Consumer behaviour is the study of individuals, groups, or organisations and all activities associated with the purchase, use and disposal of goods and services. It encompasses how the consumer's emotions, attitudes, and preferences affect buying behaviour, and how external cues—such as visual prompts, auditory signals, or tactile (haptic) feedback—can shape those responses. Consumer behaviour emerged in the 1940–1950s as a distinct sub-discipline of marketing, but has become an interdisciplinary social science that blends elements from psychology, sociology, social anthropology, anthropology, ethnography, ethnology, marketing, and economics (especially behavioural economics).
The study of consumer behaviour formally investigates individual qualities such as demographics, personality lifestyles, and behavioural variables (like usage rates, usage occasion, loyalty, brand advocacy, and willingness to provide referrals), in an attempt to understand people's wants and consumption patterns. Consumer behaviour also investigates on the influences on the consumer, from social groups such as family, friends, sports, and reference groups, to society in general (brand-influencers, opinion leaders).
Due to the unpredictability of consumer behavior, marketers and researchers use ethnography, consumer neuroscience, and machine learning, along with customer relationship management (CRM) databases, to analyze customer patterns. The extensive data from these databases allows for a detailed examination of factors influencing customer loyalty, re-purchase intentions, and other behaviors like providing referrals and becoming brand advocates. Additionally, these databases aid in market segmentation, particularly behavioral segmentation, enabling the creation of highly targeted and personalized marketing strategies.
Origins of consumer behaviour
In the 1940s and 1950s, marketing was dominated by the so-called classical schools of thought which were highly descriptive and relied heavily on case study approaches with only occasional use of interview methods. At the end of the 1950s, two important reports criticised marketing for its lack of methodological rigor, especially the failure to adopt mathematically-oriented behavioural science research methods.Tadajewski, M., "A History of Marketing Thought", Ch 2 in Contemporary Issues in Marketing and Consumer Behaviour, Elizabeth Parsons and Pauline Maclaran (eds), Routledge, 2009, pp 24-25 The stage was set for marketing to become more inter-disciplinary by adopting a consumer-behaviourist perspective.
From the 1950s, marketing began to shift its reliance away from economics and towards other disciplines, notably the behavioural sciences, including sociology, anthropology, and clinical psychology. This resulted in a new emphasis on the customer as a unit of analysis. As a result, new substantive knowledge was added to the marketing discipline – including such ideas as opinion leadership, reference groups, and brand loyalty. Market segmentation, especially demographic segmentation based on socioeconomic status (SES) index and household life-cycle, also became fashionable. With the addition of consumer behaviour, the marketing discipline exhibited increasing scientific sophistication with respect to theory development and testing procedures.Sheth, J.N., "History of Consumer Behavior: a Marketing Perspective", in Historical Perspective in Consumer Research: National and International Perspectives, Jagdish N. Sheth and Chin Tiong Tan (eds), Singapore, Association for Consumer Research, 1985, pp 5-7.
In its early years, consumer behaviour was heavily influenced by motivation research, which had increased the understanding of customers, and had been used extensively by consultants in the advertising industry and also within the discipline of psychology in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. By the 1950s, marketing began to adopt techniques used by motivation researchers including depth interviews, projective techniques, thematic apperception tests, and a range of qualitative and quantitative research methods.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 More recently, scholars have added a new set of tools including ethnography, photo-elicitation techniques, and phenomenological interviewing.Tadajewski, M., "A History of Marketing Thought", Ch 2 in Contemporary Issues in Marketing and Consumer Behaviour, Elizabeth Parsons and Pauline Maclaran (eds), Routledge, 2009, p. 28 In addition to these, contemporary research has delved further into the complexities of consumer behavior, incorporating innovative approaches such as neuroimaging studies and big data analytics. These modern tools provide deeper insights into subconscious consumer motivations and decision-making processes. Today, consumer behaviour (or CB as it is affectionately known) is regarded as an important sub-discipline within marketing and is included as a unit of study in almost all undergraduate marketing programs.
Definition and explanation Consumer behaviour entails "all activities associated with the purchase, use and disposal of goods and services, including the consumer's emotional, mental and behavioural responses that precede or follow these activities."Kardes, F., Cronley, M. and Cline, T., Consumer Behavior, Mason, OH, South-Western Cengage, 2011 p.7 The term consumer can refer to individual consumers as well as organisational consumers, and more specifically, "an end user, and not necessarily a purchaser, in the distribution chain of a good or service." Consumer behaviour is concerned with:Kardes, F., Cronley, M. and Cline, T., Consumer Behavior, Mason, OH, South-Western Cengage, 2011 p.9; Sassatelli, R., Consumer Culture: History, Theory and Politics, Sage, 2007, p. 10 purchase activities: the purchase of goods or services; how consumers acquire products and services, and all the activities leading up to a purchase decision, including information search, evaluating goods and services, and payment methods including the purchase experience use or consumption activities: concerns the who, where, when, and how of consumption and the usage experience, including the symbolic associations and the way that goods are distributed within families or consumption units disposal activities: concerns the way that consumers dispose of products and packaging; may also include reselling activities such as eBay and second-hand markets
Consumer responses may be:Kardes, F., Cronley, M. and Cline, T., Consumer Behavior, Mason, OH, South-Western Cengage, 2011 pp 10-11 emotional (or affective) responses: refer to emotions such as feelings or moods, mental (or cognitive) responses: refer to the consumer's thought processes, their behavioural (or conative) responses: refer to the consumer's observable responses in relation to the purchase and disposal of goods or services.
According to the American Marketing Association, consumer behaviour can be defined as "the dynamic interaction of affect and cognition, behaviour, and environmental events by which human beings conduct the exchange aspects of their lives."
As a field of study, consumer behaviour is an applied social science. Consumer behaviour analysis is the "use of behaviour principles, usually gained experimentally, to interpret human economic consumption." As a discipline, consumer behaviour stands at the intersection of economic psychology and marketing science.Foxal, G., "Foundations of Consumer Behaviour Analysis", Marketing Theory, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp 165–199
The purchase decision and its context
Understanding purchase and consumption behaviour is a key challenge for marketers. Consumer behaviour, in its broadest sense, is concerned with understanding both how purchase decisions are made and how products or services are consumed or experienced. Consumers are active decision-makers. They decide what to purchase, often based on their disposable income or budget. They may change their preferences related to their budget and a range of other factors.*Schöfer, Klaus, Word-of-Mouth:Influences on the choice of Recommendation Sources, 1998.
Some purchase decisions involve long, detailed processes that include extensive information search to select between competing alternatives.Belch, G, Belch, M.A, Kerr, G. and Powell, I., Advertising and Promotion Management: An Integrated Marketing Communication Perspective, McGraw-Hill, Sydney, Australia, 2009, p. 126 Other purchase decisions, consumers must make highly complex decisions, often based on a lack of time, knowledge or negotiating ability. Such as impulse buys or habitual purchases, are made almost instantaneously with little or no investment of time or effort in information search.
Some purchase decisions are made by groups (such as families, households, or businesses), while others are made by individuals. When a purchase decision is made by a small group, such as a household, different members of the group may become involved at different stages of the decision-making process and may perform different roles. For example, one person may suggest the purchase category, another may search for product-related information, while yet another may physically go to the store, buy the product, and transport it home. It is customary to think about the different types of decision-making roles, such as:
The Initiator the person who proposes a brand (or product) for consideration (something in return); The Influencer someone who recommends a given brand; The Decider the person who makes the ultimate purchase decision; The Purchaser the one who orders or physically buys it; The User the person who uses or consumes the product.Rossiter, J.R. and Percy, L., "Advertising Communication Models", in: Advances in Consumer Research, Volume 12, Elizabeth C. Hirschman and Moris B. Holbrook (eds), Provo, UT : Association for Consumer Research, 1985, pp 510-524., Online: http://acrwebsite.org/volumes/6443/volumes/v12/NA-12 or http://www.acrwebsite.org/search/view-conference-proceedings.aspx?Id=6443
For most purchase decisions, each of the decision roles must be performed, but not always by the same individual. For example, in the case of family making a decision about a dining-out venue, a parent may initiate the process by intimating that they are too tired to cook. The children are important influencers in the overall purchase decision, but both parents may act as joint deciders performing a gate-keeping role by vetoing unacceptable alternatives and encouraging more acceptable alternatives. The importance of children as influencers in a wide range of purchase contexts should never be underestimated and the phenomenon is known as pester power.Kenway, J. and Bullen, E., Consuming Children: Education, Entertainment, Advertising, Buckingham, Open University Press, 2001
To approach the mental processes used in purchasing decisions, some authors employ the concept of the black box, which represents the cognitive and affective processes used by a consumer during a purchase decision. The decision model situates the black box in a broader environment which shows the interaction of external and internal stimuli (e.g. consumer characteristics, situational factors, marketing influences, and environmental factors) as well as consumer responses.Sandhusen, R. L., Marketing, 2000. Cf. S. 218 The black box model is related to the black box theory of behaviourism, where the focus extends beyond processes occurring inside the consumer and also includes the relation between the stimuli and the consumer's response.