The emergence of Consumer Introspection Theory (CIT): Introduction to a JBR special issue

Introspection in its various forms, names, paradigmatic controversies and especially its power for insight has earned its place as a topic for a special issue. Here, I introduce this issue in terms of the introspections it contains and introspect a bit myself mainly through introspective thought exercises. What I find grounded in the texts of the submitted papers as thematic data is an emergent (rebranded) perspective on introspection which I call, Consumer Introspection Theory (CIT). I relate CIT as a paradigm to different forms of research: Consumer Culture Theory (CCT), critical marketing and experimental research. I also further elaborate how it functions in terms of single versus multiple person introspection, autoethnography and other practice variations; narrative versus metacognitive introspection; grounded versus hypothesis-driven introspection and introspective thought exercises.