Review of Marketing Research

Review of Marketing Research covers the important areas of marketing research with a more comprehensive state-of-the-art orientation. The chapters in this publication review the literature in a particular area, offer a critical commentary, develop an innovative framework, and discuss future developments, as well as present specific empirical studies. Ford, West, Magnini, LaTour, and Polonsky provide a content analysis of the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of Consumer Research, and the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science over the 25-year period (1977-2002). Anderson, Simester, and Zettelmeyer investigate the problems that firms confront when introducing an Internet channel. Hada, Grewal, and Lilien highlight and discuss referral equity that captures the net effect of all referrals for a supplier firm in the market. Dholakia reviews research on the question-behavior effect (QBE), the phenomenon that asking questions influences respondents' behavior. Malhotra, Jain, Patil, Pinson, and Wu address one aspect of the broad issue of the psychological foundations of the dimensions of MDS solutions by focusing on consumer cognitive complexity using empirical data from three independent studies. Rigdon, Ringle, and Sarstedt point out that like SEM, PLS began with an assumption of homogeneity but has developed techniques for modeling data from heterogeneous populations, consistent with a marketing emphasis on segmentation. Collectively the chapters in Volume 7 will substantially aid our efforts to understand, model, and make predictions about both the firm and the consumer and provide fertile areas for future research.