This dissertation facilitates an understanding of the entire domain of product/consumption-based behaviors. It takes a holistic approach to the conceptualization, description, and measurement of consumer behaviors. Although the discipline has adopted the label "consumer behavior," previous research has considered behaviors narrowly, usually focusing on the purchase and rarely considering more than a very limited subset of consumption-based behaviors (e.g., complaining behaviors, word-of-mouth, information search). This research conceptualized behaviors inclusively, including all behaviors that consumers undertake in relation to the product. Comprehensive inventories of consumption-based behaviors were generated through a review of the literature and through interviews with consumers. Those inventories of consumption-based behaviors were then examined for structure via the use of a card sort methodology intended to gauge consumer perceptions of similarity/dissimilarity. This methodology did not yield the dimensional structure which had been hypothesized, but it did identify categorical structure across the behaviors--consumers appeared to recognize differences in types of behaviors. Two levels of behavior typologies were identified. The first was a parsimonious set of three distinct types of consumption-based behaviors: information/ transactional/social behaviors; maintenance/repairs/working on the product behaviors; and usage behaviors. These three types of behaviors generalized across the three product categories considered (cars, stereos, and clothes). A second, more specific, level of typology was developed for each product category. These more detailed frameworks included groups of behaviors particular to each product category. Finally, in a large consumer survey, indices of the behavior typologies for the car product category were developed and the measured behaviors were related to consumption-based affect and consumer product involvement. Thus, this research has: contributed to a comprehensive conceptualization of consumption-based behaviors; explicated a description and understanding of that behavior's domain; and, developed and validated measures of those behaviors.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-8873 |
| Date | 01 January 1994 |
| Creators | Mooradian, Todd Andrew |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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