午夜剧场

We enjoy shopping and gain new discoveries by using or consuming things. All of these are understood as consumer behavior, and it is clear that we lead richer lives while having various experiences as consumers.

Consumer behavior theory is a subfield of marketing theory. Marketing refers to the mechanisms and systems used to ensure that consumers continue to support products, services, and brands; however, to achieve this effectively and efficiently, it is necessary to understand consumer behavior. Therefore, as marketing became more emphasized in US business practices, research into consumer behavior also attracted attention. It was recognized as an academic field in the 1970s and has been actively researched to this day.

Among these areas, I conduct research focusing on the fact that consumers select multiple different products and services sequentially. For example, in situations such as shopping at a supermarket or ordering at a cafe, it is not uncommon to select different items (e.g., cake and coffee) sequentially. In such situations, data shows that consumers tend to make subsequent choices while considering the results of prior choices (e.g., choosing bitter coffee after choosing a sweet cake). The significance of analyzing these choices by considering the influence between them, rather than treating each choice separately, has been pointed out. In the future, if research results on sequential selection become more generalized, it will be possible to provide useful insights to retailers, for example, regarding layouts and promotions that take into account the interactions between different products.

As mentioned earlier, this type of research is based on the premise that a company's understanding of consumer behavior contributes to the realization of better marketing. In this sense, it can be said that consumer behavior theory is "for the company (marketing)."

On the other hand, as long as we consumers feel that our lives are enriched through consumer behavior, it is also necessary to actively engage in research aimed at directly presenting insights to consumers—that is, consumer behavior theory "for the consumer"—such as analyzing the mechanisms by which purchasing behavior enriches life.

In this way, consumer behavior theory has the potential to develop further as a jitsugaku (science), and I myself hope to contribute to that as a researcher.