What is the significance of consumer behavior?

Consumer has an enormous impact on a company or industry's growth. What impacts consumer behavior can have many different factors involved for a company or certain goods and services. Such factors may include media hype (both good or bad), poor production methods, bad advertising campaign, acts of nature, war, etc.

For instance, earlier this year when a few batches of fresh spinach were found to be contaminated with Ecoli even the news media warned about buying the usually good for you healthy produce actually advising consumers to not eat raw spinach period. This made a heavy impact on Central California's agricultural market.

Another example would be the slowdown of consumerism in America after 9-11. Fear literally paralyzed every market and Industry in the nation.

These are some more extreme and dismal portrayals of consumer behavior, but I think it shows exactly what the power of consumer behavior means in the marketplace.