Consumer behaviour
Interdisciplinary study of purchase, use, and disposal of goods.
Last updated
Costalesmarlynjean · CC BY-SA 4.0
It examines how emotions, attitudes, and preferences affect buying behaviour, and how external cues such as visual or tactile feedback shape those responses.[1] The field emerged in the 1940–1950s as a sub-discipline of marketing and now blends psychology, sociology, anthropology, and economics.[1]
Quick Facts
- Field
- Marketing, interdisciplinary social science
- Known for
- Study of purchase, use, and disposal of goods and services; analysis of consumer emotions, attitudes, and preferences
- Origins
- 1940s–1950s as a sub-discipline of marketing
- Influenced by
- Psychology
- sociology
- anthropology
- ethnography
- economics (behavioural economics)
Facts from the source article.
Key facts and history
In the 1940s and 1950s, marketing was dominated by descriptive classical schools that relied on case studies and occasional interviews.[2] In its early years, consumer behaviour was heavily influenced by motivation research used in advertising and psychology in the 1920s–1940s.[3] By the 1950s, marketing adopted techniques from motivation researchers including depth interviews, projective techniques, and thematic apperception tests.[3] The field is an applied social science that stands at the intersection of economic psychology and marketing science.[4]
Marketing's insufficient methodological rigor, particularly its failure to embrace mathematically-oriented behavioural science methods, was the subject of criticism in two significant reports issued near the close of the 1950s.[2] Because of this change, the customer became the primary unit of analysis, and novel concepts such as opinion leadership, reference groups, and brand loyalty were introduced to marketing.[5] Currently, consumer behaviour is considered a vital sub-discipline within marketing and is a required topic in nearly all undergraduate marketing curricula.[6]
What the cited sources add
That reading also presents activities occurring during the three phases of the consumer buying process: pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase.[7] It analyzes consumer decision-making units, including roles such as buyer, influencer, gatekeeper, and approver.[7] The reading concludes by exploring three developments that profoundly affect consumers' decision-making: social media, co-creation and customer involvement, and conscience marketing.[7] A reading titled "Consumer Behavior and the Buying Process" outlines four frameworks for analysing consumer decisions: cognitive versus emotional, high-involvement versus low-involvement, optimizing versus satisficing, and compensatory versus noncompensatory decision making.[7]
References
- Wikipedia, "Consumer behaviour" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Hampton, "Haptic Rewards: How Mobile Vibrations Shape Reward Response and Consumer Choice", Journal of Consumer Research, 2025 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Consumer behaviour" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Tadajewski, M., "A History of Marketing Thought", Ch 2 in Contemporary Issues in Marketing and Consumer Behaviour, Elizabeth Parsons and Pauline Maclaran (eds), (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Consumer behaviour" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Fullerton, R.A. "The Birth of Consumer Behavior: Motivation Research in the 1950s", Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2013, pp.212-222; Tadajewski, M., "A History of Marketing Thought", Ch 2 in Contemporary Issues in Marketing and Consumer Behaviour, Elizabeth Parsons and Pauline Maclaran (eds), (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Consumer behaviour" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Foxal, G., "Foundations of Consumer Behaviour Analysis", Marketing Theory, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp 165–199 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Consumer behaviour" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Sheth, J.N., "History of Consumer Behavior: a Marketing Perspective", in Historical Perspective in Consumer Research: National and International Perspectives, J (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Consumer behaviour" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Plassmann, "Branding the brain: A critical review and outlook", Journal of Consumer Psychology, January 2012, p. 18–36 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- "Marketing Reading: Consumer Behavior and the Buying Process ^ 8167", HBR Store. facts only, no text reused. store.hbr.org
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Consumer behaviour (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Consumer behaviour (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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