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It is a great honor to be selected as a marketing legend, and 117 of my refereed journal articles are published in nine volumes by Sage India as part of the Legend series. In this chapter, I discuss my preparation for an academic career and the trajectory my research has followed. I reflect on my research contributions to marketing by selectively summarizing the key contributions in each of the nine volumes and draw out some lessons and principles I have learned in the process.

This chapter addresses one aspect of the broad issue of the psychological foundations of the dimensions of multidimensional scaling (MDS) solutions. Using empirical data from three independent studies, it is shown that the dimensionality of MDS solutions is negatively related to individual differences in the level of cognitive differentiation and integrative complexity of individuals and positively related to the individual's ability to discriminate within dimensions. MDS dimensionality is also shown to be affected by a variety of task-related variables such as perceived task difficulty, consistency in providing similarity judgments, confidence, familiarity, and importance attached to the stimuli. The chapter concludes by raising the issue of whether MDS can be validly used to describe complex cognitive processes.