Context and Cognition in Consumer Choice

Abstract

Attempts to predict behavior from cognitive measures have proved highly problematical unless situational influences are taken into consideration. The case has been made that the cognitive variables used to explain behavior reflect contingencies of reinforcement via surrogates of the consumer’s learning history and the consumer behavior setting. Attitude researchers appear to be taking just this approach, despite their tendency to deal in respondents’ perceptions or judgments of the contingencies rather than their direct influences on behavior. We have noted cognitive psychologists’ tendency to think in terms of cognitive portrayals of the effects of past behavior and its situational determination, but we might argue that what they have discovered at base is the need for a behavior-based explanation of choice.