Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This article analyzes 12 years of recent scholarly research on consumer behavior published in the five leading international journals in this field. Analyzing academic contributions to a specific area of research provides valuable insights into how it has evolved over a defined period. The approach was to briefly discuss content analysis and its application in scholarly literature review studies. The methodology used here involves the classification of topics to evaluate key trends in consumer behavior literature. It includes a ranking of topics published, typology of the published articles, the research classification in terms of methodologies, and analysis techniques. The most cited articles in the field and within each journal are also examined. The comprehensive literature review of consumer behavior research undertaken in this article could advance the discipline of consumer behavior research by elucidating the evolution of consumer behavior literature in the studied period.

Keywords

consumer behavior content analysis literature review consumer behavior research trends

Introduction

Consumer behavior has always been an area of major interest for social science researchers, witnessing an explosion over the past 50 years (MacInnis & Folkes, 2010). Accordingly, literature on this topic has been the center of attention in a number of previous studies (Arndt, 1986; Battalio et al., 1974; Belk et al., 2012; Hameed, Waqas, Aslam, Bilal, & Umair, 2014; Hawkins & Mothersbaugh, 2009; Howard & Sheth, 1968; Robertson & Kassarjian, 1991; Solomon, 2013). Literature on consumer behavior is diverse and extensive as changes in society, economics, and technology affect the way consumers behave.

Inevitably, these changes lead to changed consumer behavior studies by which, when, how, and why the topics are studied. Like any other discipline, systematic analysis of the knowledge development status of consumer behavior field is critical in ensuring its future growth (Williams & Plouffe, 2007). It is of a greater importance for a field of research such as consumer behavior that, as MacInnis and Folkes (2010) claimed, is thriving by the growing number of articles and topics examined. One way of conducting this systematic analysis is through studying scholarly literature, which can illustrate a discipline’s intellectual history (Pasadeos, Phelps, & Kim, 1998). In this regard, to assess a discipline’s accrued knowledge, in-depth reviews of research published in peer-reviewed journals are the most relevant and useful resources (Üsdiken & Pasadeos, 1995; Williams & Plouffe, 2007). The importance of consumer behavior in the different disciplines of business literature also suggests the need for an up-to-date look at the literature in this field. Beyond helping consumer behavior scholars and practitioners develop a better understanding of the direction in which the field is progressing and identify the gaps, such studies will provide a guideline for them in positioning their future research and marketing efforts.

In this regard, a technique such content analysis, which can be used to analyze message content and handling, is ideal for conducting such literature review studies. As an observational research method, content analysis systematically evaluates the symbolic content of all forms of recorded communications (Sattari, 2012). It can be considered as an empirical starting point generating new research evidence about the nature and effect of specific communications (Kolbe & Burnett, 1991; Vallet-Bellmunt, Martínez-Fernández, & Capó-Vicedo, 2011). Content analysis not only helps identify central issues to the field but can also help to reveal areas where more work needs to be undertaken, particularly if these are considered to be important and defining issues in the discipline (Cokley, Caldwell, Miller, & Muhammad, 2001). Such integrative review of consumer behavior research as a diverse discipline with an overwhelming scope in peer-reviewed journals is necessary if the field is to progress in a systematic fashion. Moreover, although content analysis of journals can be time-consuming and data intensive, such studies provide direction into future areas of needed inquiry in the field by offering insight about the topical, methodological, and theoretical trends into research communities (Williams & Plouffe, 2007).

According to Buboltz, Miller, and Williams (1999), an examination of articles published in a journal reveals the trends and issues that impact the discipline. A content analysis of journal articles within a specific discipline allows for an examination of the kinds of topics that are deemed important to the particular field the journal represents (Cokley et al., 2001). In consumer studies, marketing research, and other business disciplines, literature investigations can also provide insights into the specific journals’ contributions to the field as well as the specific published works (Sattari, 2012). This, in turn, can be used to describe a discipline’s intellectual history (Pasadeos et al., 1998). A comprehensive content analysis of peer-reviewed journal publications in a field encourages the scholars to assess the entire “forest” of knowledge by taking a step back from their individual “trees” (Williams & Plouffe, 2007).

Such studies have been conducted within a variety of disciplines based on publications in the most respected journals. Two examples are the Pasadeos et al. (1998) and West (2007) studies reporting on the impact of advertising on researchers during different periods of time. Buboltz et al. (1999) and Cokley et al. (2001) have contributed similar studies in psychology. Others have targeted the consumer behavior field such as the studies done by Kassarjian (1977) and Helgeson, Kluge, Mager, and Taylor (1984), but there is no current review of the field. Therefore, given the importance of consumer behavior research, a comprehensive literature study of more recent contributions to this area of research is warranted.

In this regard, this article serves to assess the structure and evolution of consumer behavior research content in business disciplines. The purpose of this literature review is to systematically review consumer behavior research over a 12-year period in five major journals in the field. Such an examination of diverse research in this discipline allows for identification of shifts and changes in a longitudinal manner. This article presents the results of a comprehensive content analysis covering 12 years of research in the domain of consumer behavior. Our review, which evaluated more than 1,000 articles published across five key journals, provides a descriptive snapshot of the status of consumer behavior research including the most dominant topics based on Helgeson et al.’s (1984) framework and methodological and analytical approaches, in addition to citation statistics of the reviewed consumer behavior articles.

Method

To examine the content of consumer behavior literature, trace its evolution, and identify the main streams of research over time, a content analysis was first performed on the articles focusing on consumer behavior. Helgeson et al. (1984) classified 32 years of consumer behavior literature from selected journals and proceedings. As there did not seem to be a comprehensive review and classification of consumer behavior topics in the literature, they tried to rectify the situation by examining the evolution of consumer behavior literature as a topic between 1950 and 1981. No similar research has been carried out since 1981, so this study replicates Helgeson et al.’s work based on the framework proposed by Berthon, Pitt, Ewing, and Carr (2002) by extending its context to the period 1998-2009.

The purpose of this article is, therefore, to cover 12 years (1998-2009) of literature to investigate consumer behavior growth as a research topic in the literature. Like Helgeson et al. (1984), our objective is not to evaluate the results of the research but to categorize and evaluate trends as found in the following publications: (a) Journal of Consumer Research (JCR), (b) Journal of Marketing (JM), (c) Journal of Marketing Research (JMR), (d) Journal of Advertising (JA), and (e) Journal of Advertising Research (JAR).

The choice of these five journals is straightforward as they have held positions as the top consumer behavior journals and business journals for decades. Evidence of this comes from many sources, such as the ABS’ (Chartered Association of Business Schools) Academic Journal Quality Guide Studies evaluating these journals at the top level of business journals.

Evidence is also available from the Web of Science Internet library source and Thomson Reuters journal citation reports, both measuring the influence of publications based on impact factors (defined as the frequency with which articles from a journal have been cited). The last journal citation report from Web of Science (2014) shows that JCR (5-year impact factor of 5), JM (5-year impact factor of 7.42), JMR (5-year impact factor of 3.77), JA (5-year impact factor of 1.73), and JAR (5-year impact factor of 2.54) have consistently been positioned as top influential business journals (Journal Citation Reports, 2014). Moreover, the idea behind choosing these journals was to cover various disciplines among business studies such as marketing, advertising, and consumer research. Choosing these five journals also helped to evaluate articles published by different publishers, namely, the American Marketing Association (AMA), Oxford University Press, Taylor & Francis, and World Advertising Research Center.

Moreover, as claimed by Furrer, Thomas, and Goussevskaia (2008), established influential journals, such as the ones chosen in this study, set the bar for studies within their frame of reference by forming the theoretical and empirical work in their discipline.

However, it must be said that notable contributions to consumer behavior research have come from other sources, particularly books and monographs, which we did not examine. In total, 2,915 articles published in the five journals during the period under study were included in our review.

The first decision made by each reviewer was whether the article dealt with consumer behavior. Hence, in the initial phase of this research, the authors manually reviewed every issue of the five examined journals to identify articles for inclusion in the analysis. First each article’s title, abstract, and keywords were evaluated, and if they included consumer behavior (or behaviour), then the article would be on the list for further analysis. In many cases, this criterion was not met so the full article was inspected and skimmed through to determine whether that the article was related to consumer behavior. A very small number of publication entries, such as editorials, points of view, abstracts, and book reviews, were excluded from the analysis. In total, this identification phase yielded a sample of 1,263 consumer behavior articles (Table 1).

Table 1.

Number of Total and Consumer Behavior Articles.

Year	Description	Journal of Advertising	Journal of Advertising Research	Journal of Consumer Research	Journal of Marketing	Journal of Marketing Research	All five journals
1998	Total	32	46	34	27	63	202
1998	Consumer behavior articles	11	13	20	6	16	66
1999	Total	24	49	33	48	58	212
1999	Consumer behavior articles	13	22	21	10	8	74
2000	Total	27	50	44	48	58	227
2000	Consumer behavior articles	12	26	33	6	14	91
2001	Total	29	52	59	42	61	243
2001	Consumer behavior articles	11	30	42	9	15	107
2002	Total	33	56	49	46	58	242
2002	Consumer behavior articles	11	9	34	11	17	82
2003	Total	30	41	47	35	47	200
2003	Consumer behavior articles	13	18	31	6	15	83
2004	Total	28	40	78	44	47	237
2004	Consumer behavior articles	14	12	52	15	14	107
2005	Total	37	41	60	52	47	237
2005	Consumer behavior articles	12	12	44	20	12	100
2006	Total	44	39	61	46	68	258
2006	Consumer behavior articles	17	20	46	18	17	118
2007	Total	46	50	52	55	63	266
2007	Consumer behavior articles	20	23	41	18	25	127
2008	Total	40	59	86	54	55	294
2008	Consumer behavior articles	19	27	71	18	17	152
2009	Total	34	56	82	61	64	297
2009	Consumer behavior articles	17	28	67	21	23	156
	Total	404	579	685	558	689	2,915
	Consumer behavior articles	170	240	502	158	193	1,263
	%	42.1	41.5	73.3	28.3	28	43.3

The second phase of the study involved systematically categorizing the major aspects of each chosen article. Both deductive and inductive procedures were conducted to determine the categories used in the content analysis of the articles. The initial inclusion of content topics relied on deductive procedures, meaning that the reviewed consumer behavior articles were classified into 37 topics, which were divided into four major areas, Internal, Purchase Process, External, and Miscellaneous (Table 1), as previously determined by Helgeson et al. (1984). This categorization can be explained through Wright’s (2006) perspective in that the variety of human internal factors, external environment, and problem-solving processes should be identified when trying to understand consumer behavior. Accordingly, the Internal category covers topics associated with consumers’ individual and psychological factors, whereas the topics categorized under External involve situational and social factors.

To ensure consistent classification of multitopic articles, in cases where an article could be classified under more than one topic, the authors discussed the article and obtained a consensus about the closest topic, which the article covered. Then, each article was classified based on its research typology as being either qualitative, quantitative, or both. In the next step, by using Google Scholar, the number of citations for each selected article was gathered.

Articles were further categorized according to research methodology. Helgeson et al. (1984) used a group of four methods: Survey, Experiment, Discussion, and Other. Inductive procedures were used to develop additional categories for the articles’ methodologies and analysis techniques. This was done by each author independently reviewing the contents of articles they were assigned and then meeting and discussing their overall impressions of the types of articles published in the journal. The inductive procedures resulted in adding a new separate category to the research methods (case study) and one to the analysis techniques (structural equation modeling [SEM]).

Analysis and Results

The number of consumer behavior articles during the studied time period ranged from 66 per year in 1998 to 156 per year in 2009 (Table 1). These numbers as a percentage of total articles appearing in the literature in the five selected journals are illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Trend of total and consumer behavior articles.

At least three characteristic life-cycle patterns seemed to emerge, when plotting the percentage of consumer behavior articles devoted to each of four major areas over time (Figure 2). The first pattern is exemplified by External area, which, despite its consistent appearance in the literature, showed a decline in the number of articles compared with the other three areas. This pattern for External topics is negatively skewed with periodic peaks through time. A second pattern is exhibited by Internal topics, which are still in a growth stage showing a gradually increasing interest in the literature. The skewness for pattern is positive without any significant periodic peaks through time. The Purchase Process area revealed a third pattern, which is also positively skewed but with some periodic and major peaks through time. Despite a decline in the height of these peaks over time, the Purchase Process topics remain an important part of the literature, and this trend is growing.

Figure 2.

Occurrence of four major areas of topics in consumer behavior over time (%).

Table 2 exemplifies the frequency and percentage of articles that each of the main area of topics covered compared with the reviewed articles in consumer behavior fields in the reviewed journals.

Table 2.

Frequency and Percentage of Articles in Each Major Area.

Major topic category	Number of articles	%
Internal	534	43
Purchase Process	328	26
External	313	23
Miscellaneous	88	8

As mentioned above, 37 major topics in consumer behavior were selected in categorizing articles, which were then grouped into four major areas. Using these categories, Table 3 shows the percentage of occurrence of each topic within the reviewed consumer behavior articles.

Table 3.

Major Topics of Consumer Behavior and Their Percentage of Occurrence.

Topic category	Number of articles	%
Internal
Attitudes	145	11.5
Attribution	36	2.9
Belief-expectancy models	11	0.9
Cognitive dissonance	16	1.3
Information processing	29	2.3
Involvement	12	1.0
Learning	10	0.8
Life style	17	1.4
Motivation	16	1.3
Perception	151	12.0
Personality	12	1.0
Physiological	42	3.3
Values/beliefs	31	2.5
Purchase Process
Brand awareness/loyalty	78	6.2
Choice	74	5.9
Evaluation	46	3.7
Postpurchase	41	3.3
Purchase decision process	60	4.8
Search for information	36	2.9
External
Communications	57	4.5
Consumer socialization	18	1.5
Culture	32	2.6
Demographics	32	2.6
Family decision process	7	0.6
Group influences	24	2.0
Innovators/innovations	13	1.1
Opinion leaders	16	0.3
Persuasion	49	3.9
Segmentation	22	1.8
Situation	7	0.6
Social stratification	10	0.8
Miscellaneous
Consumerism	17	1.4
General	6	0.5
Models	41	3.4
Preference	22	1.8
Public policy	11	0.9
Store patronage	16	0.3

According to the findings, the most studied topic within consumer behavior articles in the five journals was Perception, which was covered in 12% of the articles. Only slightly less common, Attitudes came next (11.5%), while the third topic, at almost half the size of the preceding two, with 6.2%, was Brand awareness/loyalty.

In Table 3, bold fonts highlight the most studied topic in each major area. As discussed earlier, the present study classified articles based on their research typology, methodology, and the data analysis techniques used. Findings revealed that a large number of the reviewed consumer behavior articles were classified as quantitative studies (76%), as shown in Table 4. To dig deeper into this matter, we also evaluated the relationship between the types of studies (qualitative and quantitative) with respect to the four topic categories as shown in Table 5.

Table 4.

Frequency and Percentage of Research Typology.

Research typology	Number of articles	%
Qualitative	960	76
Quantitative	139	11
Both	164	13

Table 5.

Frequency and Percentage of Research Typology With Regard to Topic Category.

Topic category	Research typology
	Qualitative	Quantitative	Both
	Number of articles
External	47	207	33
Internal	58	399	71
Miscellaneous	18	87	8
Purchasing Process	26	259	50

Moreover, according to the research methodology, experiments and surveys were the most common instruments for conducting consumer behavior research. This can be described as the nature of consumer behavior as related to studying and observing consumers. The articles were also classified by using one of the previously mentioned 10 analytical techniques. Table 6 presents the frequency and percentage of each research methodology and the analysis techniques used in the reviewed articles.

Table 6.

Frequency and Percentage of Research Methodology and Data Analysis Techniques.

Research methodology	Number of articles	%
Experiment	530	42
Survey	530	42
Discussion	101	8
Case study	89	7
Other	13	1
Data analysis techniques	Number of articles	%
ANOVA	278	22
Descriptive	164	13
Multivariate analysis	164	13
Bivariate and multiple regression	139	11
Other	126	10
SEM (PLS, LISREL)	88	7
Correlation	76	6
t test or chi-square	76	6
Content analysis	31	3
Nonparametric	39	3
Discourse analysis	22	2
Grounded theory	22	2
Narrative analysis	19	1.5
Framework approach	11	1
Ethnography	8	0.6

Note. SEM = structural equation modeling; PLS = partial least squares; LISREL = linear structural relations.

Moreover, Table 7 shows the trends regarding analytical techniques used during the 12 years studied as the percentage of all consumer behavior articles in each year.

Table 7.

Trend of Analytical Techniques Used in Consumer Behavior Literature (%).

Analysis Technique	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009
ANOVA	4.3	4.9	5.7	10.3	6.3	6.0	9.8	11.8	10.9	7.8	12.1	10.1
Bivariate and multiple regression	7.3	3.0	3.7	11.0	7.3	4.9	8.5	6.7	10.4	12.2	12.2	12.8
Correlation	8.8	10.5	8.8	10.5	12.3	8.8	3.5	8.8	14.0	1.8	8.8	3.5
Descriptive	6.1	7.1	15.3	6.1	5.1	9.2	8.2	5.1	5.1	18.4	6.1	8.2
Multivariate analysis	8.3	7.4	5.8	5.0	4.1	7.4	9.1	7.4	9.9	9.1	11.6	14.9
Nonparametric	2.5	2.5	12.5	5.0	12.5	5.0	7.5	0	5.0	17.5	22.5	7.5
Qualitative	2.6	12.0	7.7	6.8	9.4	5.1	6.8	6.0	6.8	7.7	12.8	16.2
SEM (PLS, LISREL)	2.1	3.7	5.3	7.4	5.3	6.9	9.5	8.5	10.6	9.5	14.3	16.9
t test or chi-square	5.1	6.8	13.6	13.6	3.4	10.2	6.8	3.4	3.4	11.9	8.5	13.6
Other	10	5.7	8.6	4.3	4.3	5.7	7.1	5.7	8.6	12.9	12.9	14.3

Note. SEM = structural equation modeling; PLS = partial least squares; LISREL = linear structural relations.

In comparison with the study done by Helgeson et al. in 1984, there has been tremendous growth in the use of complex statistical techniques such as SEM. This may be due to the fact that these techniques involve advanced computer software and packages that did not exist in 1984. It may also be the result of an increase in the number of consumer behavior articles that conducted scientific hypothesis testing generated from a theory base. The complexity of the articles written has also witnessed an increase due to growing emphasis on theoretical foundations and multivariate statistics, linked to advances in computer manipulation of data. Thus, to comprehend the more recent consumer behavior articles, readers are required to have a greater knowledge of the theoretical roots of articles and more statistical sophistication than had been necessary for earlier articles.

Another consequence of the data analysis concerns articles that have been cited the most often in consumer behavior literature. Table 8 shows the 15 most cited articles in all journals, whereas Table 9 illustrates the three most influential articles from each journal.

Table 8.

Fifteen Top Cited Articles.

Journal	Article title	Citation
Journal of Marketing	“Whence Consumer Loyalty?,” 1999, Richard L. Oliver	5,104
Journal of Consumer Research	“Consumers and Their Brands: Developing Relationship Theory in Consumer Research,” 1998, Susan Fournier	3,936
Journal of Consumer Research	“Brand Community,” 2001, Albert M. Muniz Jr. and Thomas C. O’Guinn	2,911
Journal of Marketing	“The Chain of Effects From Brand Trust and Brand Affect to Brand Performance: The Role of Brand Loyalty,” 2001, Arjun Chaudhuri and Morris B. Holbrook	2,560
Journal of Marketing	“Consumer Trust, Value, and Loyalty in Relational Exchanges,” 2002, Deepak Sirdeshmukh, Jagdip Singh, and Barry Sabol	2,208
Journal of Consumer Research	“Assessing Measurement Invariance in Cross-National Consumer Research,” 1998, Jan-Benedict E. M. Steenkamp and Hans Baumgartner	2,166
Journal of Consumer Research	“Constructive Consumer Choice Processes,” 1998, James R. Bettman, Mary Frances Luce, and John W. Payne	1,909
Journal of Marketing	“Customer Evaluations of Service Complaint Experiences: Implications for Relationship Marketing,” 1998, Stephen S. Tax, Stephen W. Brown, and Murali Chandrashekaran	1,807
Journal of Marketing	“Self-Service Technologies: Understanding Customer Satisfaction With Technology-Based Service Encounters,” 2000, Matthew L. Meuter, Amy L. Ostrom, Robert I. Roundtree, and Mary Jo Bitner	1,681
Journal of Marketing Research	“A Model of Customer Satisfaction With Service Encounters Involving Failure and Recovery,” 1999, Amy K. Smith, Ruth N. Bolton, and Janet Wagner	1,559
Journal of Marketing Research	“Satisfaction, Repurchase Intent, and Repurchase Behavior: Investigating the Moderating Effect of Customer Characteristics,” 2001, Vikas Mittal and Wagner A. Kamakura	1,409
Journal of Marketing	“On the Profitability of Long-Life Customers in a Noncontractual Setting: An Empirical Investigation and Implications for Marketing,” 2000, Werner J. Reinartz and V. Kumar	1,196
Journal of Consumer Research	“Heart and Mind in Conflict: The Interplay of Affect and Cognition in Consumer Decision Making,” 1999, Baba Shiv and Alexander Fedorikhin	1,099
Journal of Marketing Research	“A Dynamic Model of Customers’ Usage of Services: Usage as an Antecedent and Consequence of Satisfaction,” 1999, Ruth N. Bolton and Katherine N. Lemon	956
Journal of Advertising Research	“The Internet Shopper,” 1999, Naveen Donthu and Adriana Gacia	859

Table 9.

Three Top Cited Articles of Each Journal.

Article title	Citation
Journal of Consumer Research
“Consumers and Their Brands: Developing Relationship Theory in Consumer Research,” 1998, Susan Fournier	3,936
“Assessing Measurement Invariance in Cross-National Consumer Research,” 1998, Jan-Benedict E. M. Steenkamp and Hans Baumgartner	2,166
“Constructive Consumer Choice Processes,” 1998, James R. Bettman, Mary Frances Luce, and John W. Payne	1,909
Journal of Marketing Research
“A Model of Customer Satisfaction With Service Encounters Involving Failure and Recovery,” 1999, Amy K. Smith, Ruth N. Bolton, and Janet Wagner	1,559
“Satisfaction, Repurchase Intent, and Repurchase Behavior: Investigating the Moderating Effect of Customer Characteristics,” 2001, Vikas Mittal and Wagner A. Kamakura	1,409
“A Dynamic Model of Customers’ Usage of Services: Usage as an Antecedent and Consequence of Satisfaction,” 1999, Ruth N. Bolton and Katherine N. Lemon	956
Journal of Marketing
“Whence Consumer Loyalty?,” 1999, Richard L. Oliver	5,104
“Customer Evaluations of Service Complaint Experiences: Implications for Relationship Marketing,” 1998, Stephen S. Tax, Stephen W. Brown, and Murali Chandrashekaran	1,807
“Self-Service Technologies: Understanding Customer Satisfaction With Technology-Based Service Encounters,” 2000, Matthew L. Meuter, Amy L. Ostrom, Robert I. Roundtree, and Mary Jo Bitner	1,681
Journal of Advertising Research
“The Internet Shopper,” 1999, Naveen Donthu and Adriana Gacia	859
”Attitude Toward the Site,” 1999, Q. Chen and W. D. Wells	825
“A Multivariate Analysis of Web Usage,” 1999, Pradeep K. Korgaonkar and Lori D. Wolin	810
Journal of Advertising
“Building Brand Image Through Event Sponsorship: The Role of Image Transfer,” 1999, K. P. Gwinner and J. Eaton	575
“The Impact of Corporate Credibility and Celebrity Credibility on Consumer Reaction to Advertisements and Brands,” 2000, R. E. Goldsmith, B. A. Lafferty, and S. J. Newell	533
“Impact of 3-D Advertising on Product Knowledge, Brand Attitude, and Purchase Intention: The Mediating Role of Presence,” 2002, Hairong Li, Terry Daugherty, and Frank Biocca	336

Conclusion

The results presented in this article suggest many implications for the consumer behavior research community, researchers, journal editors, and reviewers, as well as for the practitioners. In this regard, this article not only serves to evaluate the structure and evolution of the literature in consumer behavior field but also presents some assumptions about further developments in this literature.

By helping consumer behavior scholars to better understand the direction in which the field is going, the article is intended to provide a guideline for scholars in positioning their future research efforts. The results of this article provide consumer behavior researchers with a concrete perspective on what has been published on the subject area by indicating hot topics, research methods, and analysis techniques. The findings of this study highlight the most important consumer behavior topics and the most influential articles in the field based on citation frequency. The number of topics studied in consumer behavior showed a dramatic growth and revealed some general patterns during the 12 years studied in this article.

According to the results, authors aiming to have an article published in a journal will have a better understanding of the different trends consumer behavior research has had during the studied period. Moreover, potential authors, researchers, and interested readers may use the information presented as a means to assess the field.

The findings of this research also provide journal editors and reviewers with a wider (global, in a sense) perspective regarding the publication trends and themes on consumer behavior research topics, methods, and statistical analysis.

Practitioners can use this study to indicate which journals to consult as sources of information on specific topics. The analysis of the topic areas among the reviewed articles provides evidence that certain topic areas (Purchase Process and Internal) enjoyed consistent popularity among the chosen journals’ editors and reviewers during the studied years, while the interest in topics related to external aspects of consumer behavior has decreased among the five journals. This is in line with the ever-changing environment of consumers’ decision making and the move from profit-focused perspective of companies to a relationship-focused one to increase loyalty. This seems to be in line with the evolution of consumers’ preferences too, meaning that scholarly work in these journals has recognized this change and has begun to investigate these changes in consumer behavior.

Limitations and Avenues for Future Research

While the content analysis conducted in this study provides useful information to consumer behavior researchers and practitioners, several limitations of the study must be indicated. First, the five journals analyzed here do not represent the entire body of consumer behavior research. In this regard, future studies could select a larger number of journals, as well as conference proceedings and books from various disciplines. Furthermore, this article reviewed consumer behavior studies published in a specific period. Extending this time frame would, of course, strengthen the results and their generalizability.

Moreover, as Yale and Gilly (1988) argued, any content analysis may, to some extent, have a learning bias, meaning that when the judges (in our case the authors of the article) review more articles, they become more skillful and intuitive, which may result in a different manner of inspection for the articles evaluated earlier versus the ones assessed later in the process. As the reviews of the articles done in this study are based on the judgments of its authors, further research may come up with new and slightly different results. Therefore, a more systematic and transparent coding scheme is recommended for future study.

Future studies of the consumer behavior research literature can also investigate authorship of the articles, including which authors have had what impact on the discipline and which scholars from which institutions have been productive in terms of consumer behavior publications. Finally, future research can investigate and categorize the results and the implications of articles in each topic, as well as the theories that have been used or applied in those studies.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,authorship,and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.

Author Biographies

Kaveh Peighambari is an entrepreneur and a faculty member at Linnaeus University in Sweden.

Setayesh Sattari is an assistant professor at Linnaeus University in Sweden. Her research interests include branding,consumer behavior,tourism and sustainability.

Arash Kordestani is an assistant professor at Industrial Environmental Management Group at Lulea University of Technology in Sweden. His primary research focus is on sustainable supply management,and understanding buying behavior.

Pejvak Oghazi is an assistant professor at Linnaeus University,School of Business and Economics. He holds an MSc in Industrial and Management Engineering in addition to a PhD in Industrial Marketing.

References

Arndt

(1986). Paradigms in consumer research: A review of perspectives and approaches. European Journal of Marketing, 20, 23-40.

Battalio

R. C.

Kagel

J. H.

Winkler

R. C.

Fisher

Jr. Basmann

R. L.

Krasner

(1974). An experimental investigation of consumer behavior in a controlled environment. Journal of Consumer Research, 1, 52-60.

Belk

Askegaard

Scott

(Eds.). (2012). Research in consumer behavior. Howard House, Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Berthon

Pitt

Ewing

Carr

C. L.

(2002). Potential research space in MIS: A framework for envisioning and evaluating research replication, extension, and generation. Information Systems Research, 13, 416-427.

Buboltz

W. C.

Jr. Miller

Williams

D. J.

(1999). Content analysis of research in the Journal of Counseling Psychology (1973–1998). Journal of Counseling Psychology, 46, 496-503.

Cokley

Caldwell

Miller

Muhammad

(2001). Content analysis of the Journal of Black Psychology (1985-1999). Journal of Black Psychology, 27, 424-438.

Furrer

Thomas

Goussevskaia

(2008). The structure and evolution of the strategic management field: A content analysis of 26 years of strategic management research. International Journal of Management Reviews, 10, 1-23.

Hameed

M. A.

Waqas

Aslam

M. N.

Bilal

Umair

(2014). Impact of TV advertisement on children buying behavior. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 4, 246-261.

Hawkins

Mothersbaugh

(2009). Consumer behavior: Building marketing strategy. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

10.

Helgeson

J. G.

Kluge

E. A.

Mager

Taylor

(1984). Trends in consumer behavior literature: A content analysis. Journal of Consumer Research, 10, 449-454.

11.

Howard

Sheth

J. N.

(1968). The theory of buyer behavior. New York, NY: John Wiley.

12.

Journal Citation Reports. (2014). Social sciences edition. New York, NY: Thomson Reuters.

13.

Kassarjian

H. H.

(1977). Content analysis in consumer research. Journal of Consumer Research, 4, 8-18.

14.

Kolbe

R. H.

Burnett

M. S.

(1991). Content-analysis research: An examination of applications with directives for improving research reliability and objectivity. Journal of Consumer Research, 18, 243-250.

15.

MacInnis

D. J.

Folkes

V. S.

(2010). The disciplinary status of consumer behavior: A sociology of science perspective on key controversies. Journal of Consumer Research, 36, 899-914.

16.

Pasadeos

Phelps

Kim

B. H.

(1998). Disciplinary impact of advertising scholars: Temporal comparisons of influential authors, works and research networks. Journal of Advertising, 27, 53-70.

17.

Robertson

T. S.

Kassarjian

H. H.

(1991). Handbook of consumer behavior. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

18.

Sattari

(2012). Essays on the issues of readability in the business disciplines (Doctoral thesis). Luleå University of Technology, Sweden.

19.

Solomon

M. R.

(2013). Consumer behavior: Buying, having, and being (10th ed.). Essex, England: Pearson Education.

20.

Üsdiken

Pasadeos

(1995). Organizational analysis in North America and Europe: A comparison of co-citation networks. Organization Studies, 16, 503-526.

21.

Vallet-Bellmunt

Martínez-Fernández

M. T.

Capó-Vicedo

(2011). Supply chain management: A multidisciplinary content analysis of vertical relations between companies, 1997–2006. Industrial Marketing Management, 40, 1347-1367.

22.

West

(2007). Directions in marketing communications research an analysis of the International Journal of Advertising. International Journal of Advertising, 26, 543-554.

23.

Williams

B. C.

Plouffe

C. R.

(2007). Assessing the evolution of sales knowledge: A 20-year content analysis. Industrial Marketing Management, 36, 408-419.

24.

Wright

(2006). Consumer behaviour. London, England: Thomson Learning.

25.

Yale

Gilly

M. C.

(1988). Trends in advertising research: A look at the content of marketing-oriented journals from 1976 to 1985. Journal of Advertising, 17, 12-22.