The poverty of economic explanations of consumption and an action theory alternative

The purpose of this essay is to critique economic conceptualizations of consumer behaviour and explanations of consumer choice, and to propose an alternative rooted in the philosophy of mind and action, as well as in nascent social psychological and marketing models of purposive behaviour. It is claimed that economic theory harbours ideological and methodological biases in how consumer behaviour is conceived and obscures understanding of the many decision processes constituting consumer behaviour and its causes and effects. A novel multistage model is proposed to account for consumer goal achievement|goal failure, where goal outcomes are hypothesized to be joint functions of consumer actions and physical, social, or other environmental forces. Consumer action, in turn, is proposed to begin with reasoning processes (subject to nonconscious biases found in neural operations), to undergo appraisals of anticipated goal outcomes, which are experienced as positive and negative emotions, to involve a subsequent integrative stage of desire production, where reasoning, emotional, and social processes are integrated and transformed into a decision to act or not, and finally to encompass additional affective and reasoning processes that are initiated in a stage termed, 'trying to consume', wherein decisions are planned and implemented, and goal-directed behaviours activated. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.