Interdiscuplinary Study in Consumer Behaviour Essay

With the development of a bringr society, increasing consumer power in the market place, the growth in marketing, advertising, sophisticated consumers, ethical outgo etc, habit is recognized as central to modern life. Thus it entails to go into a depth of the different approaches to consumer behaviour. Many human sciences give a conversion of reasons to explain why a consumer behaves in a particular way in a given situation. Studies of consumption investigate how and why society and individuals consume goods and services, and how this affects society and human relationships.These are found in many social sciences such as economics, psychology, sociology, etc. The present study tries to investigate these theories based on consumption and consumer behaviour and how far these are interlinked as well as different from one another. It is also aimed at studying the relevance of these theories with the help of chief(a) entropy and research. The purpose of this study is to find out whe ther there is some interlink between the various theories and approaches given by different economists, psychologists and sociologists.The hypothesis frame in for the research is that Consumption is greatly influenced by the income factor. The data used in the study was mostly secondary in nature from the internet and reference to several(prenominal) books. The theories of consumption studied for this purpose are the demand theory, indifference curve analysis, revealed preference theory, Keynes consumption theory, permanent income hypothesis, relative income hypothesis, life-cycle hypothesis, Maslows Hierarchy of needs, the sociological theories of consumption given by G.Katona, Ruby Turner Norris and the theory of Conspicuous consumption given by Veblen. An attempt has been made to study consumer behaviour with the help of basal data collected from a sample of 40 people from 4 categories namely, students, housewives, employees and businessmen. They were asked to rank the differen t factors that influence their buying behaviour. The influential factors given in the questionnaire were interpreted from the consumption theories given in economics, sociology as well as psychology as given above.From the analysis of both primary as well as secondary data, it was found that majority of people give importance to their income level. However, it is also found that, besides income factor, people also think about sociological and mental factors while purchasing a commodity such as security, safety, fashion, advertising, comforts and prestige issues. As given in the Sociological theories of G. Katona and Norris, it was seen after the primary data analysis that the economic theory of consumption lacks such social structural variables.Thus it is concluded that in the construction of any consumption function or theory for a particular product, for a particular class of products, or for consumption in general not either economic or sociological or psychological variable i s to be regarded as the key determinant. Different combinations of all these three enter into different statements of consumption functions at different situations and cadence periods according to the necessity or urgency of the wants.