Editorial

Citation

Leventhal, R.C. (2007), "Editorial", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 24 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/jcm.2007.07724baa.001

Editorial

What type of information is the consumer desirous of ascertaining in conjunction with their decision making, as it pertains to a product or service? Is the “job” of a company to educate the consumer as it pertains to their products or services, or should enough information be disseminated to the consumer so that s/he should be able/expected to make their own choice based upon this information? But is the type of information that is being communicated to the consumer accurate? Important? Meaningful? And, is the consumer willing to spend their time evaluating/listening to all of this information give the staggering amount of messages that are targeted towards them? This situation tends to get complicated as marketers make a concerted effort to attract/retain consumers.

Al-Ghamdi, Sohail and Al-Khaldi examine the role of consumer protection agencies in Saudi Arabia. The authors measure the level of satisfaction with the performance provided by five different protection agencies. Their results reveal that consumers assign different levels of importance to various dimensions when evaluating satisfaction with consumer protection agencies in Saudi Arabia.

D’Astous and Gagnon examines factors that are of importance to adults in explaining players’ appreciation of a board game. These factors should be of interest to people involved in the conception and marketing of new board games. Perhaps the ability to allow players to get out of their “routine” and live “uncommon experiences” as well as interacting with other players should be given more consideration.

Horne, Norberg and Ekin explore consumer misrepresentation (lying) during personal information disclosure in a commercial context. The authors engaged in two studies: one examined the extent of consumer lying in a consumer-commercial exchange context, the variation of lying about different kinds of personal information and a classification of consumers in terms of disclosure tendencies, and the second study examined two mediating processes that may drive lying behavior.

Friedman and Gould examine attitudes about direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription drugs to the final user or consumer. The authors posit that negativism that has become associated with this type of marketing communication indicate that significant changes in DTCA are necessary. If such changes are not forthcoming then DTCA may become impractical or even prohibited.

Again, please be certain to also take the time to read our Misplaced marketing, Case study, Book review and Computer currency sections.

Richard C. Leventhal