No scientific paradigm, taken alone, can provide a comprehensive ex­ planation of so complex a field as consumer behavior. Each perspective presents insights not made available by the others. While recognizing the merits of the prevailing paradigm, still overwhelmingly cognitive, con­ sumer research can benefit from an accurate appreciation of the ontological and methodological concerns of its alternatives. The Behavioral Perspective Model of purchase and consumption (BPM)

derives from a research program that has sought to fix the scope and limits of the contribution of behavior analysis (Skinner 1953) to consumer research. Assuming that ‘the variables of which human behavior is a function lie in the environment’ (Skinner 1977: 1), behavior analysis ex­ plains the rate at which responses recur by reference to the consequences they have produced in the past. A comprehensive account will eventually incorporate both cognitive and behavioral sources of explanation but, as a prelude to such synthesis, the BPM explores the implications of a radical environmental perspective on choice (Foxall 1990). This chapter describes

and evaluates the model in the context of micro-positive marketing in profit and not-for-profit sectors (Hunt 1976). The BPM contributes to marketing science in two ways. First, it

provides a means o f conceptualizing situational influences on consumer behavior. Cognitive decision models assume purchasing to be the outcome of goal-directed information processing: the consumer sets objectives, plans their achievement and intentionally deploys resources to secure des­ ired benefits. None of these models omits external influences on consumer choice; but none stresses them either. In the process, such models tend to decontextualize consumer behavior. In spite of recent interest in the effects of situational variables on consumer choice (reviewed by Troye 1985), no general conceptual framework has yet emerged. The theoretical contri­ bution of the BPM comprises such a framework.