A Consumer Behavior Theory of Tutoring

Abstract

The paper aims to explore the behavior of consumers in the tutoring market in China, in which consumers perspectives would be divided into two parts: parents and students. Parents and students would consider and focus on different factors to maximize the utility based on their own standpoint, which is the reason why they usually make different decisions in reality. The paper would build a theory of consumer behavior in tutoring market based on the neoclassical consumer theory. There are several essential features that should be noticed in the paper: (1) for simplifying, the commodities consumed in the market are the average scores that are estimated to increase based on the original average scores; (2) the consumers decisions are subject to two resource constraints of money and time; (3) the utility is not only a function of goods but also of the time that is required to finish consuming it, in other words, the time a student needs to spend for earning one more score.