This paper aims to explore recent trends in marketing and major factors that influence consumer buying behaviour. The study of consumer behaviour and the consumer market has evolved significantly over the years. Marketing was often studied under positivist philosophical theory until the 1980s when a post-positivist trend emerged. The problem is to isolate the key factors influencing consumer behaviour, explaining the significance of each factor within the overall consumer market from the point of view of marketing as a social science as well as a commercial practice. From there it will be important to assess the value of the marketing models that have been used, within the very large body of marketing knowledge that has accumulated since the 1960s. It is important to trace the trends in marketing from that time to the present and to consider likely tendencies in the future. To stress interpretivist schemes, it is useful to consider whether positivism was responsible for a wrong path in marketing, or whether it may have not been the positivist statements that were made but the tendency for many models to be conceived with certain assumptions taking the place of variables in the building of models. It is crucial to review the image of the consumer, often as a marketing target, in a changing light where the consumer became a responsible interlocutor who provided feedback and even worked as a collaborator. Findings from this study highlight that it will be very important in drafting text and discussing issues to concentrate on the development of proto-models that may elucidate the relative strength of possible factors, and economically distribute the overall aims of models to balance and refine individual factors that empower marketing campaigns. This study also recommends numerous directions for future research related to consumer behaviour.