What is it about?
Economic theory has traditionally explained consumer choice in terms of utility, an imaginary cause. Instead, this paper brings together evidence from psychological and market research to replace the idea of utility with a more realistic and sophisticated explanation.
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Why is it important?
This revision opens up new explanations of consumer demand behaviour, and a possible model for developing more realistic explanation of the demand for non-consumer goods (e.g. capital goods, raw materials), and more realistic explanation of how workers and job-seekers behave in labour markets.
Perspectives
The value of this study is that it dispenses with fictional explanations of consumer behaviour, escaping the endless task of trying to amend utility theory so as to save if from the evidence, and instead suggesting a more-evidence way of grounding both demand theory, and micro-economic theory more widely.
Prof Rod Sheaff
University of Plymouth
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Towards a realistic view of consumer behaviour, Journal of Institutional Economics, January 2025, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/s1744137424000353.
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