Robert Perloff, 92, professor emeritus of consumer psychology at the University of Pittsburgh

GROWING UP IN Philadelphia during the Great Depression, Robert Perloff knew what it was like to hustle for a buck.

He peddled newspapers, worked as a soda jerk and movie usher and took other menial jobs to help his family get through the desperate financial times.

When he was 12, his father, Meyer Perloff, committed suicide. It was a wrenching loss that he later described in a touching newspaper essay after he had become a distinguished professor of business administration and psychology at the University of Pittsburgh.

Perloff died April 15 of heart failure. He was 92 and lived in Pittsburgh.

As a teacher and researcher, Perloff became known as the father of consumer psychology, the study of how and why people buy what they do. Businesses used his findings over the years to make crucial merchandise decisions.

Perloff went from Philadelphia into the Army. He saw action in the Philippines during World War II and won a Bronze Star for valor.

After the war, he returned to Philadelphia to attend Temple University. He graduated in 1949. He later earned a doctorate in psychology from Ohio State University.

He taught industrial and consumer psychology at Purdue University before moving to the University of Pittsburgh's Katz Graduate School of Business in 1969. He had the title of emeritus professor when he died.

Perloff was a tireless writer of essays and letters, mostly published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He wrote on a wide variety of topics, many on current events and people in the news, as well as personal experiences.

In one essay, he mourned the loss of his father, who "never got to show me how to shave, to tell me awkwardly about the birds and the bees, to offer fatherly wisdom about how to 'fight city hall' - to cope with life's adversities."

He also wrote about how ashamed he became about scorning his mother, Elizabeth Perloff, because of her lack of education and thick Russian accent, blind to the fact that "she was very much in touch with life at its core."

Perloff's son, Richard, described his father as a "Teddy Roosevelt" type, "a bit blustery but endearing."

Brian Blake, a former student of Perloff's at Purdue, described him in a Post-Gazette obituary as "just a salt-of-the-earth guy, who was the best example of how to be a human being."

Perloff was president of the Association of Consumer Research and the American Psychological Assocation, and was active in other academic and professional organizations.

Besides his son, he is survived by his wife, Evelyn; two daughters, Linda and Judy, and six grandchildren.

There was no immediate information about funeral services.