Consumer Behaviour

Introduction

Consumer behavior was defined in (Hawkins, Motherbaugh, Best, 2007) as ‘the study of individuals, groups, or organizations and the processes they use to select, secure, use, and dispose of products, services, experiences, or ideas to satisfy needs and the impacts that these processes have on the consumer and society’. Studying the behavior of consumers is important because it helps marketers understand, guess, and map future customers’ actions. Marketers can reach their consumers more effectively when they understand the behavior of their customers in the market place, and consequently adjust their efforts accordingly.

The study of consumer behavior enriches our understanding of how individuals and groups make their choices, and how their interaction with their environment and surroundings can influence these choices. It also allows us to understand how deficiencies in knowledge or in understanding can impact the choices made by consumers.

To help them understand the complicated processes of consumer behavior, marketers can draw on many fields of study like perception, motivation, attitudes, decision making, cultural influence, etc… and in this article we will discuss the use of one of these fields in the study of consumer behavior through a review of a number of academic articles and empirical research papers. This field of study is motivation.

We started by explaining the concept of motivation. Then we discussed the relation between motivation and consumer behaviour in the academic literature theoretically. Finally, we summarized a number of empirical research papers that used motivation in the investigation of consumer behavior.  

Definition of motivation

Motivation was defined by Solomon (2009, p.154) as ‘the processes that lead people to behave as they do’.

The basic process behind motivation in the context of studying consumer behavior was described by Solomon (2009). The process starts when a need is aroused creating a state of tension driving the consumer to attempt to reduce or eliminate it through the purchase of a particular brand or product that satisfies his need or at least reduce his tension to a particular level that can be beard. So, Solomon (2009) concludes, ‘motivation is the result of unmet needs’.

Motivation was also defined as ‘an emotion or desire operating on the will and causing it to act’ (Merriam-Webster, online). In this respect, ‘motivations provide the motor for behavior’ (Fiske and Taylor, 1984). Motivation as a psychological construct has played many roles as paradigms have risen and fallen over the decades; however, the central concept that motivation is the result of unmet needs has remained unchanged throughout these theories and systems (Pincus, 2004).

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