Many of the diseases which afflict people in an affluent society like the United States seem to be related to food consumption (e.g., adult-onset diabetes mellitus, hyperlipidemia, and colon cancer). In recent years, the health-related professions have become aware that their exclusive aim of disease treatment must be expanded to include health promotion. Professionals in food and nutrition, health education, social marketing, and psychology, as well as others have become interested in finding ways to promote healthy behaviors such as appropriate food consumption patterns. To modify...

Recent research on joint or dyadic decision making has received renewed attention from behavioral scientists. This interest is due mostly to the advances in analytic and conceptual models used to study interaction processes. A number of related disciplines have used distinctive paradigms to study the same focal problem: namely, the processes by which two people interact, come to resolve a problem and, finally, reach a decision. Dyadic Decision Making presents in a single, integrated volume the conceptual and analytic strategies developed in communications research, marketing,...

Methodological advances in consumer behavior are increasing rapidly. We can characterize these advances by work in two logically separate but functionally related areas: (a) the philosophical underpinnings of our methods, and (b) the analytic strategies for examining the phenomena of interest in the field. An important aspect in communicating these advances is the demonstration of their use on focal problems in consumer behavior. Current research strategies and analytic techniques in the field of consumer research reflect the dominant logical empiricist epistemology. The develop- ment of new...