumers and advocates, and observational data. The theoretical insights generated indicate that markets affected by historical stigma, restrictive authority interventions, and changing expert opinions are susceptible to becoming post-truth markets. Further, the data analysis suggests that post-truth conditions lead to contestation in such markets, including moral contestation which has been noted in prior literature, and epistemic contestation which this study introduces. Consumers develop various strategies based on a post-truth subjectivity to navigate post-truth markets, including alternate truth-seeking (through relational and embodied knowledge), entrepreneurship, and activism. This research introduces several new concepts to consumer research, including the concepts of post-truth markets, post-truth subjectivity, and epistemic contestation. The findings also contribute to the growing literatures on marketplace contestation, activism, stigma, and the role of emotions in consumption. Finally, the findings have implications for various stakeholders in the nicotine vaping market, as well as other post-truth markets.