Psychological Theories of Consumer Choice

This article presents an overview of psychologists appro.aches to cc:m-sumer choice and generates several hypotheses for studYing the choice process in different situations. BACKGROUND Unlike economists, psychologists have not been directly concerned with consumer behavior. Psy-chological theory has been applied to the study of consumer choice by marketing students, who have worked with models developed in such areas as social psychology, motivational psychology, environ-mental psychology, and educational psychology. Furthermore, psychologists do not have one theory of choice behavior. Instead, they have a num-ber of different theories, many of which may be applied to the study of consumers. Therefore,. th,~ topic psychological models of consumer choIce can be approached from two different angles: One can ask, What kind of psychological models exist that could be used in the study of consumer choice? or one can ask What kind of psychological models are actually ap~lied by students of consumer choice? Ideally, one should arrive at the same answers re-gardless of the question raised, but that is not the case. The first question calls for a review of different areas of psychology, whereas the second question implies that marketing and other students applica-tions of psychological theory be analyzed. In this chapter, the second approach dominates. However, to provide a broader frame of refere~ce, the review begins with a discussion of psychologIcal models of choice in general before turning to models of consumer choice. THE NATURE OF MODELS OF CHOICE What is a Choice? We all intuitively understand what a choice is. It is classically illustrated by the person walking down a road who hesitates at a fork in the road before choosing which route to take. We all agree that he is