Articles
Jeff Bray: Consumer Behaviour Theory: Approaches and Models
1.1 Consumer behaviour & consumer decision making
• Utility Theory: proposes that consumers make choices based on the expected outcomes of
their decisions. Approaches topics from an economic perspective, and focuses solely on the
act of the purpose.
• Utility theory views the consumer as a ‘rational economic man’.
• Activities influencing the consumers: need recognition, information search, evaluation of
alternatives, the building of purchase intention, the act of purchasing, consumption and
disposal.
• ‘Consumer behaviour is the study of the processes involved when individuals or groups select,
purchase, use or dispose of products, services, ideas or experiences to satisfy needs and
desires.’
• ‘Consumer behaviour is the behaviour that consumers display in searching for, purchasing,
using, evaluating, and disposing of products and services that they expect will satisfy their
needs’.
1.2 Theoretical approaches to the study of consumer behaviour
• Five approaches of decision making: Economic Man, Psychodynamic, Behaviourist, Cognitive,
Humanistic.
1.3 Economic Man
• Economic man (/Homo economicus): in order to behave rationally in the economic sense, a
consumer would have to be aware of all the available consumption options, be capable of
correctly rating each alternative and be available to select the optimum course of action.
1.4 Psychodynamic Approach
• This view posits that behaviour is subject to biological influences through ‘intensive forces’ or
‘drives’ which act outside of conscious thought.
• Is attributed to the work of Sigmund Freud, he identified three facets of the psyche, the Id, the
Ego and the Superego while other theorists identify different drives.
• The key tenet of the psychodynamic approach is that behaviour is determined by biological
drives, rather than individual cognition, or environmental stimuli.
1.5 Behaviourist Approach
• ‘Little Albert’: this study involved teaching a small child (Albert) to fear otherwise benign
objects through repeated pairing with loud noises. The study proved that behaviour can be
learned by external events and thus discredited the Psychodynamic approach predominant.
• Behaviourism is a family of philosophies stating that behaviour is explained by external events,
and that all things that organisms do can be regarded as behaviours.
• Classical Behaviourism required the entirely objective study of behaviour, with no mental life
or internal states being accepted.
• Radical Behaviourism acknowledges the existence of feelings, states of mind and
introspection, however still regards these factors as epiphenomenal.
• Cognitive Behaviourism claims that intrapersonal cognitive events and processes are causative
and the primary irreducible determinants of overt behaviour.
1.6 Cognitive Approach
• The cognitive approach ascribes observed action (behaviour) to intrapersonal cognition. The
individual is viewed as an ‘information processor’.
,• Cognitivism had taken over from Behaviourism as the dominant paradigmatic approach to
decision research.
• Contemporary Cognitive Psychology has identified and developed a wide range of factors
which are thought fundamental to these intrapersonal processes including: perception,
learning, memory, thinking, emotion and motivation.
• Early Stimulus-Organism-Response model suggest a linear relationship between the three
stages with environmental and social stimuli acting as external antecedents to the organism.
This approach assumes that stimuli act upon an inactive and unprepared organism.
• Four key strengths of cognitivism as a means of explaining consumer behaviour:
- Its closeness to the common-sense explanations of everyday discourse make it a means of
offering explanations of everyday behaviours.
- The ability of consumers to describe their experiences in terms of their attitudes, wants,
needs and motives ensures that an explanation proceeds in the same terms as the
description of what is explained.
- It brings a measure of unity and consensus to a still young field of inquiry.
- The extensive use has assisted the conceptual development of this research by making
possible the borrowing of theoretical and methodological inputs.
• Cognitivism has the capacity to explain complex behaviours, an acknowledged deficiency of
the competing Behavioural perspective where it is impossible to ascertain the contingencies
that control response.
• Criticism: the cognitive approach relies upon the use of abstract and unobservable
explanatory variables which seldom prove amenable to empirical investigation and evaluation;
additionally it assumes the consumer is rational, discerning, logical and active in decision
making, assumptions that have been questioned by a number of writers.
1.6.1 Cognitive Models of Consumer Behaviour
• Analytical models provide a framework of the key
elements that are purported to explain the behaviour
of consumers. Due to their wide-ranging scope such
models are often labelled the ‘grand models’.
• Prescriptive models ‘provide guidelines or
frameworks to organise how consumer behaviour
structured’. The most widely referenced and used
prescriptive models are the Theory of Reasoned Action and the Theory of Planned Behaviour.
1.6.1.1 Analytic Cognitive Models
• Theory of Buyer Behaviour: provides a ‘sophisticated
integration of the various social, psychological and
marketing influence on consumer choice into a coherent sequence of information processing’.
• Input variables are the environmental stimuli. Significative stimuli are actual elements of
products and brands that the buyer confronts, while symbolic stimuli refers to the
representations of products and brands as constructed by markerters through advertising and
act on the consumer indirectly. Social stimuli include the influence of family and other pree
and reference groups.
• Hypothetical Constructs can be classified in two categories: perceptual and learning
constructs. Perceptual constructs include:
- Sensitivity to information: the degree to which the buyer controls the flow of stimulus
information.
- Perceptual bias: distortion or alteration of the information received due to the consumer
fitting the new information into his or her existing mental set.
- Search for information: the active seeking of information on consumption choices.
Learning constructs include:
- Motive: general or specific goals impelling action.
- Evoked set: the consumers’ assessment of the ability of the consumption choices.
, - Decision mediators: the buyer’s mental rules or for assessing purchase alternatives.
- Predispositions: preference toward brands in the evoked set expressed as an attitude
toward them.
- Inhibitors: environmental forces which restrain the consumption choice.
- Satisfaction: feedback mechanism from post-purchase reflection.
• In situations where the consumer does not have strong attitudes they are said to engage in
Extended Problem Solving (EPS). As the product group becomes more familiar, the consumer
undertakes Limited Problem Solving (LPS) and eventually Routine Problem Solving (RPS).
• The output variables
represent buyer’s
responses, and follow
progressive steps to
purchase:
- Attention: the
magnitude of the
buyer’s information
intake.
- Comprehension: the
processed and
understood
information that is
used.
- Attitudes: buyer’s
evaluation of a
particular brand’s
potential to satisfy
purchase motives.
- Intention: the buyer’s
forecast of which
product they will buy.
- Purchase Behaviour:
actual purchase behaviour, which reflects the buyer’s predisposition to buy as modified by
any inhibitors.
• Critique on Theory of Buyer Behaviour:
- Attitude influences purchase only through intention.
- The model is simply the result of a Baconian induction of the influences on the consumer.
- Questioning of the model’s validity due to the lack of empirical work, employing ‘scientific’
methods, examining the organisation of the model and the inclusion of individual
constructs.
- Due to the unobservable nature of many of the intervening variables explicit
measurement is difficult.
- Unsuitability in explaining joint decision making.
• Consumer Decision model: is structured around a seven-point decision process → need
recognition followed by a search of information, the evaluation of alternatives, purchase, post
purchase reflection, and divestment.
• Firstly, stimuli are received and processes by the consumer in conjunction with memories of
previous experiences, and secondly, external variable in the form of either environmental
influences or individual differences.
- Environmental influences: culture, social class, personal influence, family and situation.
- Individual influences: consumer resource, motivation and involvement, knowledge,
attitudes, personality, values and lifestyle.
