Abstract
Consumers’ valuations are influenced strongly by the social contexts in which they are formed and shaped. Inter-personal interaction affects valuation through the assessment of others’ attitudes and behaviour. Human groups, moreover, determine for themselves a degree of control over the nature of the social environment which will influence the course of their behaviour, collective intentionality. This observation suggests how the intentional consumer-situation posited by the BPM might be augmented through the incorporation of symbolic reinforcement, the rewarding of action by events that have significance by virtue of the fact that utilitarian and informational reinforcers stand for them. Often symbolic reinforcers are intentional objects. Social settings influence the symbolic reinforcement of consumer behaviour, a vital component of V2.
A group, in the social psychological sense, is a plurality of persons who interact with one another in a given context more than they interact with anyone else.
—W. J. H. Sprott (1958, p. 9)
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Foxall, G.R. (2021). Social Behaviour and Symbolic Reinforcement. In: The Theory of the Marketing Firm. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86106-3_7
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