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Consumer researchers have long known that some shoppers prefer to combine errands on their shopping trips, while others tend to focus on one errand at a time. However, there was no published evidence that similar behaviors occur within a specific shopping situation. Proposes that polychronic tendency analysis (PTA) can provide insights that explain such behaviors. Self‐reports were used to examine adult women's general polychronic tendency and to contrast this with reported polychronic tendencies when shopping for groceries and shopping for clothing to be worn at work. Three strong‐fitting, theoretically sound constructs consisting of multiple simultaneous activity and activity‐changing items were constructed using a structural equation modeling approach. The general, grocery shopping, and clothing shopping models differed from one another. This showed that women have different time use tendencies in different shopping situations. Also demonstrates how situation‐specific survey instruments and the resultant models and measurement scales can be developed using the PTA approach. Offers retail implications.

The purpose of this paper is to extend and apply the systems model of the household proposed by Dixon, his colleagues, and his students to situations in which vulnerable consumers are not able to follow the purely rational models of economics. The case of homeless families is examined.

The paper presents a literature review, an introduction of Baker et al.'s concepts of consumer normalcy and consumer vulnerability, and an application of expanded model to consumer studies of homeless persons published by Ronald Hill and his colleagues.

The same household systems models might be used to unfold the complex problems that can undermine the functioning in a household, causing it to be unproductive and potentially fail. Applications of the concepts of “consumer normalcy” and “consumer vulnerability” provide a useful platform to develop public policy recommendations, the example of homeless persons will be considered as an illustration.

The extension and application is limited in that it is applied to analyze data collected approximately 20 years ago. The research should be extended to actual homeless households in the present day, and to additional “types” of households who are likely to encounter vulnerabilities as consumers (e.g. persons with disabilities).

The four levels of household processes (employment, purchasing, home‐production, and consumption) provide a useful framework for examining households in which vulnerabilities occur. This approach is useful in identifying the gaps in the household processes that can slow down productivity and instead introduce confusion and demoralization, plus continue the spiral of economic deprivation.

For over 50 years, the work of Goffman has played an important role in identifying individuals and households that did not fit societal norms, resulting in their possibly experiencing conditions of stigmatization. Examining specific household types in terms of the functionality or dysfunctionality of their use of inputs may allow researchers to recommend various types of support, training, or assistance related to the household as a system, rather than focusing on the individual without considering the household dynamics.

This paper takes a general systems approach in applying the concepts of consumer normalcy and consumer vulnerability, both based in behavioral theories in the social sciences, to the economic approach to the household emphasizing rational decision making and orderly production functions.

In the present study, the authors propose a segmentation schema based on patterns of e‐browsing and e‐purchasing. We examine self‐reports of browsing and purchasing using five specific non‐store channels: the Internet, television infomercials, advertising that accompanies regular television programming, television shopping channels, and print catalogs. Our findings indicate that shoppers who browse and/or purchase on the Internet differ in their use of multi‐channel options related to their perceptions of convenience. Some shoppers clearly want to purchase in the store setting and reject multiple forms of non‐store shopping. Others like to browse various non‐store media and have extended their browsing to the Internet, yet maintain their loyalty to in‐store purchases. Retailers who attempt to “convert” such shoppers to Internet‐only purchasing may alienate the shoppers who rely on the Internet solely for information.

This paper aims to extend understanding of the cues that customers with disabilities use to judge inclusion/welcome (or not) in interactions in retail stores.

Critical incident interviews were conducted with 115 informants who provided rich descriptions of 113 welcoming incidents and 105 unwelcoming incidents. Interview transcripts were content analyzed to determine inductively the cues customers with disabilities use to perceive welcoming.

Four primary situational factors explain to what perceptions of welcome/inclusion are attributed: service personnel; store environmental factors; other customers; and product/service assortments. Further, a disability becomes salient only when there is an interaction between these situational factors and consumers' disabilities.

The findings suggest an extension to Bitner's servicescape conceptualization in that it specifies that the assessment of an environment as enabling or disabling is important for at least some customers in deciding whether they should stay, go, or return to a particular servicescape.

The results reveal that consumers with disabilities should be viewed as customers first, and only as possessing a disability in particular interactions in the customer‐firm interface.

This research presents the views of a set of customers who are under‐represented in research samples. It discusses how not all people with disabilities are alike and begins to develop a deeper understanding of their behavior as consumers. The research is valuable for retail managers and service providers who need useful information for training employees, for designing servicescapes that are welcoming for consumers with disabilities, and for fulfilling the inclusive intent of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). It will also be of interest to academics who are engaged in research that attempts to improve the quality of life for consumers.

The Asian‐American consumer group is thought to be the fastest‐growing market in the USA. Asian‐Americans are thought to be well‐educated, generally affluent, and geographically concentrated. However, significant cultural and language differences among Asian subgroups are often overlooked. These include patterns of information gathering, use of promotional media, and methods of household decision making. This article presents a comparative marketing examination of the similarities and differences among five of the largest Asian‐American groups and develops implications for marketing strategies.

Successful advertising must attract attention, communicate clearly, and ideally be memorable for optimum impact. The basic processes of encoding and decoding underlie successful communication, but advertisers often neglect to test for accessibility by visually‐disabled persons. The present paper will present a framework for detecting information‐processing problems and illustrate the use of this framework by analyzing the responses of color‐deficient consumers.

The goals of this investigation are to identify behaviors and attitudes that are predictive of an individual’s polychronic or monochronic time use, relating these findings to individuals’ time management approaches. A modified polychronic attitude indicator (PAI3) scale is used as the overall measure of monochronic/polychronic tendencies. A series of potential predictor variables from the “structure” portion of the FAST scale, items related to the time structure questionnaire, and other items based on literature synthesis and researcher judgment were used. A stepwise multiple regression analysis resulted in an eight‐predictor variable solution. It was concluded that polychronicity is related to different aspects of time management; recommendations are given for future study and for application in the workplace.

Retail buyers' decisions result in billions of dollars of merchandise being purchased and offered for sale by retailers around the world. At present, retail buyers do not appear to be adequately harnessing consumer input to improve their forecasts. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue by introducing a new approach involving both retail buyers' consensus forecasts and those from a sample of “ordinary” consumers.

The authors introduce a new approach to online forecasting that involves both retail buyers' consensus forecasts and those from a sample of “ordinary” consumers.

The results suggest an opportunity to create what are termed retail prediction markets that offer significant potential to improve the accuracy of buyers' forecasts.

The authors go beyond crowd sourcing technology and show how retail prediction markets may offer significant potential to improve the accuracy of retail buyers' forecasts.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ushered in an era of puzzling, sometimes confounding regulations for retailers. While the mandated changes were welcomed by disability advocate groups and by consumers at large, retailers have been uneven in their implementation and enactment of the ADA’s actual requirements. The present research reports on a study in which a cross‐section of retailers were interviewed concerning their understanding and their actions following the ADA’s implementation. The study examined anticipated differences among retail awareness of and compliance with the ADA at the local versus the regional or national levels. It was expected and found that national and regional chains have a corporate policy enforced by local management, while locally‐owned retailers interpret and develop their own reactions to the ADA. The level of formality, level of accommodation, and amount of investment differ by available resources of each retailer and the ability to effectively manipulate shopping access. Our findings suggest that retailers can choose to implement low‐cost, high impact accommodations which involve simple readjustments of their existing policies. A critical look at problems and solutions suggests that a no‐surprise, high‐respect environment can be achieved with minimal expense to retailers.