An article published this month in the premiere CB journal, the Journal of Consumer Research, is totally relevant to the material we've been discussing in class recently.

Here's the opening paragraph:
       Stephanie, a first-year MBA student, is shopping for a new suit to wear to her internship   
       interviews. She finds a suit she likes and decides to try it on. As she approaches the dressing
       room, she sees another customer standing in front of a three-way mirror wearing the same suit
       she has in her hands. The customer is beautiful and looks stunning in the suit. Stephanie tries on
       the suit, is  not satisfied with how it looks on her, and decides to keep looking at another store.
       The question we examine in the current research is whether or not Stephanie’s evaluations of the
       suit would have been different had she not seen the other customer wearing it and what factors
       might influence this social comparison process.

From "Social Information in the Retail Environment: The Importance of Consumption Alignment, Referent Identity, and Self-Esteem," by Darren W. Dahl, Jennifer J. Argo, Andrea C. Morales

If you're on campus, you should be able to link to the full-text article seamlessly.  If you're off-campus (or if the on-campus link is sticky), you can access it through our wonderful library website (note: you have to log into the lib site to have access to any paid-for material).

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Why am I pointing you in this direction, hoping that you'll read, or at least skim, the article?  Why is research important in general?  Why is research important at Montana State University?  Why should research be important to you, as an undergraduate?