Biology and consumer behaviour Biology and consumer behaviour Consumer behaviour is the study of the motivations surrounding a purchase of a product or service. It has been linked to the field of psychology, sociology and economics in attempts to analyse when, why, where and how people purchase in the way that they do. However, little literature has considered the link between our consumption behaviour and the basics of our being, our biology. Segmentation by biological-driven demographics such as sex and age are already popular and pervasive in marketing. As more knowledge and research is known, targeting based on consumers' biology is of growing interest
Consumer behaviour or ethnography has its origins in anthropology. However, marketers use ethnographic research to study the consumer in terms of cultural trends, lifestyle factors, attitudes and the way that social context influences product selection, consumption and usage. Ethnographic research, also called "participant observation", attempts to study consumer behaviour in natural settings rather than in artificial environment such as labs. Different types of ethnographic research are used in marketing including; Trendspotters such as Faith Popcorn's BrainReserve make extensive use of ethnographic research to spot emergent trends. Consumer neuroscience (also known as neuromarketing) refers to the commercial use of neuroscience when applied to