Consumer behavior, hormones, and neuroscience: Integrated understanding of fundamental motives why we buy

Consumer behaviors are shaped by fundamental motives: affiliation, self-protection, status attainment, mate attraction, mate retention, and child-rearing. It has been argued that each fundamental motive is activated by cues pertaining to threats or opportunities linked with each fundamental motive, and may be based on qualitatively different cognitive and neural systems. Steroid hormones influence specific neural systems and consumer behaviors rooted in diverse fundamental motives. By taking steroid sex hormones as examples of internal cues, we suggested that at least three fundamental motives (status attainment, mate attraction, and mate retention) may be explained by common cognitive and neural mechanisms. Consumer behaviors rooted in diverse fundamental motives, including status attainment, mate attraction, and mate retention, may be commonly explained by social motivations/vigilance (amygdala) and reward processing (reward-related brain regions). Neuroscientific tools may be useful for refining the fundamental motive framework, and for understanding more fully consumer behaviors rooted in evolutionary motives.