ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the epistemological status of a comprehensive model of purchase and consumption derived from a critique of behavior analysis. It describes the provenance of the model's research program. The chapter identifies the complexities with which a behavior-analytical model of consumer choice contends: verbal behavior and marketing interventions in affluent consumer-orientated economies. It describes the Behavioral Perspective Model of purchase and consumption. The chapter examines the model's components the consumer's learning history, the consumer behavior setting, purchase and consumption responses, and their reinforcing and punishing consequences. It concerns the conceptual refinement of the model, extension of its explicatory scope, and an evaluation of it. The chapter considers the sources and implications of complexity for the behavior-analytical account of consumer choice, expanding on the rule-governed nature of much human behavior and on the consequences of considering consumer choice within the context of an affluent, marketing-oriented economic system.
