The Chaotic Purchase Decision Process: A Study Aiming to Understand the 21st Century Purchaser

Abstract

Based on the thought of McLuhan [1] where all the artifacts created from the first instruments to the current technologies are extensions of the human body, your nervous system, your emotions and perceptions, suggests that there is now a new human, a new consumer, a mutation to each new technology or tool created. There are many variables in permanent evolution, influencing consumers, businesses and the world. From this evidence has begun a study observing possible contribution of chaos theory to the understanding of consumer behavior, which is increasingly unpredictable [2]. The current article is the result of the continuation of this study. The research aimed to analyze how consumers is taking their purchasing decisions in order to verify the possibility of purchasing chaotic or disordered in relation to different products. This is an exploratory study with a quantitative approach based on the opinion of 212 respondents. The audience was composed of Brazilians over 18 years old economically active, mostly college students proceeding in a non-probability sample. These initial results confirmed the existence of purchase chaotic motivating future research to produce more information about this topic.

Keywords: Marketing, Costumer Behavior, Chaos Theory.