Consumer Behavior: New Essays on the Study of Consumption

Consumer Behavior presents an autobiographical view of Morris B. Holbrook’s contributions to the study of consumer behavior, describing his life and work over the past 60 years via a collection of subjective personal introspective essays. This new collection extends, enlarges, and elaborates on the insights garnered over Holbrook’s career to provide a lively and thought-provoking exploration of the evolution of consumer research.

Using Subjective Personal Introspection (SPI), Holbrook shares aspects of his own journey in developing insights into such topics as the consumption experience, consumer value, the jazz metaphor, marketing education, and various controversies that have interested the scholarly community. Early chapters portray Holbrook’s evolution in college, graduate school, and faculty membership, while later chapters trace his approaches to understanding the role of consumption as the essence of the human condition. Throughout, SPI is used to illuminate the ways in which academic struggles have led toward deeper understandings of consumers.

Readers with an interest in the autobiographical details of how ideas develop and emerge in an area such as consumer research - including doctoral students or faculty members in the field of marketing - will find enlightenment and inspiration in contemplating the (mis)adventures of a fellow traveler.

Morris B. Holbrook is now-retired W. T. Dillard Professor Emeritus of Marketing, Graduate School of Business, Columbia University, New York City. He received his Bachelor’s Degree from Harvard College (English Literature) in 1965, his MBA from Columbia University in 1967, and his PhD in Marketing from Columbia in 1975. From 1975 to 2009, he taught courses at the Columbia Business School in such areas as Sales Management, Marketing Strategy, Research Methods, Consumer Behavior, and Commercial Communication in the Culture of Consumption. His research has covered a wide variety of topics in marketing and consumer behavior with a special focus on issues related to communication in general and to aesthetics, semiotics, hermeneutics, art, entertainment, music, jazz, motion pictures, nostalgia, and stereography in particular.