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Professor
Ruth Smith
Library Liaison
Jeff Waller
Contents
Introduction
Research Basics
Background and Reference
Find Books at Geisel Library
Find Books beyond
Geisel Library
Find Journal Articles
Find Newspaper Articles
How to Cite Your Sources
Subject Guide
Economics & Business
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This guide ties in with the class assignment to conduct a literature review of books and articles about the consumption of a particular product or service. Start your research by searching the library catalog for useful books, including more general works related to consumer behavior as well as books specific to your topic. Then search the journal and newspaper databases for relevant articles that focus more narrowly on your particular product or service. If the books or articles you need are unavailable in Geisel Library, use our Interlibrary Loan service to request them from other libraries.
The reference librarians have created a group of Web pages named Research Help, and a tutorial called Searchpath, designed to help teach you the basics of library research and to introduce you to Geisel Library. On the Research Help pages, you will find a guide on Research Basics that walks you through the steps of performing college-level research. Please take advantage of these resources.
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Reference materials can provide basic background information on your topic and help you identify keywords for further searching. Many of the reference volumes listed below offer multi-page essays that shed light on historic and modern consumption of goods and services, including intangible "products" such as holidays and the media.
Some reference resources provide bibliographies at the ends of each entry or volume, which will point you to additional books and journal articles worth exploring. Many of these will be in our collection, but if the "perfect" book/article is not here at Geisel, don't hesitate to request it from another library through our Interlibrary Loan service. Articles often arrive within 3–5 days, while books generally arrive within 1–2 weeks.
American Folklore: An Encyclopedia
Ref GR101 .A54
This single-volume work may be useful if your topic relates to American folklore such as arts and crafts, games, or music.
Best Customers: Demographics of Consumer Demand
Ref HC79 .C6 R87
Statistical profiles of the consumption of more than 300 products and services, with breakdowns by age, income, region, race, and level of education.
Encyclopedia of American Social History
Ref HN57 .E58
This encyclopedia provides lengthy essays on themes such as food, sports, nightlife, alternative medicine, holidays, and music, along with a discussion of the "culture of consumption."
Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion
Ref GT507 .E53
Entries on topics such as body piercing, makeup, fashion advertising, and the social class issues related to clothing.
Encyclopedia of Food and Culture
Ref GT2850 .E53
This three-volume reference includes an essay on the consumption of food, along with entries on specific foods and beverages, social class issues, and "food as metaphor."
Encyclopedia of Human Behavior
Ref BF31 .E5
This encyclopedia provides a psychological perspective on issues like consumer psychology, substance abuse, social values, appetite, and body image.
Encyclopedia of the United States in the Twentieth Century
Ref E740.7 .E53
While most of this encyclopedia focuses on historical events and people, volume 6 contains revealing essays on clothing, leisure, music, the mass media, and the arts.
Oxford Reference Online
This database enables you to search within many of Oxford's reference works, including the Oxford Companion to United States History (with entries on consumer culture, fashion, tourism, and popular music, among other topics).
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To find relevant books, you will probably want to try a combination of Keyword and Subject searching in the Geisel Library catalog. Start by searching one or more keywords corresponding to the product or service that you're researching (e.g. cosmetics, fast food, or birth control). When you find a useful book, check in its catalog record for Subject Headings that are pertinent to your topic. If you find a good Subject Heading, click on it to see a list of other books on the same subject.
You can also try directly performing a Subject search on a defined Subject Heading related to your topic. Here is a sample of generic Subject Headings that may prove fruitful; there will also likely be subject headings corresponding to your product.
- Child Consumers
- Consumer Behavior
- Consumer Behavior-United States
- Consumers—United States
- Consumption Economics
- Leisure
- Popular Culture—United States
- Women Consumers
Use the *(asterisk) as a truncation symbol to retrieve variant forms of a word root; for example, consum* will catch books with the words "consumer" or "consumption" in the catalog record. Use the Boolean AND to combine together multiple concepts, and use the Boolean OR to expand your search with synonyms and related terms.
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Thanks to the ready availability of Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service, you are not limited to using the books available at Saint Anselm. By searching WorldCat (an online catalog encompassing the holdings of thousands of libraries worldwide), you can identify relevant books owned by other colleges and have them delivered to Geisel Library for your use. One strategy to exploring WorldCat is to perform Subject searches on the same Subject Headings you found in the Geisel Library catalog. You may wish to conduct Keyword searching on terms related to your product or service.
Inside most WorldCat book records is a "Request ILL" link; to place an ILL request, all you need to do is:
- Click on the Request ILL link
- Input your name and contact information, including the S number on your student ID
- Click the Submit button
The book will be available at our circulation desk within 1–2 weeks. You will be emailed when it arrives, and you can check it out for the usual borrowing period.
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More detailed and specific analyses of consumer behavior will be available in academic journals, popular magazines, and the trade press. Scholarly journal articles will typically offer theoretical or empirical examinations of consumer behavior, while popular magazine articles provide overviews of the latest trends. Trade–press periodicals (i.e., periodicals targeted toward companies in specific industries) present the industry insider's perspective on the latest developments in consumer goods markets, including insight into the tastes of customers.
To look for useful articles, start by searching the same keywords you used in the book catalogs, employing the Boolean AND and OR to combine concepts and related terms. As examples, here are a few keyword searches based on topics for this project:
- overeating AND behavior
- wedding* AND gift*
- abuse AND (drug* OR alcohol)
- (celebrities OR celebrity) AND culture AND appeal
- (fast food) AND consum*
- (China OR Chinese) AND (products or goods) AND safety
Once you run your search, make use of the limiters across the top of the search results screen to narrow your focus to Academic Journals, Trade Publications, or Magazines. Click on a Subject along the left-hand side to narrow your results to articles dealing with that particular topic. If there is no link to the full text of the article, click on the  icon to determine whether the journal is available at Geisel Library or in full-text via another electronic database. If the article isn't available, consider clicking on the Interlibrary Loan link to request a PDF copy of the article from another library; the article should be emailed to you within a week.
Academic Search Premier
A broad index providing abstracts and some full-text of scholarly and popular journals. Check here for popular magazine articles on consumer trends, and for scholarly articles from a range of academic disciplines.
Business Source Premier
Provides full-text articles and article abstracts for periodicals covering business, marketing, consumers, and industry trends. Search this database for articles from the trade press, popular magazines like Business Week and Fortune, and scholarly business journals such as the Journal of Marketing and Journal of Consumer Research.
PsycINFO
Search here for citations and full text of articles from over 2,000 scholarly journals in psychology. This database is worth exploring if your topic has a strong psychological component, such as disorders, addictions, appetites, or self-image.
SocINDEX
This database contains full text articles from journals dealing with sociology, social psychology, and ethnic and gender studies. Consider searching SocINDEX if your topic involves sociological issues such as group identification, social conventions, etiquette, or popularity.
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In their feature and style articles, newspapers often cover new consumer trends long before journals and books address them. Although they lack the analysis and scholarly weight of journal articles, newspaper articles may be the best source of information on popular fads and new products. Try the same keyword searches that succeeded in the journal databases.
LexisNexis Academic
Find full-text newspaper articles from local, national, and international papers. Choose the Terms and Connectors option to conduct Boolean searching, applying limiters to narrow the search. Next to Select Sources, choose either "US Newspapers and Wires" or "Major World Newspapers". In the results screen, change the Sort to "Relevance" to move the best results to the top.
You can also search within the following individual newspapers:
Newspaper Source
Get full-text articles from several national and international newspapers (including USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Post, The Times-London, etc.) and selected full-text access to more than 200 regional (U.S.) newspapers (including The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, and The Detroit Free Press).
Wall Street Journal
This database offers full-text access to the Wall Street Journal (Eastern edition) from 1984 through the present. You can do keyword searching within the citations, abstracts or full text of articles.
Alternative Press Watch
Provides citations (some with abstracts) from over 250 alternative or radical periodicals, concerned with cultural, economic, political and social change. Try searching this if your topic relates to non-mainstream American culture (for example, alternative medicine or body piercing).
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See the library's How To Cite Your Sources guide for resources on how to properly cite research materials. Always confirm the style required by your instructor.
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