Consumer behavior: Yesterday, today, and tomorrow

Abstract

A s the new decade creeps in and the new century approaches, a time has come to reflect upon and predict the consumer's behavior in the marketplace. Many things have changed since the end of mass marketing and the beginning of market segmentation. Under mass marketing, Henry Ford gave the consumer the Ford in any color as long as it was black. After World War II, marketers switched from making products they wanted to making products the consumer wanted. Finding out what the consumer wants to purchase and why is what consumer behavior is all about. Our theoretical models (see Figure 1) of how consumers make purchase decisions have evolved from the economic paradigm of the 1940s, through the irrational consumer of the 1950s and 1960s, to the information processor of the 1970s, up to the 1980s cognitive miser. Tomorrow's consumers will undoubtedly have a distinctive theoretical decision model that will grow out of the future decision making environment. It is the purpose of this article to outline that future. But first, let us take a brief look at how the study of consumer behavior has evolved since its inception. The individual-oriented consumer behavior of the past will change to a more collective style in the 1990s.