Integrating control theory, evolutionary psychology, and a hierarchical approach to personality, this book presents a new approach to motivation, personality, and consumer behavior. Called the 3M, which stands for `Meta-theoretic Model of Motivation', this theory seeks to account for how personality traits interact with the situation to influence consumer attitudes and actions. The book proposes that multiple personality traits combine to form a motivational network that acts to influence behavior. Mowen argues that in order to understand the causes of enduring behavioral tendencies, one must identify the more abstract traits underlying surface behaviors. In constructing the 3M model, the author reports data from fifteen empirical studies employing over 3500 respondents. In this hierarchical model, four types of personality traits are identified: elemental, compound, situational, and surface traits. Eight elemental traits are proposed as forming the underlying dimensions of personality. Consistent with control theory, the research reveals that the elemental traits combine to form compound traits, such as self-efficacy, task orientation, playfulness, and competitiveness. These elemental and compound traits combine with situational influences to cause enduring behavioral tendencies within general situational contexts. Examples of situational traits investigated include impulsive buying, value consciousness, sports interest, and health motivation. In the 3M model the elemental, compound, and situational traits combine to yield surface traits, which are enduring dispositions to act in specific behavioral contexts. Five surface traits are empirically investigated in the book: compulsive buying, sports participation, healthy diet lifestyles, proneness to bargaining, and a tendency to frugality. Across these five studies, the empirical results reveal that the 3M model accounts for over 44% of the variance in the surface trait measures. By presenting a new meta-theory of motivation and personality that is testable, Mowen's 3M model accounts for high levels of variance in consumer behavior. By integrating the work of selected past and current theorists into a comprehensible whole, the 3M model provides coherence in a field currently dominated by conflicting ideas, theories, and approaches. The book provides evidence that by understanding the individual dispositions that underlie consumer behavior, public policy officials and marketing specialists can develop better communication programs to influence and persuade their target audiences. The book shows how to employ the 3M model to segment the marketplace, provide psychographic inventories, position brands, create promotional themes, and develop brand personalities.

This book presents and discusses seven contemporary theoretical approaches to behavior analysis that build upon the foundations laid by B.F. Skinner’s radical behaviorism and renew its legacy. These contemporary approaches show that behaviorism is not a monolithic or static intellectual tradition, but a dynamic movement, which changes and adapts in face of new questions, issues, and perspectives. The death of behaviorism has been proclaimed since its early days – a “premature” assessment, to say the least – but this volume shows that behaviorism is alive and kicking, even thirty years after its main proponent passed away. This volume contains seven sections, each one dedicated to a particular variation of contemporary behaviorism: Howard Rachlin’s teleological behaviorism, William Baum’s molar behaviorism and multiscale behavior analysis, John Staddon’s theoretical behaviorism, John Donahoe’s biological behaviorism, Gordon Foxall’s intentional behaviorism, Steven Hayes’ contextual behaviorism or contextual behavioral science, and Emilio Ribes-Iñesta’s field-theory behaviorism. Each section contains three chapters: the first one written by the original proponent of each of these forms of behaviorism, the second one written by a commentator, and the third one written by the proponent, replying to the commentator. Contemporary Behaviorisms in Debate will be a valuable tool to behavior analysts and psychologists in general by providing an introduction to contemporary forms of behaviorism and promoting debates about the main philosophical issues faced by the field of behavior analysis today— issues that can directly influence future epistemological variations in the selection process of “behaviorisms.” By doing so the book is directed not only to the present, but, more importantly, toward the future of the field.

In recent years, all types of businesses have increasingly focused on the importance of the relationship with the customer. Customer knowledge management has become a well-known term used in the business and academic worlds for understanding how to control consumer behavior. The Handbook of Research on Managing and Influencing Consumer Behavior discusses the importance of understanding and implementing customer knowledge management and customer relationship management into everyday business workflows. This comprehensive reference work highlights the changes that the Internet and social media have brought to consumer behavior, and is of great use to marketers, businesses, academics, students, researchers, and professionals.

These proceedings highlight research on the latest trends and methods in experimental and behavioral economics. Featuring contributions presented at the 2017 Computational Methods in Experimental Economics (CMEE) conference, which was held in Lublin, Poland, it merges findings from various domains to present deep insights into topics such as game theory, decision theory, cognitive neuroscience and artificial intelligence. The fields of experimental economics and behavioral economics are rapidly evolving. Modern applications of experimental economics require the integration of know-how from disciplines including economics, computer science, psychology and neuroscience. The use of computer technology enhances researchers’ ability to generate and analyze large amounts of data, allowing them to use non-standard methods of data logging for experiments such as cognitive neuronal methods. Experiments are currently being conducted with software that, on the one hand, provides interaction with the people involved in experiments, and on the other helps to accurately record their responses. The goal of the CMEE conference and the papers presented here is to provide the scientific community with essential research on and applications of computer methods in experimental economics. Combining theories, methods and regional case studies, the book offers a valuable resource for all researchers, scholars and policymakers in the areas of experimental and behavioral economics.