This volume showcases papers presented at the annual Advertising and
Consumer Psychology conference, sponsored by the Society for Consumer
Behavior, the Marketing Science Institute, and Backer Spielvogel Bates,
Inc., who also hosted the conference at their agency in the Chrysler Build-
ing in New York City. The contributors include most of the important
active scholars in the world who have an interest in the general area of
psychographics, values, and lifestyles in advertising. The mix of authors is
remarkably interdisciplinary and international. The combinations of prac-
titioner and academic backgrounds augmented the quality of dialogue at
the conference and the quality of the chapters finally included in this
book.

The volume is divided into four nonorthogonal sections. Each chapter
is placed into one section, although several chapters could fit into more
than one section quite conveniently.

The first section deals with theoretical and conceptual issues in this
research. Reynolds, Westberg, and Olson extend their well-known work in
means-end theory from product advertising to issue and image advertising.
Englis and Solomon illustrate how lifestyle imagery is generated and modi-
fied by advertising, marketing, and media gatekeepers. Murry, Lastovicka,
and Austin build their case that by examining the relations between lifestyle
traits and consumption beliefs, one can begin to understand why beliefs
are held and better understand how traits influence consumption behavior.
This understanding can illuminate communication strategy. Prensky and
Wright-Isak discuss the importance of communities in transmitting values.
They provide evidence that "virtual" communities of mass-media consumers
receive and enact values differently today from communities of the past.
Fennell argues that an advertiser must understand the scope of an indi-
vidual brand in the user's individual and population world. She presents
a model of a behavioral episode representing an occasion for action and
illustrating the value relevance for advertising. Kahle, Homer, O'Brien,
and Boush test Maslow's hierarchy and find it inadequate to explain the
phenomena of their research.

The second section presents chapters devoted to improving methodol-
ogy. Shrum and McCarty describe their research program and make a
number of recommendations for improving our understanding of the re-
lation between values and consumer behavior, including improved meas-
urement, improved attention to individual differences, and greater sensi-
tivity to the relations among variables. S. Grunert and Askegaard address
the semantic ambiguity inherent in the abstractness of value constructs
and how they are usually presented. They propose the use of pictorial
stimuli and explore the consequences of their suggestions. Wansink de-
scribes the technique of "customer profiling," which can help segment a
market through a modified laddering technique. Valette-Florence proposes

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