ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses that the growth of knowledge in consumer research requires alternative interpretations of consumer choice to the prevailing trait and information-processing models derived from structural psychology. Consumer behavior may be construed as environmentally determined, an evolutionary process in which the replication of patterns of choice is explained by the meta-principle of selection by consequences. The Behavioral Perspective Model of purchase and consumption (BPM) is described and applied to the communication of innovations. Structural accounts of human activity assume that observed behavior results from what is happening within the individual. The evolutionary explanation of behavior in social science has been identified by van Parijs as operant conditioning, the procedure in which the rate of a response is determined by the prior consequences of similar behavior. By assuming that Initiators' consumer behavior is characterized by Accomplishment, the model understands that they are susceptible to relatively high levels of both hedonic and informational reinforcement.
