Rational consumer choice

• Autor(a) principal: Gomes, Orlando
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://journals.openedition.org/cp/9182
• topic: consumer choice; rationality; intertemporal optimization; marketing and advertising

Consumer oriented communication sciences (marketing and advertising) base their work on a pattern of individual behavior that relies essentially on psychological and sociological motivations. In this paper, we discuss how the economic science deals with the consumer choice problem and we argue that the rational behavior, that Economics characterise, must be the underlying structure to be used when it is necessary to predict how tastes and preferences change or can be changed. The framework that Economics provide, namely when analysing intertemporal choices, gives the rule for human consumption behavior. Without this rule it is impossible to understand the exceptions, that is, the behavior that is abnormal to economic reasoning and that other sciences explore and try to explain. Hence, this is an economic paper directed to a non economic audience and it intends to emphasise the importance of scientific interdisciplinarity, namely in this case between Economics and the younger marketing and advertising research fields.