How to fail in advertising: The potential of marketing theory to predict the community-level selection of defended prey

Economics and ecology both present us with a key challenge: scaling up from individual behaviour to community-level effects. As a result, biologists have frequently utilized theories and frameworks from economics in their attempt to better understand animal behaviour. In the study of predator-prey interactions, we face a particularly difficult task-understanding how predator choices and strategies will impact the ecology and evolution not just of individual prey species, but whole communities. However, a similar challenge has been encountered, and largely solved, in Marketing, which has created frameworks that successfully predict human consumer behaviour at the community level. We argue that by applying these frameworks to non-human consumers, we can leverage this predictive power to understand the behaviour of these key ecological actors in shaping the communities they act upon. We here use predator-prey interactions, as a case study, to demonstrate and discuss the potential of marketing and human-consumer theory in helping us bridge the gap from laboratory experiments to complex community dynamics.

Automated summary

Economics and ecology face the challenge of scaling up from individual behavior to community-level effects. Biologists have used theories and frameworks from economics to understand animal behavior. Marketing has created frameworks that predict human consumer behavior at the community level, which can be applied to non-human consumers to understand their behavior in shaping communities. This study demonstrates and discusses the potential of marketing and human-consumer theory in bridging the gap from laboratory experiments to complex community dynamics using predator-prey interactions as a case study.