Marketing Strategy

mix. This entry primarily seeks to give an overview of consumer decision making

and show how those concepts listed above may be integrated to give an understanding

of the role they play in explaining decision processes of consumers.However,

before considering that material in detail, it is useful to reflect on some

aspects of the history of consumer research in marketing in order to appreciate the

variety of approaches and the overall complexity of the subject. This historical review

is not intended as a comprehensive treatise on the development of consumer

behaviour but rather a framework to understand how the subject has arrived at its

current status and content. It also helps to provide a platform from which to consider

future developments in consumer behaviour later in the entry.

1 The development of consumer behaviour research

Reflecting on the literature in consumer behaviour allied closely to marketing, it

is possible to discern three approximate phases of development:

* a segmentation era, primarily associated with work before the mid-1960s;

* a period from the mid-1960s through to the end of the 1970s which was dominated

by the development of knowledge on consumer decision making;

* a period of diversification and enrichment in the 1980s and 1990s.

In the 1950s and through to the mid-1960s much of consumer behaviour research

involved the evaluation of consumer characteristics for market segmentation. It

was at this time that consumer behaviour researchers investigated the application

of personality theories and classifications of motives taken from psychology,

and the family life-cycle and social class taken from sociology. These were

applied with very different degrees of success in cross-sectional studies of markets

in order to explain variations in consumer demand for many different classes

of products, and also for different choices of brands. Important contributions

from this period, which are illustrative of some of the research and are still commonly

referred