Critical Issues in Social Cognition and Consumer Preferences

Dear Colleagues,

Social influence is ubiquitous in human societies. An individual’s beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors are influenced by other people or groups, and this social influence has been a primary research area throughout the history of consumer research. Social influences manifest in a wide variety of forms which can cause changes in individuals’ beliefs, feelings, and thoughts. Such influences arise from diverse social forces, whether it be other individuals or larger groups, even if their presence is only expected or implied.

In brief, this Special Issue addresses how consumers form or change their preferences and choices as a function of diverse social contexts and influences from other individuals, groups, cultures, and societies. This Special Issue addresses the questions of how social contexts influence consumption behaviors on multiple levels: dyadic, group, and societal levels. Influencing social contexts could be other individuals’ characteristics, group characteristics, values and belief systems, or cultural characterizations. Studies can address questions of how consumers make trade-offs in different social contexts; for example, what are the roles of intuition, emotion, and reason in driving consumers’ choices and decisions in different social contexts? How do diverse beliefs, be they rational or irrational, affect consumers’ perceptions, preferences, and decisions?

For this Special Issue, we are interested in conceptual or empirical papers or hybrid research. Conceptual papers may include reviews of prior research on a substantive and relevant topic, such as the introduction of new theories or research streams from outside the field of consumer behavior, or frameworks for developing future research. Empirical papers, regardless of the methodological approach (experiments, field studies, qualitative methods, surveys, modeling, or other approaches), are solicited. The central goal of this Special Issue is to bring together novel studies that advance the understanding of how social contexts influence consumption decisions and how consumers’ choices—be they consumer actions or their responses to social actions—can affect social changes. Topics of interest for this issue include (but are not limited to):

• Face perception;
• Social crowding;
• Ideology;
• Social inequality;
• Anthropomorphism;
• Religion or irrational beliefs;
• Cultural influences;
• Morality;
• Consumer activism.

For this Special Issue, we invite scholars who will reassess, question, or reconstruct current paradigms so as to help illuminate new issues that consumer society faces. The submitted papers should not only describe the present theoretical background but also help set theoretical bases for future research. Some potential approaches could be one of the following:

• Proposing new frameworks or theories in viewing specific phenomena.
• Identifying new mediators or moderators of existing relationships.
• Examining previously underexplored theoretical relationships.
• Discovering new areas of research where no theory exists to explain.
• Developing scales for measuring important constructs in this domain of research.
• Providing a comprehensive literature review that provides novel frameworks in viewing specific phenomena.

Manuscripts that help to shed light on the theoretical and practical implications of the role of social contexts on consumer behaviors will be considered for this issue. Any methodological approaches, including traditional experiments, field observations, qualitative methods, text analytics, archival data analyses, descriptive empirical analyses, and quantitative methods, are welcome. We particularly encourage manuscripts that utilize mixed methodologies, although this is not a requirement. 

Manuscripts will be judged by their ability to (1) offer a scholarly description of an important phenomenon related to this Special Issue, (2) provide a precise summary of the existing paradigm related to the topic, and (3) offer empirical (or research-based) evidence for paradigm expansion or replacement. Both high-quality conceptual papers grounded in some real-world evidence and frameworks that are tested systematically using data are welcome.

Please contact me if you have any questions about the suitability of your manuscript for the Special Issue. We look forward to working with you.

Dr. Ahreum Maeng
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as conceptual papers are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Societies is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• marketing
• consumer behavior
• social contexts
• social influences