jquery AJAX and json format

You aren't actually sending JSON. You are passing an object as the data, but you need to stringify the object and pass the string instead.

Your dataType: "json" only tells jQuery that you want it to parse the returned JSON, it does not mean that jQuery will automatically stringify your request data.

Change to:

$.ajax({
        type: "POST",
        url: hb_base_url + "consumer",
        contentType: "application/json",
        dataType: "json",
        data: JSON.stringify({
            first_name: $("#namec").val(),
            last_name: $("#surnamec").val(),
            email: $("#emailc").val(),
            mobile: $("#numberc").val(),
            password: $("#passwordc").val()
        }),
        success: function(response) {
            console.log(response);
        },
        error: function(response) {
            console.log(response);
        }
});

I never had any luck with that approach. I always do this (hope this helps):

var obj = {};

obj.first_name = $("#namec").val();
obj.last_name = $("#surnamec").val();
obj.email = $("#emailc").val();
obj.mobile = $("#numberc").val();
obj.password = $("#passwordc").val();

Then in your ajax:

$.ajax({
        type: "POST",
        url: hb_base_url + "consumer",
        contentType: "application/json",
        dataType: "json",
        data: JSON.stringify(obj),
        success: function(response) {
            console.log(response);
        },
        error: function(response) {
            console.log(response);
        }
    });