The ISI impact score of Journal of Consumer Affairs now places it among the leading business journals and one of the top handful of marketing- related publications. The immediacy index score, showing how swiftly the published studies are cited or applied in other publications, places JCA seventh of those same 77 journals. More importantly, in these difficult economic times, JCA is the leading journal whose focus for over four decades has been on the interests of consumers in the marketplace. With the journal's origins in the consumer movement and consumer protection concerns, the focus for papers in terms of both research questions and implications must involve the consumer's interest and topics must be addressed from the consumers point of view. As the journal's first editor Gordon E. Bivens wrote in his editorial for the inaugural issue in Summer 1967: "The Journal recognizes as one of its prime functions that of making available the research findings of a number of disciplines which have a major thrust toward understanding the consumer, his behavior and the implications of his economic, social, legal, and political environment...items of interest to scholars, teachers, students, and professional activists with a major, or even minor, parts of their activities in consumer affairs."

TopHighlights

Consumers' Rules of Engagement in Online Information Exchanges
Amit Poddar, Jill Mosteller, and Pam Scholder Ellen

Using the Thrifty Food Plan to Assess the Cost of a Nutritious Diet
Parke E. Wild and Joseph Llobrera

Misguided Optimism Among College Student Smokers: Leveraging Their Quit Smoking Strategies for Smoking Cessation Campaigns
Joyce E. Wolburg

No Pain, No Strain: Impact of Health on the Financial Security of Older Americans
Hyungsoo Kim and Angela C. Lyons

Determinants of Online Privacy Concern and Its Influence on Privacy Protection Behaviors Among Young Adolescents
Seounmi Youn