The icons of consumer research: Using signs to represent consumers’ reality

In consumer research-as in all types of human communication-there is an inevitable link between representation and deception. In articles, monographs, and books, consumer researchers seek to present consumer experiences, behaviors, and general tendencies to readers. However, because experiences, behaviors, and general tendencies cannot be presented directly to a reader, they must instead be represented using words, tables, graphs, diagrams, formulae, and other signs. Thus, a great deal depends on the researcher’s ability to choose the most representative signs because they are the only link that a reader has with what the researcher has examined. To the extent that the researcher chooses unwisely-or worse, chooses selectively in order to present a more convincing account-the reader will be left with an incorrect or distorted view of what was researched. Umberto Eco (1979:59) summarizes this line of reasoning with the proposition that “every time there is signification, there is the possibility of using it in order to lie.�?