PERSPECTIVES on CONSUMER CHOICE from Behavior to Action, from Action to Agency Perspectives on Consumer Choice Gordon R

GORDON R. FOXALL PERSPECTIVES ON CONSUMER CHOICE From Behavior to Action, from Action to Agency Perspectives on Consumer Choice Gordon R. Foxall Perspectives on Consumer Choice From Behavior to Action, from Action to Agency Gordon R. Foxall Business Department Cardiff University Cardiff , United Kingdom ISBN 978-1-137-50119-6 ISBN 978-1-137-50121-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-50121-9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016948384 © Th e Editor(s) (if applicable) and Th e Author(s) 2016 Th e author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identifi ed as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Th is work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and trans- mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Th e use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Th e publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper Th is Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature Th e registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Th e registered company address is: Th e Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom Acknowledgments I am grateful to Maddie Holder and Liz Barlow at Palgrave Macmillan for the opportunity to write this book and for their help in bringing it to publication. I would also like to record my debt to Sally Osborne, my secretary at Cardiff Business School, for her willing and able assistance. I am grateful for discussions on the nature of behavioral economics, economic psychology, and the philosophy of explanation to Professors Erik Arntzen, Asle Fagerstrøm, Donald Hantula, Patrícia Luque, Vishnu Menon, Peter Morgan, Jorge Oliveira-Castro, Valdimar Sigurdsson, and Mirella Yani-de-Soriano. I am especially grateful, as always, to my wife Jean for her reading and discussing of various drafts, for help with the diagrams, and for her unfailing good cheer and encouragement. v Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 Explaining Consumer Choice 9 3 Consumer Choice as Behavior 51 4 Beyond Behaviorism 87 5 Th e Ascription of Intentionality 125 6 Intentional Psychologies 147 7 Consumer Choice as Action 173 8 Consumer Choice as Decision: Micro- Cognitive Psychology 211 9 Consumer Choice as Decision: Macro- Cognitive Psychology 235 vii viii Contents 10 Consumer Choice as Decision: Meso- Cognitive Psychology 259 11 Consumer Choice as Agency 279 Bibliography 311 Index 317 List of Figures and Tables Fig. 2.1 Intentional Behaviorism: Th e methodological sequence 21 Fig. 3.1 Summative Behavioral Perspective Model 53 Fig. 3.2 Patterns of reinforcement and operant classes of consumer behavior 57 Fig. 3.3 Th e BPM contingency matrix 58 Fig. 3.4 Th e BPM emotional contingency matrix 64 Fig. 3.5 Th e BPM pride-shame continuum 65 Fig. 3.6 BPM savings contingency matrix 69 Fig. 3.7 Environment-impacting consumption: Operant classes and marketing mix elements 72 Fig. 3.8 Th e BPM diff usion curve 75 Fig. 3.9 Th e BPM course of addiction matrix 79 Fig. 4.1 Consumer choice: Th e behavioral perspective 88 Fig. 7.1 Consumer choice: Th e action perspective 179 Fig. 7.2 Th e continuum of consumer choice: From self-control to impulsivity 194 Fig. 7.3 Micro- and macro-cognitive psychologies 203 Fig. 8.1 Summative dual process depiction of metacognitive control 213 Fig. 8.2 Dimensions of diff erence between impulsive and executive decision modes 216 Fig. 8.3 Metacognitive functions in relation to tripartite theory 226 Fig. 9.1 Symbolic portrayal of tracking 249 Fig. 9.2 Symbolic portrayal of pliance 253 ix x List of Figures and Tables Fig. 10.1 Bundling as a picoeconomic strategy 267 Fig. 10.2 Consumer choice: Th e decision perspective 275 Fig. 11.1 Action and settling 296 Fig. 11.2 Th e decision-action sequence 300 Fig. 11.3 Individual and collective settling and agency 304 Fig. 11.4 Consumer choice: Th e agential perspective 305 Fig. 11.5 Behavior, action, decision, and agency: Summary of the perspectives 306 Table 4.1 Th e bounds of behaviorism, the imperatives of intentionality 117 List of Boxes Box 2.1 Summary of the Contextual Stance 41 Box 7.1 Summary of the Intentional Stance 176 Box 7.2 Temporal Discounting and Preference Reversal 195 Box 10.1 Summary of the Cognitive Stance 275 xi 1 Introduction Th is book suggests how we might approach the explanation of the central pattern of behavior in affl uent, marketing-oriented societies. Th e task is well worth the eff ort since it is a central component of both social scientifi c endeavor and the need to comprehend ourselves in the twenty- fi rst century. While our parents and grandparents were primarily pro- ducers, we are more likely to defi ne ourselves as consumers. Parts of our very identities are bound up with something as superfi cially trivial as our shopping behavior. Th ere is, of course, much more than this to consumer choice: so much so that seriously seeking to understand ourselves as consumers ought surely to assume a dominant position in our epistemologi- cal landscape. But this is an intellectual task and we cannot seek to approach it at the level of either popular cultural studies or managerial marketing in the expectation that we shall thereby gain real understanding. Th e social and behavioral sciences need to be brought to bear on the task of elucidat- ing consumer choice. Th e disciplines of economic psychology, philosophy, behavioral economics, and neuropsychology are required as well, of course, as the insight that comes from knowledge of cultural awareness © Th e Editor(s) (if applicable) and Th e Author(s) 2016 1 G.R. Foxall, Perspectives on Consumer Choice, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-50121-9_1 2 Perspectives on Consumer Choice and the technological possibilities—and limitations—of contemporary marketing. 1 In approaching the nature of humans as consumers, we are forced to acknowledge the depth of their personal involvement in the behav- iors in which we are interested. Consumers invest their most intimate resources—their desires, beliefs, emotions, and perceptions—in the choices that create their economic and social welfare. Th e diffi culty is that it is not obvious which beliefs and desires, let alone which emotions and perceptions, to attribute to them as we seek to explain and interpret their choices. It is easy to speculate and romanticize about, deconstruct, and overinterpret consumer behavior and there are many examples in both consumer research and cultural studies that exhibit this tendency only too well. Avoiding these admittedly imaginative avenues, that are ultimately not germane to the present task, we must tread a more mun- dane but fi nally more illuminating path. In particular, if we are to ascribe intentionality in a responsible manner to consumers, we must fi rst estab- lish the boundaries of the behaviorist explanation of what they do. Th is initial pursuit of consumption as behavior is benefi cial in its own right since there emerge aspects of consumer choice that are only ame- nable to such treatment, things we can learn about the behavior of consumers that depend on this parsimonious methodology. Many aspects of brand, product, and store choice, for example, are yielded through the pursuit of this procedure. Th e true nature of what it is that consumers maximize is also revealed in this conceptually frugal enterprise. Equally, there are aspects of consumer choice that cannot be understood in this 1 Academic marketing is not a discipline in its own right, but an application area that relies on the perspectives, theories, methodologies, and techniques provided by disciplines such as economics and psychology. At a theoretical level, therefore, it generally incorporates rather than creates. As a result, it frequently makes philosophical and methodological assumptions that stem directly from the deliberations of other scientists pursuing other ends. Whatever discipline forms the predomi- nant underlying intellectual basis of marketing science at the moment—it was once economics, has been and continues to be economic psychology, but sociology and anthropology have had their days too—tends to provide a philosophical and theoretical foundation of a sort, somewhat ad hoc, and necessarily temporary. Th ere may not be an easy alternative to this, given the nature of marketing inquiry, but it raises certain diffi culties of explanation. For the methodological imperatives imported into marketing are, inevitably, not constructs that are in some way absolutely character- istic of the discipline involved but only those that are currently acceptable to the exponents of that discipline or a subdisciplinary section of it. 1 Introduction 3 way: we can only appreciate what they are when we have exhausted the insights we can obtain from the behaviorist approach.

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