In just the first 7 weeks of 2009, the findings from 30 different articles that recently appeared in the Journal of Consumer Research (JCR) have been reported on in mainstream media outlets in 27 different countries. In the U.S. these have included newspapers and magazines such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall St. Journal, Popular Science, and Forbes. It may surprise you to learn that ICA was one of the founding organizations behind the Journal of Consumer Research and is still one of the organizations represented on the Journal's policy board. It is somewhat ironic that an academic journal whose research is so frequently cited is relatively unknown by members of one of its founding organizations. Now that JCR is in its 35th year of existence, it is well past time that ICA members learn more about this prestigious journal and its potential value to you.

What is JCR (and consumer research more generally)?
The Journal of Consumer Research is an interdisciplinary journal devoted to research on consumer research. What then is "consumer research"? When many people hear the term they immediately think of fields such as marketing and advertising. Certainly a good deal of JCR's content addresses topics of interest to such disciplines. However, marketing and advertising generally approach these topics from the perspective of the product or message producer. Consumer research, on the other hand, is interested in how people respond to these messages and how they make decisions or behave in regard the items they consume. It is also important to recognize that we consume many things other than just products and services. We consume time, space, media content, food and natural resources to name just a few things. All of these are topics of interest to the Journal of Consumer Research.

The purpose behind JCR was to create an interdisciplinary journal that included a wide range of phenomena and brought a number of different perspectives to bear on these topics. This diversity can clear be seen by the 11 organizations that are represented on its policy board. Along with ICA, the organizations represented include: the American Sociological Association, two different divisions of the American Psychological Association (Division 8 - Personality & Social Psychology and Division 23 - Consumer Psychology), the American Anthropological Association, the Association for Public Opinion Research, the American Statistical Association, the American Marketing Association, the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences, and the Association for Consumer Research. The research published in JCR is academic and theoretical in nature and while most of it is from a psychological or sociological perspective, it also includes phenomenological, qualitative, ethnographic and cultural research. JCR is published by the University of Chicago Press and produces 6 issues each year.

How does JCR fit my interests?
JCR publishes research that is likely to be of interest to members of a wide range of different divisions in ICA. Indeed, one of the very first articles in the first volume of JCR back in 1974 was about the role of interpersonal (family and peer sources) and mass communication (advertising and programming) in the consumer socialization of children. Research appearing in JCR covers topics related to communication research such as: diffusion of information and innovations, changing health behaviors, cultivation effects of television viewing, message strategy and political persuasion, word of mouth communication, family communication, source effects, social networking, models of attitude change and decision-making, the impact of message strategy in decision making and attitude change, cultural differences in response to messages, visual imagery, literacy skills and consumer behavior, mood effects, risk perceptions, effects of television viewing, the impact live versus on-line venues, preference for live versus tape-delayed broadcasts, social comparison and deception in interpersonal communication, and internet communities to name but a few. Here are just a few selected articles that have or will appear in the first 4 issues of 2009 that may be of interest some ICA members.

Selected 2009 JCR articles

• Mispredicting Adaptation and the Consequences of Unwanted Disruptions: When Advertisements Make Television Programs More Enjoyable Tom Meyvis, Leif Nelson, Jeff Galak
• Who is More Generous?: Gender Identity Moderates the Effect of Moral Identity on Ingroup and Outgroup Donations Karen Winterich, Vikas Mittal, William Ross
• Sex in Advertising: Gender Differences and the Role of Relationship Commitment Darren Dahl, Jaideep Sengupta, Kathleen Vohs
• The Contrasting Effects of Culture on Consumer Tolerance: Interpersonal Face and Impersonal Fate Haksin Chan, Lisa Wan, Leo Sin 
• The Distinct Influence of Cognitive Busyness and Need for Closure on Cultural Differences in Socially Desirable Responding Ashok Lalwani, Chi-yue Chiu
• The Fit of Thinking Style and Situation: New Measures of Situation-Specific Experiential and Rational Cognition Thomas Novak, Donna Hoffman
• Temporal Sequence Effects: A Memory Framework Nicole Votolato Montgomery, H. Rao Unnava
• Category Activation Model: A Spreading Activation Network Model of Subcategory Positioning When Categorization Uncertainty is High Joseph Lajos, Zsolt Katona, Amitava Chattopadhyay, Miklos Sarvary
• It's Time to Vote: The Effect of Matching Message Orientation and Temporal Frame on Political Persuasion Hakkyun Kim, Akshay Rao, Angela Lee
• Acts of Benevolence: A Limited-Resource Account of Compliance with Charitable Requests Bob M. Fennis, Loes Janssen, Kathleen D. Vohs
• Bilingualism and the Emotional Intensity of Advertising Language Stefano Puntoni, Bart De Langhe, Stijn M.J. Van Osselaer
• Blackjack in The Kitchen: Understanding Online Versus Casino Gambling June Cotte, Kathryn A. Latour

I encourage you to look at a complete listing of the content of the forthcoming issues by going to http://ejcr.org/forthcoming.htm.

Why read or submit to JCR?
One reason to read JCR is to gain exposure to a wider and more diverse body of literature. This can help to stimulate new ideas or approaches to your research. Similarly, submitting your work to JCR allows you to reach an audience who might not otherwise get to read your work. This is not only true of academics, but JCR increases your chances of work being seen by your Dean, your neighbors and your family. This is due to JCR's rather unique "publicity initiative."

As part of this publicity initiative, JCR professionally prepares a press release for every single article published in JCR. This effort has been highly successful. JCR research is picked up and reported on regularly by outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Times (London), Scientific American, Psychology Today, the Toronto Globe and Mail, Der Spiegel, the New Yorker magazine, Newsweek, Time magazine, National Public Radio and many other venues. The JCR website lists all of the media stories from around the world in its publicity section. To see what these press releases look like and a listing of media outlets which have run stories about the research studies published in JCR, go to: http://ejcr.org/publicity.htm.

Additionally, JCR articles are frequently cited in other journals. For example, according to ISI data, JCR articles were cited in other articles over 5000 times in 2007 (the last year for which data were available).

Another reason to consider JCR for your manuscripts is its fast turn-around time. For fiscal year 2007-2008 (the last period in which complete data are available), the average length of time between a manuscript arriving at JCR and a decision being sent back to the author was 47 days (and this excludes manuscripts that were desk rejected). Additionally, people do not need to wait until an issue is published to read your research. As soon as an article is accepted for publication, it is placed on the Journal's web site. Thus, your work has a more immediate impact.

Hopefully, you now know much more about JCR and I strongly encourage anyone interested to further check out this journal at: http://jcr.wisc.edu/sitemap.htm. If you are interested in subscribing to JCR, be sure to indicate that you are a member of ICA since belonging to one of the founding organizations entitles you a significant discount. ICA's support has helped to foster the development of JCR and this journal can only grow stronger with more current members of ICA actively contributing to it.