Consumer power and market control: Exploring consumer behaviour in affluent contexts (1946–1980)

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to present and explain the emergence and decay of two unorthodox views of consumer behaviour that developed from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s: the view of the powerful consumer and the view of market control by producers. It begins by presenting their common origins in empirical studies that opposed the Keynesian-type analysis of consumption. While the first developed into the program of behavioural economics defended by George Katona of the Michigan Survey Research Center, the second nourished the contributions of authors like Galbraith (1958, 1967, 1977), Scitovsky (1954, 1962, 1976) and Mishan (1960, 1967).