Context and Cognition in Consumer Psychology is concerned with the psychological explanation of consumer choice. It pays particular attention to the roles of perception and emotion in accounting for consumers’ actions and their interaction with the desires and beliefs in terms of which consumer choice is frequently analyzed. In this engaging book, Gordon Foxall extends and elaborates his theory of consumer action, based on the philosophical strategy of Intentional Behaviorism. In doing so, he introduces the concept of contingency-representation to explore the ways in which consumers mentally represent the consequences of past decisions and the likely outcomes of present consumption. The emphasis is on action rather than behavior and the manner in which the intentional consumer-situation, as the immediate precursor of consumer choice, can be reconstructed in order to explain consumer actions in the absence of the environmental stimuli required by behaviorist psychology. The result is a novel reaffirmation of the role of cognition in the determination of consumer choice. Besides the concept of contingency-representation which the author introduces, the analysis draws upon psychoanalytic concepts, theories of cognitive structure and processing, and the philosophy of perception to generate a stimulating synthesis for consumer research. The book will be of interest to students and researchers in consumer behavior and economic psychology and to all who seek a deeper interdisciplinary understanding of the contextual and cognitive interactions that guide choice in the market place.

The first comprehensive theoretical formulation of the way people use information they receive about their social environments to make judgments and behavioral decisions, this volume focuses on the cognitive processes that underlie the use of social information. These include initial interpretation, the representations used to make inferences, and the transformation of these subjective inferences into overt judgment and behavior. In addition, it specifies the role of affect and emotion in information processing, and the role of self-knowledge at different stages of processing. The theoretical model presented here is the first to provide a conceptual integration of existing theory and research in all phases of social information processing. It not only accounts for the major portion of existing research findings, but permits several hypotheses to be generated concerning phenomena that have not yet been empirically investigated. Although focused here on the processing of information about people and events, the formulation proposed has implications for other domains such as personnel appraisal, political decision making, and consumer behavior.

This Handbook contains a unique collection of chapters written by the world's leading researchers in the dynamic field of consumer psychology. Although these researchers are housed in different academic departments (ie. marketing, psychology, advertising, communications) all have the common goal of attaining a better scientific understanding of cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses to products and services, the marketing of these products and services, and societal and ethical concerns associated with marketing processes. Consumer psychology is a discipline at the interface of marketing, advertising and psychology. The research in this area focuses on fundamental psychological processes as well as on issues associated with the use of theoretical principles in applied contexts. The Handbook presents state-of-the-art research as well as providing a place for authors to put forward suggestions for future research and practice. The Handbook is most appropriate for graduate level courses in marketing, psychology, communications, consumer behavior and advertising.

An argument that there are perceptual mechanisms that retrieve information in cognitively and conceptually unmediated ways and that this sheds light on various philosophical issues. In Cognition and Perception, Athanassios Raftopoulos discusses the cognitive penetrability of perception and claims that there is a part of visual processes (which he calls “perception”) that results in representational states with nonconceptual content; that is, a part that retrieves information from visual scenes in conceptually unmediated, “bottom-up,” theory-neutral ways. Raftopoulos applies this insight to problems in philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, and epistemology, and examines how we access the external world through our perception as well as what we can know of that world. To show that there is a theory-neutral part of existence, Raftopoulos turns to cognitive science and argues that there is substantial scientific evidence. He then claims that perception induces representational states with nonconceptual content and examines the nature of the nonconceptual content. The nonconceptual information retrieved, he argues, does not allow the identification or recognition of an object but only its individuation as a discrete persistent object with certain spatiotemporal properties and other features. Object individuation, however, suffices to determine the referents of perceptual demonstratives. Raftopoulos defends his account in the context of current discussions on the issue of the theory-ladenness of perception (namely the Fodor-Churchland debate), and then discusses the repercussions of his thesis for problems in the philosophy of science. Finally, Raftopoulos claims that there is a minimal form of realism that is defensible. This minimal realism holds that objects, their spatiotemporal properties, and such features as shape, orientation, and motion are real, mind-independent properties in the world.

Philosophers and behavioral scientists discuss what, if anything, of the traditional concept of individual conscious will can survive recent scientific discoveries that human decision-making is distributed across different brain processes and through the social environment. Recent scientific findings about human decision making would seem to threaten the traditional concept of the individual conscious will. The will is threatened from "below" by the discovery that our apparently spontaneous actions are actually controlled and initiated from below the level of our conscious awareness, and from "above" by the recognition that we adapt our actions according to social dynamics of which we are seldom aware. In Distributed Cognition and the Will, leading philosophers and behavioral scientists consider how much, if anything, of the traditional concept of the individual conscious will survives these discoveries, and they assess the implications for our sense of freedom and responsibility. The contributors all take science seriously, and they are inspired by the idea that apparent threats to the cogency of the idea of will might instead become the basis of its reemergence as a scientific subject. They consider macro-scale issues of society and culture, the micro-scale dynamics of the mind/brain, and connections between macro-scale and micro-scale phenomena in the self-guidance and self-regulation of personal behavior. Contributors George Ainslie, Wayne Christensen, Andy Clark, Paul Sheldon Davies, Daniel C. Dennett, Lawrence A. Lengbeyer, Dan Lloyd, Philip Pettit, Don Ross, Tamler Sommers, Betsy Sparrow, Mariam Thalos, Jeffrey B. Vancouver, Daniel M. Wegner, Tadeusz W. Zawidzki

This unique handbook maps the growing field of consumer psychology in its increasingly global context. With contributions from over 70 scholars across four continents, the book reflects the cross-cultural and multidisciplinary character of the field. Chapters relate the key consumer concepts to the progressive globalization of markets in which consumers act and consumption takes place. The book is divided into seven sections, offering a truly comprehensive reference work that covers: The historical foundations of the discipline and the rise of globalization The role of cognition and multisensory perception in consumers’ judgements The social self, identity and well-being, including their relation to advertising Social and cultural influences on consumption, including politics and religion Decision making, attitudes and behaviorally based research Sustainable consumption and the role of branding The particularities of online settings in framing and affecting behavior The Routledge International Handbook of Consumer Psychology will be essential reading for anyone interested in how the perceptions, feelings and values of consumers interact with the decisions they make in relation to products and services in a global context. It will also be key reading for students and researchers across psychology and marketing, as well as professionals interested in a deeper understanding of the field.

This handbook is an essential, comprehensive resource for students and academics interested in topics in cognitive psychology, including perceptual issues, attention, memory, knowledge representation, language, emotional influences, judgment, problem solving, and the study of individual differences in cognition.