"Once again, Morris B. Holbrook has combined insightful commentary on the field of consumer behavior with a readable and enjoyable writing style. A must read for anyone interested in the latest thinking in the field." Ron Hill, Professor and Chair of Marketing, Villanova University "A delightfully idiosyncratic history of consumer research. What enthralled readers will get from his stylish exposition is a socio-psychocultural description of the consumer through the ages, along with a description of attempts to understand the consumer. Scholarly yet readable, Holbrook's history is a classic study of consumerism too. Editor's Choice." --Business Today In recent years, consumer research has emerged as an academic specialty of growing concern to marketing scholars and of increased importance on today's university campuses. Courses on consumer behavior--taught in virtually every academic program of business or management--draw heavily on work by consumer researchers. Despite this wide and growing recognition as an emergent area of study, no book appears to exist on the history, nature, and types of consumer research or on the variegated and often hotly debated issues that surround this field of inquiry. Consumer Research fills this gap by providing an account of the recent historical developments in consumer research and by showing how the evolution of this discipline has affected the research. The author offers a personal and subjective glance at how various changes in the field have come about and how they have shaped studies of consumption. Marketing scholars, graduate students, and upper-level undergraduates concentrating in marketing will find Consumer Research irresistible reading.

Methods for Consumer Research, Volume One: New Approaches to Classic Methods brings together world leading experts in global consumer research who provide a fully comprehensive state-of-the-art coverage of advances in the classical methods of consumer science. The book touches on the latest developments in qualitative techniques, including coverage of both focus groups and social media, while also focusing on liking, a fundamental principle of consumer science, consumer segmentation, and the influence of extrinsic product characteristics, such as packaging and presentation on consumer liking. In conjunction with the second volume, which covers alternative approaches and special applications, this book is an invaluable reference for academics working in the fields of in-sensory and consumer science, psychology, marketing and nutrition. And, with examples of the methodology being applied throughout, it serves as a practical guide to research and development managers in both food and non-food companies. Presents a fully comprehensive coverage of the latest developments in the classical methodologies of consumer research Provides examples of successful application of the methodologies presented Includes focus groups and social media discussions Encompasses consumer segmentation, with a focus on psychographics and genetics

Daily existence is more interconnected to consumer behaviors than ever before, encompassing many issues of well-being. Problems include unhealthy eating; credit card mismanagement; alcohol, tobacco, pornography, and gambling abuse; marketplace discrimination; and ecological deterioration; as well as at-risk groups who are impoverished, impaired, or elderly. Opportunities for well-being via consumer behaviors include empowerment via the Internet, product sharing, leisure pursuits, family consumption, and pro-environmental activities, among others. In 2005 the Association for Consumer Research launched Transformative Consumer Research (TCR). Its mission is to foster research on quality of life that is both rigorous and applied for better assisting consumers, their caregivers, policy administrators, and executives. This edited volume includes 33 chapters on a wide range of topics by expert international authors. All royalties from sales of this book are donated to the Association to support TCR grants.

Methodological advances in consumer behavior are increasing rapidly. We can characterize these advances by work in two logically separate but functionally related areas: (a) the philosophical underpinnings of our methods, and (b) the analytic strategies for examining the phenomena of interest in the field. An important aspect in communicating these advances is the demonstration of their use on focal problems in consumer behavior. Current research strategies and analytic techniques in the field of consumer research reflect the dominant logical empiricist epistemology. The develop ment of new epistemologies (e.g., scientific relativism, hypothetical realism), however, is likely to modify the dominant logical empiricist approach and is also likely to influence the analytic strategies used to conduct research. For instance, with the increased awareness of scientific relativism and hypothet ical realism, greater emphasis is anticipated for idiographic rather than nomo thetic designs, for observational rather than experimental designs, for process rather than static analyses, and for more sophisticated techniques for summariz ing findings across studies. The major theme underlying this volume is that conceptual, analytic, and sub stantive diversity are essential for consumer behavior research to advance. Col lectively, the chapters we present in this volume are a diverse set of perspectives for the study of consumer behavior. This volume is organized into three parts: (1) philosophical orientations toward consumer behavior research, (2) analytic strategies for consumer behavior research, and (3) applications of these orientations and strategies to current research areas.

Consumer Research: Postcards from the Edge is a collection of cutting-edge essays by leading exponents of postmodern consumer research from Europe and America. Topics covered include: * chronicle, composition and fabulation in consumer research * postmodern approaches to pluralism in consumer research * marketing in cyberspace * poststructuralism in marketing * semiotics in marketing and consumer research