Consumer Behavior Using an Agent Based Model: Analyzing 4 Theories

Abstract

This paper seeks to find a way to study and compare theories that analyze consumer decision making from different approaches, using data from Mexico, to detect the factors that determine the patterns of consumption found in the data. Four consumer behavior theories are studied separately: Utility function Cobb and Douglas (1928), Hierarchy of human needs Maslow (1943), Priority approach Chavez-Juarez et al. (2018) and Consumption values (Sheth et al., 1991) and then compare them with each other. To interact all approaches, I used computational models (microsimulation), interpreting each theory in programming algorithms in order to analyze all the theories in a single model. The data resulted from simulations of the Agent-Based Model showed that each approach explains different segments of the population differently, which in terms of public policies means understanding which of many factors should be analyzed to study specific segments of the whole population.