團隊

There has been a continuing and growing concern over the relevance of the articles published in the Journal of Consumer Research (JCR). “Relevance” has been addressed in a number of editorials over time: Mick (2003), Deighton (2007), Dahl et al. (2014), Inman et al. (2018), and Schmitt et al. (2002). There is an opinion that, over many years, the articles in JCR have trended toward the interests of academics and do not address the actual problems faced by consumers, firms, and public policy-makers (Inman et al. 2018). Also, there has been concern that much of what appears in JCR is narrow in scope, both in terms of theory and the empirical methods employed. Further, the dependent variables investigated are often lacking in real-world significance. These concerns have led to calls to increase relevance in consumer research. For example, Wells (1993) argued that “any given piece of research should be designed from the start with a consideration of how it will be useful to audiences it seeks to address” (Dahl et al. 2014, iii). According to Dahl et al. (2014), a single mantra for JCR should be to “make it meaningful” to its audience. The audience includes academics from the founding fields as well as scholars in other fields, consumers, marketing managers, and public policy-makers. Nevertheless, despite these calls, JCR was recently rated the lowest of the premier academic marketing journals on one measure of practical relevance (Jedidi et al. 2021). In light of this long-lasting dialogue, it is not clear to us that JCR stakeholders possess a good understanding of what “relevance” actually means. For example, Dahl et al. (2014, iv) argued “there is no single formula or paradigm for producing meaningful consumer research, and we therefore encourage a wide variety of approaches across papers.” Later, Inman et al. (2018, 955) claimed “Despite long-lasting and heartful ambitions to create a big tent for impactful, consumer-relevant research, we are still far from obtaining that goal.” Finally, according to the current editorial team (Schmitt et al. 2002, 753), “the mere fact that it [relevance] is revisited with such frequency makes us wonder if speaking about the need for consumer research to be relevant has not been enough. What more can be said?” Moreover, Schmitt et al. (2002, 754) state “As a field, we need to push ourselves to see how the areas we find personally fascinating link to real-world problems or serious important decisions that people have to make in the marketplace.” The goal of this article is to introduce a framework for increasing practical relevance in consumer research and illustrate it with recent articles published in JCR. We see this as a necessary (and long overdue) first step in gaining clarity on this issue and advancing the debate. Our framework focuses primarily on experimental research with empirical data. However, we believe it can also be applied to qualitative research. To accomplish this, we begin with a review of the literature on practical relevance. We then present our framework, explain its key dimensions, and identify representative examples from recently published articles. Finally, we close with several recommendations for marketing scholars keen on improving the relevance of their work.

Websites commonly use visual formats to display numerical product ratings. Highlighting the overlooked notion of the “aesthetics” of product ratings, the current research examines how the shape of basic visual rating units (rectangular vs. non-rectangular) influences product preference. Seven experiments (and 23 supplementary experiments; N = 17,994) demonstrate a visual rounding effect. Specifically, compared to the rectangular rating format (e.g., bar ratings), the non-rectangular rating format (e.g., star ratings) increases product preference when product ratings (e.g., 3.7, 3.8, 3.9) are below the nearest integer. In contrast, the non-rectangular rating format decreases product preference when product ratings (e.g., 4.1, 4.2, 4.3) are above the nearest integer. Occurring for both the overall rating and by-attribute ratings of a product, the visual rounding effect results from a visual completeness restoration process, wherein consumers perceive non-rectangular rating units to be incomplete after vertical cutting. This research contributes to the product rating and visual marketing literatures and provides actionable implications by demonstrating what visual rating format should be adopted based on rating distribution, how the visual rounding effect can be prevented if needed, and who are even more susceptible to the visual rounding effect.