The Moment and Place for a Special Issue

Introduction: The Moment and Place for a Special Issue

David Glen Mick*

Electronically published August 13, 2008

These are more than interesting times. They are the times in which the ideology and practices of consumption have multiplied across the earth to levels of complexity, subtlety, and influence that were unimaginable just a few decades ago.

The problems and challenges related to consumer behaviors today include, but are not restricted to, unhealthy eating, effective and safe use of the Internet, substance abuse (e.g., alcohol, drugs), tobacco consumption, poor financial planning, aging and being elderly, disablements and impairments, indigence and illiteracy, education and socialization of young consumers, sexually transmitted diseases, and environmental deterioration. At the same time, many consumer behaviors support and enhance life. These include, but are not limited to, hobbies, exercise, festivals and celebrations, sustainable consumption behaviors (e.g., efficient water use, recycling), donations and communal consumption, and an array of artistic endeavors (e.g., music, painting). Over the years, unfortunately, the field of consumer research has generally underprioritized scholarship for alleviating problems and advancing opportunities of well-being. Related contributions from the Journal of Consumer Research (JCR) have been correspondingly irregular.

Since its founding in 1974, the Journal of Consumer Research has been the foremost learned outlet of its kind. It has welcomed a diversity of topics and research paradigms and consistently included the highest quality of theoretical advances and methodological sophistication. However, in reviewing the supplement that the journal published in 2004 of all the abstracts of articles it published during its initial 30 years, inconsistencies and gaps of research on human and earthly welfare become clear. Splitting the first 30 years in half, the journal published, for example, 30 articles on energy and conservation between 1974 and 1989 and then none on those subjects in the following 15-year period. Eight articles on consumer credit and debt also appeared between 1974 and 1989 and then none in the subsequent 15 years. Fifteen articles on consumer education and information were published in the first decade and a half but then only one-third (five) as many in the subsequent 15-year period. For other topics such asproduct safety, nutrition, tobacco/alcohol/drugs, the poor, the elderly, and product prices in different socioeconomic contexts, the figures are similar.

There are numerous and interacting reasons for these trends in JCR, chief among them being (with no little irony) an era of business globalization and consumer spending in the late twentieth century that had few historical parallels in terms of reach or degree. It was one big consumption party across