Social Versus Cognitive Consumer Research Unlike researchers in psychology,
consumer researchers are not identified as social or cognitive, and many researchers
in the field have examined issues in both domains. However, following the com-mon distinction in psychology between the social and cognitive domains and the
increasing importance and sophistication of research on cognition, it is of interest
to study whether there has been a corresponding increase in the share of cognitive
relative to social topics studied by consumer researchers. To explore this ques-tion, two independent judges (doctoral students working in the area of consumer
behavior) classified all consumer behavior articles that have appeared in the lead-ing consumer research journals (JCR1974 –1999,Journal of Marketing Research
1969–1999, andJournal of Consumer Psychology1990–1999) based on whether
they dealt with issues that fall in the domain of social or cognitive psychology.
The exact results of this analysis depend on the manner in which articles in
the general area of social cognition (e.g. attitude, persuasion, information process-ing), which is central to consumer research, are classified. However, regardless
of whether social cognition topics are classified as social or cognitive, the qual-itative conclusion made from this analysis is that the proportion of social topics
has declined significantly, whereas the proportion of cognitive topics has corre-spondingly increased. Social areas of consumer research that have declined in
importance include such topics as family and social influences, reference groups,
attribution, and self-perception (e.g. Bearden & Etzel 1982; Folkes 1984, Scott &
Yalch 1980). Some of the cognitive topics that have increased in importance in-clude behavioral decision making (see Bettman et al 1998 for a review), memo-ry and knowledge (e.g. Alba & Hutchinson 1987), language (e.g. Schmitt &
Zhang 1998), variety seeking (e.g. McAlister 1982, Ratner et al 1999, Simon-son 1990), and preconscious processing (e.g. Janiszewski 1988). It is noteworthy
that some social topics have become more central, such as cross-cultural and ethnic
influences on buyer behavior (e.g. Deshpande & Stayman 1994), the development
of children as consumers (e.g. Gregan-Paxton & Roedder-John 1997), and gender
differences (e.g. Meyers-Levy & Maheswaran 1991).
A major change has been the decline of attitudes as the central topic of research.
In particular, the Fishbein & Ajzen (1975) multi-attribute attitude model and theory
of reasoned action received a great deal of attention from consumer researchers in
the 1970s and early 1980s, examining such questions as whether intentions mediate
the effect of attitudes on behavior and the role of the normative component in the
formation of attitudes (e.g. Lutz 1977, Miniard & Cohen 1983, Shimp & Kavas
1984; see also Bagozzi et al 1992).
Since the early 1980s, the elaboration likelihood model of Petty and Cacioppo
(e.g. Petty et al 1983) and related dual process models (Chaiken 1980, Fiske & Pavelchek 1986) have been accepted by most consumer researchers as the approach
that can best account for the diverse findings on the formation of attitudes, persua-sion, and related information processing issues (e.g. Aaker & Maheswaran 1997,
Sujan 1985). In addition, consumer researchers have started to examine persuasion
processes that relate specifically to marketing and were not derived from exist-ing psychological theories, such as the persuasion knowledge model (Friestad &
Wright 1994).
Another important development, which likely contributed to the decrease in
the proportion of attitude and persuasion research, has been the growing interest
in consumer decision making and the rise of BDT consumer research. In par-ticular, Bettman’s (1979) influential book, An Information Processing Theory of
Consumer Choice, inspired by the work of Newell & Simon (1972), Payne (1976),
and other decision-making researchers, presented a framework that describes how
information inputs are processed to achieve a decision. It emphasized the role of
short- and long-term memory, decision rules and heuristics, and other issues that
have subsequently received much attention from consumer researchers.
Finally, memory and cognitive elaboration is another cognitive area that has
received growing attention from consumer researchers, including the use of
principles of memory operation to explain persuasive communication effects (e.g.
Johar & Pham 1999, Keller 1987). For example, according to the resource-matching
hypothesis (Norman & Borrow 1975; see Anand & Sternthal 1990 for a review),
persuasion is enhanced or hindered depending on the match between the level of
cognitive resources available for message processing and the level of cognitive
resources that the message requires (e.g. Meyers-Levy & Tybout 1997, Unnava
et al 1996).
Research on “Hot” Versus “Cold” Aspects of Consumer Behavior A great
deal of attitude and decision-making research has examined what might be con-sidered “cold” aspects of consumer behavior. “Cold” aspects include such top-ics as the role of beliefs in attitude formation, attention, perception, informa-tion acquisition, learning, expertise, attribution, and decision rules. Conversely,
“hot” aspects include such topics as the role of affect and mood, arousal, regret,
low-involvement peripheral persuasion, hedonic aspects of consumption, conflict,
and self-expressive motives for brand preference. In psychology there has been
growing emphasis on the role of emotions and other “hot” aspects of cognition
(see, e.g. Zajonc 1998).
We examined the proportion over time of “cold” and “hot” topics in con-sumer research based on a classification of articles that have been published
in the leading consumer research journals (JCR1974 –1999,Journal of Mar-keting Research1969–1999, andJournal of Consumer Psychology1990–1999).
Counting only articles that the judges coded as “cold” or “hot” (excluding the
“other” category), there has been a decline in the relative proportion of “cold”
topic articles from about 85% in the 1970s, to 75% in the 1980s, and 64% in
the 1990s. For example, until recently decision-making research was clearly a “cold” domain, perhaps reflecting the cold economic benchmark often used by
decision researchers. However, BDT consumer researchers have recently started
to study the role of emotions in decision making (e.g. Bettman 1993). For exam-ple, Luce (1998) examined the effect of emotional tradeoff difficulty on the type
and amount of information processing (see also Pham 1998, Shiv & Fedorikhin
1999). Other “hot” topics include, for example, affective responses to advertising
(e.g. Baumgartner et al 1997, Edell & Chapman-Burke 1987), consumers’ fun and
fantasies (Holbrook & Hirschman 1982), and measures of consumption emotions
(Richins 1997).
In summary, a review of articles published in the leading consumer research
journals reveals two trends, both reflecting similar trends in psychology. There
has been a decline in the proportion of classic social topics and an increase in the
proportion of cognitive topics. Further, the proportion of “hot” topics has increased
relative to “cold” topics, though the latter category still accounts for the majority
of consumer research articles.
