ABSTRACT
This chapter raises the question of how scientific progress is possible in consumer psychology, given the preeminence of this explanatory mode. It argues that cognitive information processing explanations should be subjected deliberately and systematically to a rigorous critique based upon the contrasting assumptions about the causes of behavior which are found in alternative perspectives. It examines that the chief role of the radical behaviorist paradigm (RBP) in consumer psychology is the provision of a critical stance, a counterpoint to the prevailing paradigm's explanatory mode. Marketing practitioners and applied researchers often try to avoid academic speculation, preferring to let the facts speak for themselves'. The focal approach to explanation, radical behaviorism, draws upon the experimental analysis of operant conditioning phenomena and extrapolations from that analysis to human social affairs in general. The cognitive information processing paradigm (CIPP) has the following features by which it conforms generally to the requirements of a scientific paradigm.
