Consumer behaviour analysis is the use of behaviour principles, usually gained experimentally, to interpret human economic consumption. It stands academically at the intersection of economic psychology on one hand, and marketing science – the study of the behaviour of consumers and marketers, especially as they interact – on the other. Whilst behaviour principles are central to its theoretical and empirical research programme, its quest to interpret naturally occurring consumer behaviours such as purchasing, saving, gambling, brand choice, the adoption of innovations, and the consumption of services raises philosophical and methodological issues that go beyond the academic discipline known as the ‘experimental analysis of behaviour’ or ‘behaviour analysis’. Moreover, since the usual approach of consumer researchers and marketing scientists to explain and predict consumer behaviour is still overwhelmingly cognitive in scope and procedure, it goes beyond the current interests of most academic marketing. It is, nevertheless, of vital concern to both marketing and behaviour analysis.1 Were consumer behaviour analysis a mature research programme, it would be possible to present here an almost definitive account of its nature and scope. That it is enjoying its inaugural phase has two implications: first, for the selection of reviewed literature and, second, for the scope of this essay. As far as the selection of literature reviewed is concerned, a rather wide range of publications must be included simply because the scope of consumer behaviour analysis is not yet fixed: diversity of materials and viewpoints is an essential element in the intellectual adventure and what will prove central and what merely useful has yet to be established. The implication for this foundational essay is that it consists largely of points and arguments aimed at encouraging the working together of members of disparate scientific communities rather than a state-of-the-art account of how they