Introduction to the Special Issue on Consumer identities

Much of our consumer behavior involves some degree of self-reflection¿about who we are or are seen to be. Consumers can adopt, possess and strive for multiple identities, depending on the consumption context and the social environment. It is thus not surprising that consumers' sense of who they are¿their identity¿is an important driver of consumer behavior. Consumer identities may refer to who we currently are, who we used to be, want to be, or should (not) be. Any one of these identities can influence thoughts, feelings, judgments, and drive even the most mundane consumption choices. Despite the long tradition of academic marketing research exploring identity-based consumer behavior, many important questions remain unanswered and many new ones are rapidly gaining importance due to social and technological changes such as social networking and globalization. This special issue presents 11 articles to capture some of the latest thinking on consumer identities. The first, invited, article, by Reed, Forehand, Puntoni, and Warlop sets the stage for the special issue by providing a definition of consumer identity, defining key principles in identity research, and by applying these principles in important domains for future research. In particular, they define a consumer identity as any category label to which a consumer self-associates either by choice or endowment. According to Reed et al., a category label becomes an identity when consumers begin to self-regulate along this dimension, that is, when they start incorporating it into their sense of who they are, and initiate the process of becoming that kind of person.