Consumer Psychology
The study of the mental processes behind buying, such as attention, memory, emotion, judgement and the shortcuts people use when they choose.
What it is
It overlaps heavily with consumer behavior, which draws on it, and differs mainly in scope: consumer psychology looks at the mind behind a choice, while consumer behavior follows the whole cycle and the people and settings around it. On this site it is read alongside Consumer Behavior and Consumer Decision Process.
In effect
A consumer psychologist might ask why a scarce item feels more desirable; a consumer behavior researcher might also ask who in the household proposed the purchase and what became of the item later.
What it does not say
It is not the same thing as Consumer Behavior, which sits close to it on this site but describes a different part of how people decide. It also does not say that the finding reaches every product, buyer or setting; where this page goes beyond the cited research, the step is an inference and is labelled as one.
Sources
- See the article listed above for the work this page draws on.