Consumer Behaviour Essay

Consumer behavior is considered to be a major aspect of marketing, possessing many definitions and models developed by various authors throughout the years that contribute to fully understanding this notion. As a broad definition, most marketers recognize consumer behavior as “an ongoing process, not merely what happens at the moment a consumer hands over money or a credit card and in turn receives a good or service. (Solomon, 2012)”. Therefore three different phases involved in the consumer behavior process should be analyzed: pre-consumption, consumption and post consumption.

In addition to consumer behavior, companies must take into account other factors in order to develop business able to satisfy the needs and wants identified in the market,

However, individuals do not always act in a fully rational manner. Consumer behavior differs from individual to individual and even from period to period within the same individual. Levy (1959) stated that people do not just buy products for what they do, meaning functionality, but also for what they might represent for them, prioritizing the role of a product over the task it performs, even in cases where products are completely

Among these researchers there are two conflicting major points of view. Some defend the idea that attitude has a single affective dimension which can be either a positive or negative attitude vis-à-vis the object (Thurstone, 1931). On the other hand, other researchers have built more complex theories stating that attitudes have three different dimensions (affective, cognitive and behavioral or conative) which differ from individual to individual even if referring to the same object (Hovland &Rosenberg, 1960; Ostrom, 1969; Bagozzi, Craig, Sternthal & Tybout 1979.) One major model defending this last position is the Tricomponent Model of Attitude (Hovland & Rosenberg, 1960) which states that attitudes are overall evaluations of stimuli derived from individual’s affects, cognitions and past