A Review of Resource Theories and Their Implications for Understanding Consumer Behavior

The shift to consumer-centric marketing accentuates the need for a more comprehensive understanding of consumer desires, including how consumers manage their resources to satisfy these desires. However, the complexity of the resource concept combined with a fragmented research stream thus far provides a limited understanding of consumer resources and their effect on consumer well-being. The purpose of this article is to encourage continued research into consumer resources, including resource exchange, to gain a more complete understanding of the concept and to facilitate the development of a unified theory of consumer resources. To accomplish our objective, resource theories proposed in different disciplines (economics, management/marketing, psychology, and social psychology) are summarized and used to provide research direction into a wide variety of consumer behavior issues related to consumer resource management and resource exchange behavior.