Consumer Behavior

Consumer behavior refers to the ways in which individuals, households, and groups select, purchase, use, and dispose of goods, services, and experiences, and to the social, cultural, economic, and psychological influences that shape these choices. Classical economics treated consumers as rational maximizers, but sociologists emphasize that consumption is socially embedded and symbolically meaningful. Thorstein Veblen examined status-driven spending, Pierre Bourdieu showed how class habitus and cultural capital structure taste, and Georg Simmel analyzed fashion as a process of imitation and differentiation. Herbert Simon’s bounded rationality and Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s work on heuristics demonstrated that real decisions depart from calculation. Viviana Zelizer showed how people attach moral and relational meaning to money, and Colin Campbell argued that modern consumption is driven by imaginative longing as much as need. Everett Rogers’s diffusion of innovations explains how new products spread through social networks, while Paul Lazarsfeld and Elihu Katz described the role of personal influence and opinion leaders. Advertising, peer groups, family, income, and digital platforms all shape consumption patterns. Consumer behavior remains central to research on culture, identity, inequality, marketing, and sustainability.