A consumer is the ultimate user of a product or service. The overall consumer market consists of all buyers of goods and services for personal or family use, more than 270 million people (including children) spending trillions of dollars in the United States as of the late 1990s.

Consumer behavior essentially refers to how and why people make the purchase decisions they do. Marketers strive to understand this behavior so they can better formulate appropriate marketing stimuli that will result in increased sales and brand loyalty. There are a vast number of goods available for purchase, but consumers tend to attribute this volume to the industrial world's massive production capacity. Rather, the giant known as the marketing profession is responsible for the variety of goods on the market. The science of evaluating and influencing consumer behavior is foremost in determining which marketing efforts will be used and...