Buyer Behavior
Choosing a Topic
In addition to classroom discussion, your textbook and personal curiosity, browsing handbooks and journals may spark an idea for a satisfying and managable research topic.
Journal of consumer psychology (Ranked 3rd among business journals, 5.322 Impact, 1.422 Influence)
Journal of consumer research (Ranked 12th among business journals, 3.021 Impact, 1.744 Influence)
Cambridge Handbook of psychology and economic behaviour (Single user access)
Research Methods
For illuminating articles on how to do social science research, or just a quick reference describing a methodology, the following digital reference books are helpful.
Encyclopedia of Research Design
Encyclopedia of Measurement and Statistics
Encyclopedia of Social Science Research Methods
Encyclopedia of Survey Research Methods
Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods
Article Databases
Since the study of buyer behavior is interdisciplinary, there is not one single academic article database that will consistently give you the best and thorough results for a literature review. Each of the following databases can be used to good effect to find academic research on consumer behavior.
Dissertatoins and Theses Online
Searching Tips
- Use synonyms, brainstorm and mine found resources
- Notice controlled vocabulary, index, descriptor and subject terms. Take good notes!
- Use truncation to search for all terms with the same root: child* for child, children and childhood
- Combine terms with boolean operators, AND contains both terms, OR contains at least one term
- Search phrases; quotes work for most databases
- Use dropdown menu or radio buttons to limit search to fields such as title, subject, abstract, descriptors
- Save time and frustration with the Help menu: every database has one!
Contributed by Kristyna Carroll
Reference Tools & Tips
Refworks Never type a bibliography again! RefWorks will help you easily gather, manage, and store bibliographic citations for all types of information, as well as generate footnotes and bibliographies.
Most library databases have tools that format citations in APA style. Look for these common icons to cut and paste citations into your works cited list in your Word document. Some databases only offer this feature after after adding citations to a "marked list."
Whether you make citations from scratch, export them to Refworks (or another citation managment application such as Zotero), or cut and paste them from a database, they are not likely to be perfect the first time around. Inevitably you will need to be familiar with citation style rules in order to revise references. Research and Documenation Online is a reliable online reference for creating APA citations. But the authoritative source, Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, is only available in print.
