The self--a sense of who and what we are--is suggested as an organizing construct through which people's everyday activities can be understood. Life's mundane tasks and the consumer behaviors necessary to enact them are cast in a perspective of self little used by consumer psychologists--social-identity theory. Two structural modeling studies in support of the perspective are reported. The results of the first one imply that people use products to enact one of their social identities and that products relate only indirectly to the overall or global self. The second study indicates that the frequency with which activities are performed depends on the salience of the identity they represent and that such salience, in turn, depends on several enabling factors. Taken together, the studies provide theoretical support for the common-sense notion that we are attracted to products that are consistent with, and that enable the enactment of, the various social identities which make up our sense of self; the more important an identity to us, the more attractive its associated products.

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One of the thorniest issues of intergovernmental fiscal relations is state oversight of local fiscal affairs. States have oversight responsibility and must take action when local governments run afoul of responsible fiscal behavior. Less accepted is how states can detect local financial difficulties before they become emergencies that require state takeover. Research in the 1970s provided some assistance to states wishing to recognize local financial emergencies. But the time has come to look at this issue anew, particularly with an eye toward predicting local financial problems before they become serious. This article describes a 10‐point scale that predicts these problems and tests the scale to predict local fiscal stress in a sample of Michigan local governments.

Solomon (1983) proposed that products, as social stimuli, influence reflected appraisals. Appraisals, in turn, influence self-definition. Kleine, Kleine, and Kernan (1993, study 2) empirically supported Solomon's hypothesis. Appraisals were found to completely mediate the relationship between possessions and self-definition. Appraisals are thus an essential link between possession sets and individuals' selfdefinitions. The current study extends the Kleine et al. (1993) model in two important ways. First, we combined insights from identity theory, appraisal theory, and the sociology of emotions literatures to offer a more precise and comprehensive conceptualization of the appraisal process that includes both cognitive and emotional components. The conceptualization distinguishes appraisals of possessions from appraisals of performance and reflected versus self-appraisals. Second, symbolic interactionist theory suggests that social interactions and media are social communication discourses that, like possessions, influence self-definitions via appraisals. The extended model incorporates these possibilities. Data collected from individuals with an identity based on one of two freely chosen athletic activities provides encouraging support for the extended model. The result pattern provides insights into how appraisals mediate the relationship between social communication discourses and self-definition. K leine, Kleine, and Kernan (1993) proposed and tested a model based on symbolic interactionist identity theory that pinpoints self-definition as the organizing construct through which ordinary consumption activities can be un-

First impressions of others affect both the content and outcomes of a variety of interpersonal encounters. In sales encounters, a salesperson’s first impressions of a customer provide a starting point for probing customer needs and for adapting to those needs. This implies that salesperson effectiveness in an initial sales encounter is associated— at least in part—with a salesperson’s first impression of the customer. The reported quasi-experiment is the first study to explore empirically the connection between salespeople’s first impressions, their cognitive structures, and sales effectiveness in a single, initial sales encounter. The results provide an intriguing glimpse into the dilemma salespeople face in trying to establish the basis of a relationship while achieving short-term sales outcomes (e.g., closing a sale, satisfaction).