c March 18, 2011

Article: The Disciplinary Status Of Consumer Behavior: A Sociology Of Science Perspective On Key
Controversies (Macinnis, Folkes)

The authors present their views on three issues regarding the very definition of consumer behavior
as a discipline. These issues are: a) whether consumer behavior should be considered as a discipline,
independent from marketing b) what is the scope of consumer behavior and finally 3) should
consumer behavior be interdisciplinary. I will present the authors͛ solution for each of these issues
separately as well as my views of the matters.

The authors claim that consumer behavior should not be considered as an independent discipline but
instead a subdiscipline within marketing where it basically stems from. They argue that this is due to
the fact that consumer behavior researches various issues regarding human behavior that are
ultimately related to consumption (consumption meaning: acquisition, consumption and disposal).
The authors state that, even if consumer behavior were an n i dependent discipline, most people
working in it would eventually be marketers as this specific kind of know-how is taught in marketing
programs at universities. I agree with pretty much everything the authors suggested regarding this
issue and I add two questions: what is marketing without consumer behavior and what is consumer
behavior without marketing? Marketing without consumer behavior would, I assume, go back to its
roots and perform a simple sales function (profit maximization as the ultimate goal) ʹ taking
consumer behavior out of it would simply stop its evolution to being the core department of a
company and an important societal factor. Leaving marketing to solely focus on sales volumes would
disregard issues of relationship building with customers and loyalty which in markets nowadays can
mean success or failure of a company. Consumer behavior without marketing would be a discipline
that is a fusion of sociology, psychology, neurology and other sciences, not ͚strong͛ enough to justify
itself as the umbrella for these long-established sciences or in general, without a particular reason to
exist as a fusion of the above mentioned sciences.

Secondly, the authors try to define the scope of consumer behavior so as to clearly draw boundaries
with sciences it draws from and resembles to. They claim that it is different from these sciences in
the way that it focuses on acquisition, consumption and disposal of marketed products and services
by people within their role of consumers. While I agree that consumption should be consumer
behavior͛s main distinguishing element from similar sciences, I have to say that the scope is still
somewhat unclear to me. Namely, from what I have learned about consumer research so far is that
the research objectives vary greatly, going from trying to understand in which particular occasions
particular consumers consume particular products to how people think, feel and love throughout
their lives sometimes seemingly regardless of their consumption practices. In other words, consumer
research goes from understanding simple consumption related issues to trying to unveil the ͚absolute
truth͛. Perhaps, it is hard to draw very clear lines about where consumer research stops and maybe it
is unnecessary to do so ʹ we can follow the authors͛ notion of keeping consumer behavior as related
to actual consumption as possible and if some researches find useful information as they stray away
from the path then so be it.

Finally, the authors claim consumer behavior is multidisciplinary while its subsegments can be
interdisciplinary. They claim it cannot be interdisciplinary itself as it would be hardly possible from
the logistical point of view to gather teams of experts from various interest fields to run joint
 c March 18, 2011

research projects with consumer behavior as the overarching topic. I don͛t entirely agree with this
notion ʹ consumer behavior does indeed tackle some issues which are specific enough that they
should only be approached by experts in that particular field. For instance, some consumer research
tries to understand how people perceive and process information. Marketers, I believe, don͛t possess
this skill-set needed for this kind of research as they are usually not trained in cognitive psychology.
With this in mind, I wonder: how can we assert quality of research data if solely gathered and
processed by marketers about issues that should be handled by psychologists, sociologists and/or
other scientists. Perhaps we could train experts from these other fields that consumer behavior
draws from for work specifically in consumer behavior i.e. for marketing purposes - with these kinds
of teams we could lose the ͚logistical͛ hindrance to making consumer behavior interdisciplinary (yet
under the umbrella of marketing disciplines).

In conclusion, I believe that consumer behavior should stay on the j


 even though
it͛s findings are sometimes relevant beyond marketing borders; however, keeping in mind that
marketing͛s role is expanding to that of a major societal factor, it means that consumer behavior still
isn͛t ͚outgrowing͛ marketing. On top of that, consumer behavior should be understood as a discipline
creating knowledge on different types of human behavior ultimately related to their consumption of
products and services.