Robert East is Emeritus Professor at Kingston Business School, Kingston University, London, and Adjunct Professor at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute of the University of South Australia. He trained as a social psychologist and is a postgraduate of London Business School. His research has mainly focused on word-of-mouth patterns, where his new evidence has shown that some widely-held beliefs are mistaken. As a teacher of consumer behaviour, he has been keen to deliver knowledge that is useful to students while not oversimplifying the subject. This book reflects his iconoclastic research and his commitment to a curriculum that is both intellectual and useful. Jaywant Singh is Professor of Marketing at Kingston Business School, Kingston University, London, where he teaches consumer behaviour and research methods. He applies quantitative research methods to unravel how and why people buy goods and services, through the lenses of brand management, ethical consumption, status consumption and service management.
He has published in leading academic journals and regularly presents his research at international conferences. In his teaching, he endeavours to deliver theoretically and empirically grounded research knowledge that has direct applications in marketing and business. Malcolm Wright is Professor of Marketing at Massey University, New Zealand, and Adjunct Professor at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute of the University of South Australia. He applies empirical principles to marketing problems and has made interrelated discoveries about brand loyalty, the use of probability scales, new product forecasting and optimizing the advertising budget.
He has also published many articles critically examining the foundations of popular marketing knowledge. Marc Vanhuele holds a PhD from UCLA and is Professor of Marketing at HEC Paris. As an expert in consumer information processing, his research focuses on how consumers treat price information. A second field of research is how marketing managers can improve their decision-making through better use of quantitative information on the consumer’s mindset. His research has been published in leading academic journals. He also works as a consultant to consumer goods and market research companies. Readership and Scope We have designed this book to support courses in consumer behaviour at Master’s level. It is also suited to more advanced teaching at first-degree level. Our intended audience is those who see consumer behaviour as a research-based discipline that addresses the problems raised by marketing and consumer policy. The problems we explore are found in all advanced and emerging economies, and for this reason we believe that the book will be useful throughout the world. This new edition updates the subject matter of the 2013 edition, reflecting changes in the field in recent years, but its structure remains unchanged. The book is selective in the research it covers, dealing in some detail with the areas chosen. As before, the chapters are quite short and are intended to support students who will also be reading original research papers. In updating and revising the book, we found that we could often simplify and clarify the text.
The result is a book that is easier to read and no longer than the previous edition. Consumer Behaviour: Applications in Marketing stresses well-researched aspects of consumer behaviour that are of widespread importance. Following the Introduction, we describe the patterns of customer purchasing that are usually observed in market economies and the way those patterns can be explained and used in practical marketing applications. We then look at research that has illuminated our understanding of consumer decision-making and show how this understanding can be used by marketers and public policy-makers. The last section of the book deals with the observed consumer response to market intervention and covers research findings on price, promotion, word of mouth and advertising. Approach Most textbooks on consumer behaviour are extensive and well illustrated, but may present the subject in a rather uncritical manner.
Often, the treatment illustrates fashionable topics rather than providing evidence that helps us understand long-standing marketing problems. Such books do not make sufficient call on the expanding research in our field, and when they do cite research may give limited attention to the uncertainties or opposing views that persist in our discipline. In practice, there are competing findings and explanations in all areas of consumer behaviour and marketing, and we have tried to recognize these and discuss their relative merits. This touches on a problem familiar to those who teach business students. Some of these students find arguments from evidence quite unfamiliar and may instead provide accounts of current business practice as though these were conclusive. Our approach opposes such uncritical thinking. We believe that those who learn to use evidence as students acquire a technique that will serve them well as practitioners. One hazard of research-based texts is the sheer weight of evidence. We have tried to emphasize the most recent work and key papers on topics while also acknowledging those early researchers who first identified problems in consumer behaviour – problems that are usually still current. We therefore make no apology for some of the more ancient citations in this book, as these help to describe the origin of current thinking. As subjects become more fragmented, textbooks acquire importance as integrators of different perspectives. In scientific consumer behaviour, we can discern two rather different approaches to research and application.
On the one hand, there is the tradition that dominates in the large conferences of the Association for Consumer Research. Put baldly, this endorses theorizing and hypothesis-testing, often within experimental designs, and tends to emphasize explanations in terms of the beliefs, the preferences and the culture of consumers – a cognitive orientation. In contrast to this is the approach of those who belong to the Marketing Science grouping, who place an emphasis on behaviour, measures rather than concepts, generalization from an accumulation of findings, and on the use of mathematical models rather than psychological theories for explanation. Textbooks have generally emphasized the cognitive tradition.
We give more space than usual to the marketing science orientation; in particular, we emphasize behavioural explanations, the role of habit and the modelling of market patterns and market change. However, we also provide an extensive treatment of the techniques and theory that underlie the cognitive approach to consumer behaviour. Consumer behaviour is a changing field. New research is providing answers to questions of major importance, and in due course will give rise to a new breed of professional marketer. All four authors are active researchers and use their own research in this book; we hope that, in doing so, we manage to convey the excitement that new discoveries arouse.