Rhetorical Analysis of Academic Journal

My Selfie. February 2016

The most recent publication of the Journal of Consumer Research I could find from the University of Arizona library is from December 2015 so I wrote about the publications listed under this publication of the journal.

1. Who are the authors/speakers published in this specific issue of the academic journal you've selected? How many different authors are published here?

The authors listed under the December 2015 publication of this journal are Rom Schrift, Moty Amar, Anne-Kathrin Klesse, Jonathan Levav, Caroline Goukens, Rhiannon MacDonnell, Katherine White, Sunaina Chugani, Julie Irwin, Joseph Redden, Lisa Wan, Robert Wyer, Nicholas Reinholtz, Daniel Bartels, Jeffrey Parker, Caroline Roux, Kelly Goldsmith, Andrea Bonezzi, Luca Cian, Aradhna Krishna, and Norbert Schwarz.

If I counted correctly, I listed 21 authors, which is all of the people listed as authors in the December 2015 edition of the Journal of Consumer Research under the University of Arizona library database.

2. Who is the intended audience for this particular journal issue? How can you tell? Are there any secondary audiences included here? Cite specific details from the journal issue in your answers. 

The intended audience for this journal issue are people interested in consumer behavior. I can tell because of the titles of the articles in this publication of the Journal of Consumer Research. For example, three of the titles are "Positioning Rationality and Emotion: Rationality Is Up and Emotion Is Down," "Consumer Reaction to Attractive Service Providers: Approach or Avoid?" and "The Effect of Preference Expression Modality on Self-Control." As you can see, all three articles are a mix of marketing and psychology, which combines to talk about consumer behavior.

3. What is the context surrounding this particular journal issue? How does this affect the content of the journal?

Like I kind of stated above, the context is consumer research in regards to marketing. This affects the content because only articles relating to psychology, marketing, or consumer behavior will be included in this publication of the journal.

4. What is the overall message of the journal issue? How did you decide this?

I think the overall message would be that there are so many different factors that change how consumer think, feel, and buy. These factors include things such as scarcity, price, etc. Therefore I think the message may be that consumer research is not simple but is a combination of changing factors.

5. What purpose is the journal issue trying to achieve?

The purpose of the journal is to inform readers about the consumer research and the factors that affect it. It is trying to inform people about why scarcity affects people, why emotion and rationality go hand-in-hand and affect consumers behavior, things like that.