Breaking the vicious cycle of health management: how compensatory strategies increase consumers' persistence after experiencing failure

Purpose Consumers pursuing health goals often experience two types of failures: health-management behavioral failure and outcome failure. Both can undermine intentions to persist in health behaviors. This research examines how these failures influence persistence intentions and proposes two intervention strategies (i.e. conservative and breakthrough) based on compensatory control theory to restore sense of control and encourage persistence in health behaviors. Design/methodology/approach Four studies are developed to test these hypotheses. Specifically, in the context of keeping exercise, Study 1A examined whether familiarity and novelty strategies could effectively alleviate the negative consequences of behavioral failure and outcome failure, respectively, which demonstrates H1a and H1b. Study 1B further investigated the differentiated compensatory effects of self-production and non-self-production strategies across the two types of failure, which demonstrates H2a and H2b. To further enhance the robustness of the findings, Studies 2A and 2B replicated the above investigations in the context of dietary control, providing additional evidence for H1 and H2, respectively. Findings The findings of four experiments are convergent and indicate the effectiveness of two types of intervention strategies, namely, the adoption of conservative strategies (i.e. familiarity and non-self-production strategies) to deal with health-management behavioral failure and the adoption of breakthrough strategies (i.e. novelty and self-production strategies) to deal with health-management outcome failure. Originality/value The current research contributes to health behavior management by distinguishing between behavioral and outcome failures and demonstrating their distinct psychological consequences. It further introduces compensatory intervention strategies that restore sense of control and improve persistence intentions. The findings offer insights for health-related marketers and policymakers seeking to design more effective behavior-support interventions.