There are two purposes of this paper. One is to present a brief introduction to item response theory in conjunction with marketing research. The other is to present a review of current use of item response theory in representative marketing research journals. Several item response theory relevant papers were recently published in various marketing research journals. Because models under item response theory from simple to complex were used without any systematic introduction in marketing research, this paper briefly presents main concepts in item response theory. An encyclopaedia entry (Kim, 2015) and two graduate-level textbooks (Baker & Kim, 2004, 2017) are mainly referred and used for the first purpose. A content analysis was done for the second purpose with 28 item response theory relevant articles on marketing research journals. Articles are sorted based on the classification framework by Thissen and Steinberg (1986). Many articles reviewed relied on some type of unidimensional dichotomous item response theory models. Articles published recently within 10 years that used item response theory models were more complicated both mathematically and statistically than other previously published articles in marketing research journals. The taxonomic tabulations in this study should aid marketing researchers who are planning their continuous training in item response theory, and faculty who design or teach courses on marketing research methods for advanced undergraduate and graduate students.

• Seock-Ho Kim(University of Georgia, USA)
• John Hulland(University of Georgia, USA)
• Hyo Jin Eom(Korea University, Korea)