Political Ideology and Consumer Research beyond Complaining Behavior: A Response to the Commentaries

Two commentaries on our article offer interesting and useful paths for pushing forward the research stream we have developed. Jost, Langer, and Singh suggest delving more deeply into underlying psychological motives while extending our finding to consumer boycotting behavior, and Crockett and Pendarvis suggest broadening the scope to consider the sociocultural context in which complaining occurs. We discuss these two complementary approaches. Building on these ideas, we offer five research themes we believe are fruitful avenues for exploring the interface between consumer research and political ideology. As an illustration of one of these themes, we use three county-level datasets to explore whether and how political ideology and social vulnerability combine to influence a number of prosocial behaviors.