Consumption, Identity, Demographics and Self-Concept

Dear Colleagues,

Consumers typically consume and publicly display products such as fashion, jewelry, and cars in particular to express themselves, (re)construct their identity, elevate their social status, conform to a socially acceptable norm (generalized other), and/or affiliated with desired social groups (significant others). In other words, consumer goods can be used as a nonverbal communicator or “social glue” to communicate and connect with others. More specifically, consumption plays a significant role in identity development, impression formation, and appearance management of young consumers, including millennials and Generation Z. Prior research has demonstrated that the way in which people portray themselves in various situations is associated with their cognitive and affective judgments and decision-making. However, emotional feelings are difficult to verbalize and interpret. To gain a deeper understanding of how people perceive themselves, others, and products, mixed-research methods and technological devices (e.g,. eye-tracking, virtual reality, EEG, NIRS, fMRI, MEG, data mining, machine learning) can be utilized to provide a more reliable, objective and nonbiased assessment of people’s attention and reactions towards an object (e.g., consumer product) and/or individual (e.g., significant others) in different sociocultural contexts. For example, emotional, mental, behavioral, and physiological reactions of a person can be measured through visual attention, gaze behavior, facial expressions, and physiological signals. With this perspective, it seems imperative and appropriate to employ mixed-research methods to examine and uncover the complex relationships between consumers’ affective reactions, consumption situations, identity formation, and presentation of self. The aim of this Special Issue is to provide practical, conceptual, and/or theoretical insights into the field of consumer behavior from a variety of perspectives: consumption and identity formation, consumption and presentation of self, and consumption and affective reactions.

This Special Issue focuses on fusing new developments with research on behavioral sciences. Submissions should explicitly speak to one or more of the following themes:

• Consumption and identity formation;
• Culture and identity formation;
• Identity in the consumer market: media (traditional and digital);
• Identity and (in)conspicuous consumption;
• Transnational identity;
• Ethnic/cultural identity in a multicultural market environment;
• Products (high-/low-involvement) and consumer identity;
• Identity, demographics, and consumer behavior;
• Consumer behavior, identity, and millennials;
• Gendered marketing and advertising;
• Consumption and presentation of self;
• Social conformity and symbolic consumption;
• Consumer behavior and self-concept;
• Publicly consumed products and social self;
• Consumer identity and social self;
• Privately consumed products and private self;
• Cognitive and affective judgments on consumption;
• Consumer perception and presentation.

Prof. Dr. Osmud Rahman
Dr. Gabriel R. D. Levrini
Guest Editors

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 short communications 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 single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Behavioral Sciences 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 2200 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.

• consumption
• identity
• demographics
• self-concept
• affective judgments
• social conformity
• consumer market
• marketing
• advertising
• media