Editing Consumer behaviour (section)

== Origins of consumer behaviour ==
{{main|History of marketing#History of marketing thought}}

In the 1940s and 1950s, marketing was dominated by the so-called ''classical schools of thought'' which were highly descriptive and relied heavily on case study approaches with only occasional use of interview methods. At the end of the 1950s, two important reports criticised marketing for its lack of methodological rigor, especially the failure to adopt mathematically-oriented behavioural science research methods.<ref>Tadajewski, M., "A History of Marketing Thought", Ch 2 in ''Contemporary Issues in Marketing and Consumer Behaviour,'' Elizabeth Parsons and Pauline Maclaran (eds), Routledge, 2009, pp 24-25</ref> The stage was set for marketing to become more inter-disciplinary by adopting a consumer-behaviourist perspective.

From the 1950s, marketing began to shift its reliance away from [[economics]] and towards other disciplines, notably the behavioural sciences, including [[sociology]], anthropology, and [[clinical psychology]]. This resulted in a new emphasis on the customer as a unit of analysis. As a result, new substantive knowledge was added to the marketing discipline – including such ideas as [[opinion leadership]], reference groups, and [[brand loyalty]]. [[Market segmentation]], especially [[demographic segmentation]] based on socioeconomic status (SES) index and household life-cycle, also became fashionable. With the addition of consumer behaviour, the marketing discipline exhibited increasing scientific sophistication with respect to theory development and testing procedures.<ref>Sheth, J.N., "History of Consumer Behavior: a Marketing Perspective", in ''Historical Perspective in Consumer Research: National and International Perspectives,'' Jagdish N. Sheth and Chin Tiong Tan (eds), Singapore, Association for Consumer Research, 1985, pp 5-7.</ref>

In its early years, consumer behaviour was heavily influenced by motivation research, which had increased the understanding of customers, and had been used extensively by consultants in the [[advertising]] industry and also within the discipline of [[psychology]] in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. By the 1950s, marketing began to adopt techniques used by motivation researchers including depth interviews, projective techniques, [[thematic apperception test]]s, and a range of [[Qualitative research|qualitative]] and [[quantitative research]] methods.<ref>Fullerton, R.A. "The Birth of Consumer Behavior: Motivation Research in the 1950s", ''Journal of Historical Research in Marketing,'' Vol. 5, No. 2, 2013, pp.212-222</ref>  More recently, scholars have added a new set of tools including ethnography, [[Photo elicitation|photo-elicitation]] techniques, and [[Phenomenology (philosophy)|phenomenological]] interviewing.<ref>Tadajewski, M., "A History of Marketing Thought", Ch 2 in ''Contemporary Issues in Marketing and Consumer Behaviour,'' Elizabeth Parsons and Pauline Maclaran (eds), Routledge, 2009, p. 28</ref> In addition to these, contemporary research has delved further into the complexities of consumer behavior, incorporating innovative approaches such as neuroimaging studies and big data analytics. These modern tools provide deeper insights into subconscious consumer motivations and decision-making processes.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Plassmann |first1=Hilke |last2=Ramsøy |first2=Thomas Zoëga |last3=Milosavljevic |first3=Milica |date=January 2012 |title=Branding the brain: A critical review and outlook |url=https://myscp.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1016/j.jcps.2011.11.010 |journal=Journal of Consumer Psychology |language=en |volume=22 |issue=1 |pages=18–36 |doi=10.1016/j.jcps.2011.11.010 |issn=1057-7408|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Today, consumer behaviour (or ''CB'' as it is affectionately known) is regarded as an important sub-discipline within marketing and is included as a unit of study in almost all undergraduate marketing programs.