With the development of a consumer society, increasing consumer power in the market place, the growth in marketing, advertising, sophisticated consumers, ethical consumption etc, consumption is recognized as central to modern life. Thus it entails to go into a depth of the different approaches to consumer behaviour.
Many human sciences give a variety of reasons to explain why a consumer behaves in a particular way in a given situation. Studies of consumption investigate how and why society and individuals consume goods and services, and how this affects society and human relationships. These are found in many social sciences such as economics, psychology, sociology, etc.
The present study tries to investigate these theories based on consumption and consumer behaviour and how far these are interlinked as well as different from one another. It is also aimed at studying the relevance of these theories with the help of primary data and research.
The purpose of this study is to find out whether there is some interlink between the various theories and approaches given by different economists, psychologists and sociologists.
The hypothesis framed for the research is that Consumption is greatly influenced by the income factor. The data used in the study was mostly secondary in nature from the internet and reference to several books. The theories of consumption studied for this purpose are the demand theory, indifference curve analysis, revealed preference theory, Keynes’ consumption theory, permanent income hypothesis, relative income hypothesis, life-cycle hypothesis, Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, the sociological theories of consumption given by G. Katona, Ruby Turner Norris and the theory of Conspicuous consumption given by Veblen.
An attempt has been made to study consumer behaviour with the help of primary data collected from a sample of 40 people from 4 categories namely, students, housewives, employees and