Mental Accounting and Consumer Choice
Thaler builds a model of consumer behaviour that combines cognitive psychology with microeconomics. It describes how people mentally code combinations of gains and losses using the prospect theory value function, models purchase evaluation through transaction utility, adds household budgeting to complete mental accounting, and draws marketing implications, especially for pricing. Marketing Science 4(3), 199-214, 1985. No figures are used.
Thaler builds a model of consumer behaviour that combines cognitive psychology with microeconomics. It describes how people mentally code combinations of gains and losses using the prospect theory value function, models purchase evaluation through transaction utility, adds household budgeting to complete mental accounting, and draws marketing implications, especially for pricing. Marketing Science 4(3), 199-214, 1985. No figures are used.
Written from the abstract from the OpenAlex record, 2026-11-03; full text not read.
What our sources record
Recorded when this source was checked, figures included, with page references and quotation marks removed.
Thaler, R. (1985). Mental Accounting and Consumer Choice. Marketing Science, 4(3), 199-214. doi:10.1287/mksc.4.3.199.