Abstract
Thus far we have been concerned with consumer choice as behavior which we traced through the behavioral perspective of the BPM, and consumer choice as action, traced through the action perspective and the decision perspective. This concluding chapter offers a tentative view of consumer choice as agency, on the basis that actions are bodily movements for which the individual is responsible. The philosopher John Searle refers to the point we reach in our decision making when we can fail to be influenced by the desires and beliefs we have so carefully formulated and even the decisions we have firmly made as “the gap.” The place of rationality in agency is discussed, and we conclude with coverage of consumer agency.
The Conclusion briefly draws together the themes discussed earlier and proposes that only a multiperspectival consumer psychology can capture the subtleties and nuances of consumer choice. It contrasts the consumer behavior, which is explicable by reference to a controlling environment, with the consumer action which is brought about by the individual acting purposefully. Finally, it assimilates the implications of cognition and action for the understanding of consumer choice as agency.
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Notes
- 1.
List and Pettit (2011) present an extensive and sophisticated theory of agency and I am aware that in the following section I do no more than sketch their initial contribution. I look forward to incorporating further aspects of their work on group agency into a more substantial contribution on collective intentionality.
These comments are notable not only for the immediate point they make but for their confirmation of the observation that Skinner scrupulously sought to avoid intentional language and therefore intentional explanation.
- 2.
Nanay (2013, pp. 69–70) discusses the context of another aspect of Searle’s work. Searle (1983) argues that the intentionality that explains an action may be of one or other of two kinds. In the first case, “prior intentionality,” an intention exists in the mind of the actor which is deliberatively formed by the actor before the action takes place. The other, “intention-in-action,” does not involve any previously existing intention before the action is performed. A consumer who suddenly leaves off browsing in the food aisles of a supermarket and slowly walks up and down the clothing aisles, apparently absent-mindedly, before returning to the food aisles and recommencing shopping, exhibits intention-in-action according to this view. It is not necessary, on Searle’s view, to appeal to prior beliefs or intentions to account for this activity (see also Malafouris 2013, pp. 137–140).
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Foxall, G.R. (2016). Consumer Choice as Agency. In: Perspectives on Consumer Choice. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50121-9_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50121-9_11
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