ABSTRACT
Evolutionary consumer theory is an effort to understand biological, social, and cognitive origins of consumer preferences and how they evolve as the consumers learn through personal and social experiences. Evolutionary consumer theory has also provided insights into the role that consumers play in the innovation process by stimulating research. It also sheds light on how the evolving character of demand can stimulate structural change. This chapter reviews a part of significant contributions to the evolutionary consumer theory. The review is organised around six broad topics and covers micro, macro, and meso approaches. In the spirit of evolutionary economics, complexities in environment and interdependencies among economic actors are used to link the literature reviewed in this chapter.
