Consumer Behavior

This book teaches the basics of consumer behavior and analyzes what influences purchase decision processes in the long term. Why is the shopping cart fuller than planned? Why do people want the latest smartphone so badly? The authors clarify these and other questions by first summarizing how motivational, emotional, and cognitive processes determine consumer behavior. They then show how consumer groups differ in their behavior and what role the social, physical and media environment plays.

The book follows a consistent didactic concept. As a reader, you observe the fictional characters Lea and Ben in numerous consumption situations and learn about essential theories and models of consumer behavior. Case studies, descriptions of relevant studies, QR codes for video content and questions for self-monitoring ensure quick comprehension and effective learning.

The content
Consumers and behaviourConsumer Behavior ResearchMotivation, emotion, cognition, attitude, decisionInterindividual differencesSocial environment, physical environment, media environmentChanging consumer behaviour
The authors

Prof. Dr. Stefan Hoffmann is Professor of Marketing at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität in Kiel.

Dr. Payam Akbar is a business psychologist. He researches and teaches on the topics of marketing management and consumer behavior at the Chair of Marketing at Christian Albrechts University in Kiel. Previously, he gained several years of professional experience in the field of e-commerce and multi-channel retailing.

This book is a translation of an original German edition. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation.