Models of consumer behavior

This chapter presents approaches to describing consumer behavior, by total models that comprise the “complete” buying process, influential factors, and parties involved, by process models that consider the buying process as a succession of phases, and by partial models that restrain themselves to single, empirically testable questions (e.g., What drives customers’ complaint satisfaction?). Cross-cultural research often draws on partial models, using culture as a moderating variable. Given the central role of decision-making in consumer behavior, this chapter also explains normative decision making, which presumes that consumers evaluate and weigh single product attributes, and descriptive decision making, which accounts for decision anomalies like biases (e.g., explained in Prospect Theory) and habitualized decisions like heuristics. Finally, the authors introduce ways to influence consumers’ decisions making through persuasion strategies known from social psychology, which persuade consumers by social norms (e.g., reciprocity, social proof, or scarcity) or by information (i.e., framing and priming).