1. The Role of Rationalizationin Consumer Decision Processes: A Revisionist Approach to Consumer Behavior* Rom J. Markin, D.B.A.

Washington State University

Consumers are, no doubt, sometimes rational but they are indubitiably not always rational. Furthermore, consumers, in their constant desire not to appear absurd, do rationalize their decisions; they substitute socially acceptable for real reasons; and they engage in extensive behavior which is selfjustificatory. We must admit to irrational consumer behavior and our future research should lead us to develop standards for judging behavior in terms of its rationality or irrationality. Perhaps we might even consider efforts to enable consumers to better understand their own behavior, whether it be rational or irrational, and we may need to consider facilitating the consumer's ability to recognize their own rationalizing tendencies.

2 .Factors Influencing Irrational Buying: The Case of Television Shopping Dungchun Tsai1 Wei-Wei Chen2 Hsien-Kai Chen3 Abstract Although it is assumed that consumers make their purchasing decisions rationally, it is not true all the time. Consumers often buy a product which they do not plan to buy initially, or buy the product with the amount more than what they need, or pay the price over what they expect. Such purchasing is called as impulse buying, unplanned buying, or irrational buying. This study chooses television shopping as the case to examine some important factors which will affect such irrational buying. 3.The Irrational Consumer: Why Economics Is Dead Wrong About How We Make Choices By Derek Thompson The old economic theory of consumers says that "people should relish choice." And we do. Shoppingcan be fun, democracy is better than its alternatives, and a diverse and fully stocked grocery store icecream freezer is quite nearly the closest thing to heaven on earth. But other fields of science tell a morecomplicated story. First, making a choice is physically exhausting, literally, so that somebody forced tomake a number of decisions in a row is likely to get lazy and dumb.Second, having toomany choices can make us less likely to come to a conclusion. Let me try to sum up your paper for readers, because it covers a lot of ground. Classical economists used to posit that, since consumers are rational, we make decisions to maximize our pleasure, end of story. But your paper reviews all the ways we know that consumers aren't in fact rational but prone to all sorts of biases and habits that pull us from any strictly rational view of the consumer. Is that alright? Choices are good. Trade is good. That's the view of neoclassical consumer theory. But it turns out that people don't really like making decisions. We have habits, we like thinking automatically. So sometimes we avoid making choices altogether because it stresses us out.

4. All Customers Are Irrational Understanding What They Think, What They Feel, and What Keeps Them Coming Back William J. Cusick . While stories about crazy, zany customers are entertaining, they dont make for a particularly useful business book. They dont tell you how you can improve your own business. Instead, were discussing all customers, including you and me, and how we all think about and act in the world around us. What weve learned over the last few years is that we are all, in fact, irrational. And irrational isnt all that bad. In fact, it could be the key to a better business for you. Achieving that irrational connection with customers is the key to business success, and the answers lie within this fantastic puzzle box of our subconscious. 5. Module-1 CONSUMER BEHAVIOR Sangeeta Sahney Assistant Professor, Vinod Gupta School of Management Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India Email. sahney@vgsom.iitkgp.emit.in The Interdisciplinary Nature of Consumer Behavior Though similar, consumers are unique in themselves; they have needs and wants which are varied and diverse from one another; and they have different consumption patterns and consumption behavior. The marketer helps satisfy these needs and wants through product and service offerings. For a firm to survive, compete and grow, it is essential that the marketer identifies these needs and wants, and provides product offerings more effectively and efficiently than other competitors. A comprehensive yet meticulous knowledge of consumers and their consumption behavior is essential for a firm to succeed. Herein, lies the essence of Consumer Behavior, an interdisciplinary subject, that emerged as a separate field of study in the 1960s. Joint

6. A multi-method investigation of consumer motivations in impulse buying behavior Angela Hausman Assistant Professor of Marketing, Division of Management/Marketing, Lewis College of Business, Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia, USA Keywords Consumer behaviour, Consumer marketing, Shopping Abstract This study used both qualitative and quantitative data to test hypotheses related to consumers' motivations to engage in impulse buying. A grounded theory approach was

used to develop hypotheses from in-depth interviews. These hypotheses were tested by the collection and analysis of survey data. Data support the theory that impulse buying is a common method of product selection, in part, because the shopping act and impulsive product selection provide hedonic rewards. Further information-processing overload confounds product selection, reinforcing the rewards to be obtained from alternative section heuristics, like impulse buying. 7. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization Volume 77, Issue 3, March 2011, Pages 285303 Cover image Optimal irrational behavior James Feigenbauma, Corresponding author contact information, E-mail the corresponding author, Frank N. Caliendoa, Emin Gahramanovb Abstract Contrary to the usual presumption that welfare in markets is maximized if consumers behave rationally, we show in a two-period overlapping generations model that there always exists an irrational consumption rule that can weakly improve upon the lifecycle/permanent-income rule in general equilibrium. The market-clearing mechanism introduces a pecuniary externality that individual rational households do not consider when making decisions but a publically shared rule of thumb can exploit. For typical calibrations, the improvement of the welfare of irrational households is robust to the introduction of rational agents. Although transitions to the optimal irrational steady state are not Pareto improving, transitions do exist that will improve a Pareto social welfare function with a sufficiently small generational discount rate. Generalizing to a more realistic lifecycle model, we find that the Save More Tomorrow (SMarT) Plan, if properly parameterized, can confer higher lifetime utility than the permanent-income rule. 8. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences 2001, Pages 79067910 Cover image Irrationality: Philosophical Aspects R. Samuelsa, S. Stichb Over the past few decades, human reason and rationality has become one of the most intensely investigated and hotly debated topics in psychology and cognitive science. At the heart of this debate is a view of human rationality, often associated with the Heuristics and Biases tradition, according to which, much of our reasoning and decision-making is normatively problematic because it relies on heuristics and biases rather than rational principles. In this article we describe briefly some of the evidence that has been invoked in support of this contention and consider some of the more prominent objections that have been leveled against it. In particular, we focus on a range of challenges that have come from the newly emerging, interdisciplinary field of evolutionary psychology. 9. The Journal of Socio-Economics Volume 40, Issue 6, December 2011, Pages 949958 Cover image

An exploratory analysis of composite choices: Weighing rationality versus irrationality Bijou Yang LesterCorresponding author contact information, E-mail the corresponding author Abstract Humans are engineered neurologically to make rational and irrational choices. This paper introduces a new paradigm for decision making a composite choice model in which economic agents are constantly weighing rationality versus irrationality when encountering options. In an exploratory, deterministic, two-period model, an assumption of a two-way cross-embedment (i.e., a two-way interaction between the rational and irrational components) results in a paradoxical phenomenon, an outcome of either tending toward bliss or abyss at the end of the first period. This implies, for instance, a psychological struggle between two selves within the mind. The paradigm proposed is compared to the dual-process theories recently developed by the cognitive sciences. Future research will explore implications for public policy design and implementation.

10 . The Journal of Socio-Economics Volume 37, Issue 3, June 2008, Pages 12181233 Behavioral Dimensions of the Firm Special Issue Cover image Reflections on rational choiceThe existence of systematic irrationality Bijou Yanga, Corresponding author contact information, E-mail the corresponding author, David Lesterb Abstract The behavioral challenge to the rational choice paradigm is oriented toward individual decision-making. Behavioral irrationality does not mean chaos. Most irrational behavior involves the exercise of reasoning. In reality, decision makers do not behave with full knowledge and/or optimal computational power in pursuit of maximizing expected utility. Besides reviewing critiques to the rationality paradigm for judgments and preferences and exploring the impact of culture on people's economic behavior, this paper is the first to call the attention of researchers to the phenomenon of systemic irrationality. Irrationality may exist at the aggregate or societal level, a conclusion based on the observation that large segments of the population are incapable of making decisions in accord with traditional rationalitygroups such as those who have a psychiatric disorder, those who are taking medications, those with limited intelligence, those from the lower social classes, children and adolescents, and the elderly. Even those who are not included in the aforementioned groups, but who take medications for medical conditions may have their decision-making impaired to some extent. Therefore, it is argued that rationality in economic decision-making may be the exception rather than the norm.