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The theory of consumer behavior has a large impact on management research. Since the beginning of 1900, management schools of thought have dealt with different perspectives of consumer behavior. During the period 1950-75, consumers' schools of theory assumed a leading role and pushed it to the forefront of discussion. Consumers' perspective in management covers three main areas—Behavioral theory, Activist's theory and Systems theory. This paper discusses the development of these three schools of thought, explaining the critical issues, development in research area, and their contribution to the understanding of management as a theory.
This paper deals with three major components of buyer behavior with a focus on providing a fair idea of consumer theories to the practitioners and researchers and help them develop new theories in management research. Seth and Gardner (1988) pointed out that the essential contribution of management researchers involves theoritizing the historical developments in research and implementing them for all practical purposes.
The buyer behavior school of thought presents theoretical concepts of consumer behavior and also stresses the application of these conceptual material to the management strategies and decision making in private, public, and non-profit sectors. This school of thought relies on non-interactive, non-economic school of thought as this takes the perspective of the recipients of management practice, including consumers and society at large. At the same time, they provide conceptual frameworks, hypotheses, and empirical evidences based on behavioral and social sciences rather than economic theories (Seth and Gardner, 1988).
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