Abstract

Marketing professionals in their literary works focus upon the consumer which has led to a long history of hypothesis generation and research dealing with consumer behavior in the marketplace. The purpose of this article is to review such literature in an effort to find a promising direction for future research. Students of marketing have borrowed extensively from theory and methodology developed in the social and mathematical sciences to pursue their investigations. These efforts have largely represented an era of innovation and exploration, rather than of organization and consolidation. Many diverse approaches were applied to the study of consumer behavior which lacked integrating concepts. To be useful, behavioral theory in marketing should not merely substitute one set of descriptive terms for those customarily used by the marketer. Rather it should attempt to identify relevant independent variables and describe their functioning. One variable which has received substantial attention is personality.