| Consumer Communications are characterized in consumer behavior by the transmission of information from sender to receiver, according to a longstanding model of communication. The model, borrowed from cognitive science, is based on an engineering conceptualization that was never intended to handle the complexities of human communication. In consumer research the model is understood to require the text and pictures of consumer messages be reduced to their information content through a methodical identification. Once identified, information is processed in a mechanistic manner that does not accurately reflect the consumer communication process. Consumer researchers, adhering to the information processing model, thus misunderstand what pictures represent and how they operate in consumer communications. The adherence to the information processing model where pictures are concerned has been nearly absolute over the past thirty years and has directed consumer researchers away from any productive study of picture communication and reduced the potential impact of enlightening advances into the operation of pictures for commercial communications (e.g., Kleine and Kernan 1991; Scott 1994a). |
