Knowledge that Transforms

The inaugural issue of the Journal of Consumer Research (JCR) was published 50 years ago, in June 1974. The first issue was eclectic, covering a wide range of topics from consumer economics to psychological theory. This diversity reflected the Journal's broad sponsorship base, including seven of the now eleven sponsoring organizations, and continues to represent the multidisciplinary orientation of the Journal and the field. The then-nascent academic field of consumer research is now a well-established and thriving field due, in large part, to this journal. This 50th anniversary special issue is a testament to the scholars who have published here over five productive decades. This issue includes conceptual and empirical articles, reviews of research areas and new insights, and historical as well as futuristic perspectives. Some articles reflect on the Journal over the years and the academic discipline of consumer research, considering the relevance, innovativeness, and impact of research in our field. Others explore important consumer theories or emerging marketplace phenomena. We structure the articles using editorial essays on five key JCR themes: consumer information processing and behavioral decision-making (Schmitt), society and culture (Cotte), innovation and emerging topics (Stephen), consumer research methods (Wood), and the Journal itself (Giesler). These essays are based on interviews with prominent consumer scholars who have shaped consumer research and made significant contributions over the years. They provide both a reflection on where we have been and a perspective on where we are going. In looking back at 50 years of research and insight for academic researchers, marketing practitioners, and other stakeholders, we celebrate the diversity of ideas, constructs, and methodologies that characterize our field. In this very special issue, we invite you to join us in the intellectual celebration. Happy Birthday, JCR!

Consumers have an intuitive belief in “karma” which dictates that bad (good) actions lead to bad (good) outcomes. Consequently, consumers perceive a causal connection between their own wrongdoing toward a company and a subsequent service failure that they experience in their interactions with another company. Eight experiments employing different contexts consistently show that consumers who have previously wronged a company (compared to those in a control group) evaluate another unrelated company more positively in response to a service failure by this company. We argue that this more positive evaluation is due to the greater blame consumers assign to themselves as dictated by the “karmic beliefs” held by consumers whereby the subsequent poor service by a different firm is seen as a karmic payback for their own prior transgression. The proposed effect is mitigated when a person’s karmic belief is reduced. We also examine a number of alternative explanations (e.g., negative experiences, moral balancing, and immanent justice reasoning) and find that our observed effect is more consistent with a karma-based account.

Most relatively affluent consumers are fighting a losing battle with material disorder in their homes. No matter how hard they try to rein it in, material disorder always comes out on top. We argue that part of the continued obduracy of material disorder is because of its messy understanding. We clarify material disorder’s muddled conceptual boundaries by theorizing from an ethnographic investigation of consumers who recently dealt with material disorder through decluttering their homes. Leveraging twin analytical lenses that we label the possessive materialist and post-materialist lenses, we surface two distinct yet inter-dependent forms of disorder (disorder-as-untidiness and disorder-as-clutteredness) that together plague consumers’ homes. We contribute a pluralized understanding of material disorder, that is, disorders not disorder. We also offer novel insight into agentic struggles between consumers and home possessions over material dis/orders.

Looking back at 50 years of Journal of Consumer Research methods and interviewing some of the field’s most respected methodologists, this article seeks to craft a core set of best practices for scholars in consumer research. From perennial issues like conceptual validity to emerging issues like data integrity and replicability, the advice offered by our experts can help scholars improve the way they approach their research questions, provide empirical evidence that instills confidence, use new tools to make research more inclusive or descriptive of the “real world,” and seek to become thought leaders.

The assessment of consumer scholarship must move beyond a mere counting of the number of “A”s on a researcher’s CV to include at least some measure of impact. To facilitate a broader assessment of scholarship in consumer research, we provide detailed statistics on the productivity and citation impact of the field’s 340 main gatekeepers: the editors, associate editors, and editorial board members of the Journal of Consumer Research and the Journal of Consumer Psychology. In addition, we introduce a new metric, called the p-index, which can be interpreted as an indicator of a researcher’s propensity for thought leadership. Using this metric, we show that productivity and thought leadership do not necessarily go hand in hand in consumer research and that a combination of the two is a good predictor of the level of esteem that consumer scholars enjoy among their peers and of the receipt of major career awards. Our analyses provide greater transparency into how productivity, citation impact, and propensity for thought leadership are currently distributed among prominent consumer scholars. Furthermore, the detailed descriptive statistics reported can serve as useful benchmarks against which other consumer researchers’ records may be meaningfully compared.

Gender bias is widely recognized as having negative effects on women in business, including on outcomes such as hiring, promotion, pay, and access to venture capital funding. This study identifies a strategy that women business owners can employ to boost business outcomes. Across five preregistered studies (N = 2585), including a field study, affixing the owner attribute label “woman-owned business” can engender positive business outcomes, including perceptions of business competence and service quality (studies 1 and 2). These effects are driven by an increase in perceptions of the business owner’s agency (study 3). Affixing a gender-based owner attribute label is especially effective in situations that lack other credible cues of competence (study 4) and in industries that are perceived as difficult to succeed in (study 5). The present work advances our understanding of stereotypes, discrimination, and identity in the consumer marketplace, and it offers practical implications for business owners in traditionally marginalized groups who face—and must combat—stereotypes.

With increasing longevity, the need for institutional elderly care has become commonplace. This study explores the experiences of elderly care consumers in institutional care settings, which we define as the “elderscape”—a heterotopic place shaped by the marketization of care. Drawing from 24 in-depth interviews with elderly care consumers, their family caregivers, and professional caregivers, we present a model of elderly care consumers' navigation patterns and identity processes in the elderscape. The transition to the elderscape often compels elderly consumers to strive to preserve their identities. Boundaries defined by market logic and professional care logic require elderly care consumers to navigate these constraints, sometimes adapting their identities. As a result, distinct navigation patterns emerge: rebuilding personal connections, revaluating possessions, reconsidering activities, and reclaiming space. Furthermore, the identity preservation efforts of elderly care consumers are complicated by the interventions of family caregivers. The findings highlight the dual nature of family caregivers' impact on elderly consumers' identity processes. Depending on their motivations—such as care, obligation, or nostalgia—family caregivers engage in patterned actions that either support or destabilize the elderly consumers' identity processes. This research provides valuable insights for care institutions, family caregivers, and care consumers alike.

Interracial couples are increasingly featured in marketing messages, yet little is known about how their representation influences consumer behavior. Across six experiments (N = 4,956) and a field study on Facebook, interracial couples in marketing appeals enhance brand outcomes relative to monoracial dominant (i.e., White) couples, but decrease brand outcomes relative to monoracial nondominant (i.e., minority) couples. These effects stem from how the racial composition of dominant (vs. nondominant) members within a couple either amplifies or dilutes perceived warmth. Monoracial couples possess consistent stereotype attributes, with dominant (vs. nondominant) groups typically seen as lower in warmth. Thus, monoracial couple warmth is amplified: monoracial dominant couples are seen as less warm (i.e., negative amplification), and monoracial nondominant couples as warmer (i.e., positive amplification) than the individuals in the couple. Interracial couples possess inconsistent racial attributes, inducing stereotype dilution with intermediate levels of perceived warmth. Warmth drives brand outcomes above and beyond brand diversity, social desirability, and brand morality. Effects are moderated by consumers’ social dominance orientation and whether the monoracial dominant couple is nondominant along another dimension (i.e., sexual orientation). This work holds theoretical implications for stereotyping research and provides practical insight into multiracial marketing.

Consumers generally prefer precise probabilities or outcomes over imprecise ranges with the same expected value, a bias known as “ambiguity aversion.” We argue that two elementary principles of numerical cognition explain great heterogeneity in this bias, affecting consumer choices in many domains where options are characterized by varying levels of uncertainty (e.g., lotteries, discounts, investment products, vaccines, etc.). The first principle, the “compression effect,” stipulates that consumers’ mental number lines are increasingly compressed at greater number magnitudes. This alone suffices to predict ambiguity aversion as it causes a midpoint (e.g., $40) to be perceived as closer to the upper bound of a range (e.g., $60) compared to its lower bound (e.g., $20). Furthermore, as the compression effect distorts the mental number line especially at lower numbers, it follows that ambiguity aversion should decrease around greater numbers. The second principle, the “left-digit effect” causes a range’s relative attractiveness to decrease (increase) disproportionately with every left-digit transition in its lower (upper) bound, thus increasing (decreasing) ambiguity aversion. Due to the overall compression effect, the impact of the left-digit effect increases at greater numbers. We present 34 experiments (N = 10,634) to support the theory’s predictions and wide applicability.

Products often aim to help consumers achieve desired outcomes such as increasing energy levels or removing fabric stains. These products typically work via rich causal paths. The current research suggests that the structure of these paths influences consumer judgments of product efficacy. In particular, sequential steps in these paths can evoke distinct directionalities—either increasing or decreasing variables in each step along the way. For example, a face cream could be described as “increasing the turnover of skin cells to reduce wrinkles.” Under our framework, the action influencing skin cells would correspond to increasing directionality, while the action influencing wrinkles would correspond to decreasing directionality. Ten experiments provide evidence that consumers prefer products with directionally consistent causal chains (i.e., all steps evoking the same directionality) over those with directionally inconsistent ones (i.e., steps evoking contrasting directionalities). This occurs because consumers find directionally consistent causal chains easier to process, which in turn leads them to infer higher efficacy from products working via such consistent chains. These findings advance our understanding of how consumers evaluate product descriptions and provide prescriptions for marketers tasked with composing product descriptions to convey efficacy.