Habit regimes in consumption

While pre- and post-consumption behaviors have been extensively studied in consumer research, forms of and influences on consumption behavior have not received commensurate attention. This dissertation contributes to the growing body of work which directly addresses consumption behavior. Based on literatures in habits (Aarts and Dijksterhuis 2000), variety-seeking (McAlister 1982), food value-management (Connors et al. 2001), and time-of-the-day effects (Zuckerman 1979) it is argued and demonstrated that habits—consistency in behavior over time—play a dominant role in repetitive consumption behaviors such as eating behavior.; Building on prior findings where past behavior is shown to affect current behavior through positive carryover effects (e.g., choosing the same food item every day), here it is shown that the impact of past behavior on current behavior can also be negative (e.g., alternating among preferred food items). Habitual behavior which reflects a positive carryover is termed as positive carryover habit and habitual behavior which reflects a negative carryover is termed as cycling carryover habit. This is the first demonstration of alternation as a form of habitual behavior. Further, adopting a situation-based perspective (Belk 1975), food consumption behavior is demonstrated to differ across daily meals. Consumers who habitually exhibit such differences in behavior across situations (meals) are said to show baseline habit. Such situational-specificity of habitual behavior has not been demonstrated heretofore. The study of habits here is at the level of consumption of food ingredients. The importance of this approach is highlighted by the demonstration that while breakfasts primarily provide positive ingredients (e.g., calcium), dinners primarily provide negative ingredients (e.g., saturated fat).; Methodologically, a hierarchical approach to estimation is taken. First, based on a unique time-series dataset of daily food consumption behavior of 972 respondents, measures of carryover and baseline habit are estimated for each respondent. Second, such measures of habit are pooled across respondents and then related to situational variables such as meal-type (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) and nutritional ingredient type (positive and negative). Overall, the results indicate that food consumption behavior is significantly habitual. About 81% of the respondents exhibit at least one of the two habits discussed in this dissertation.