Consumer behavior

1. Consumer behavior

2. Customer vs. Consumer Behavior • Customer behavior: a broad term that covers both individual consumers who buy goods and services for their own use and organizational buyers who purchase business products • Consumer behavior: the process through which the ultimate buyer makes purchase decisions

3. Interpersonal Determinants ofConsumer Behavior • Why People Buy New Products

4. Cultural Influences • Culture: values, beliefs, preferences, and tastes handed down from one generation to the next • It is important to recognize the concept of ethnocentrism, or the tendency to view your own culture as the norm, as it relates to consumer behavior.

5. Core Values in the Culture • While some cultural values change over time, basic core values do not • Examples of core values include: • Importance of family and home life • Education • Youthfulness • Individualism

6. International Perspective on Cultural Influences • Cultural differences are particularly important for international marketers • Successful strategies in one country often cannot extend to other international markets because of cultural variations

7. Subcultures: subgroup of culture with its own, distinct modes of behavior • Cultures are not homogeneous entities with universal values. • Subcultures can differ by: • Ethnicity or Nationality • Age or Gender • Religion • Social class or Profession • Ethnic and Racial Minorities as a Percentage of the Total Population

9. Social InfluencesGroup membership influences an individual’s purchase decisions and behavior in both overt and subtle ways. • Norms: are the values, attitudes, and behaviors that a group deems appropriate for its members • Status: is the relative position of any individual member in a group • Roles define behavior that members of a group expect of individuals who hold specific positions within the group

10. The Asch Phenomenon: the effect of a reference group on individual decision-making • Reference groups: groups whose value structures and standards influence a person’s behavior • Requires two conditions: • The purchased product must be one that others can see and identify • The purchased item must be conspicuous; it must stand out as something unusual, a brand or product that not everyone owns

11. Social classes: groups whose rankings are determined by occupation, income, education, family background, and residence location W. Lloyd Warner identifiedsix classes: • Upper-upper • Lower-upper • Upper-middle • Lower-middle • Working class • Lower class

12. Opinion leaders: trendsetters who purchase new products before others in a group and then influence others in their purchases • Figure : Alternative Channels for Communications Flow

13. Family Influences • Autonomic role is when the partners independently make equal numbers of decisions. • Husband-dominant role is when the husband makes most of the decisions. • Wife-dominant role is when the wife makes most of the decisions. • Syncratic role is when both partners jointly make most decisions.

14. Children and Teenagers in Family Purchases • Growing numbers are assuming responsibility for family shopping • They also influence what parents buy • They represent sizeable consumers in their own right

15. Personal Determinants of Consumer Behavior

16. Needs and Motives • Need: an imbalance between a consumer’s actual and desired states • Motives: inner states that direct a person toward the goal of satisfying a felt need

17. Self-Actualization Esteem Needs Social Needs Safety Needs Physiological Needs • Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

20. Perceptions: the meaning that a person attributes to incoming stimuli gathered through the five senses – sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. • Perceptual screens: the filtering processes through which all inputs must pass

21. Subliminal Perception: subconscious receipt of information • Almost 50 years ago, a movie theater tried to boost concession sales by flashing the words Eat Popcorn and Drink Coca-Cola. • Subliminal advertising is aimed at the subconscious level of awareness. • Subliminal advertising has been universally condemned as manipulative, and is exceedingly unlikely that it can induce purchasing. • Research has shown that subliminal messages cannot force receivers to purchase goods that they would not consciously want.

22. Attitudes • A person’s enduring favorable or unfavorable evaluations, emotional feelings, or action tendencies toward some object or idea • Attitude components: • Cognitive • Affective • Behavioral

23. Changing Consumer Attitudes • Attempt to produce consumer attitudes that will motivate the purchase of a particular product • Evaluate existing consumer attitudes and then make the product characteristics appeal to them • Modifying the Components of Attitude • Attitudes change in response to inconsistencies among the three components • Marketers can work to modify attitudes by providing evidence of product benefits and by correcting misconceptions

24. Learning • An immediate or expected change in behavior as a result of experience. • The learning process includes the component of: • Drive • Cue • Response • Reinforcement

25. Applying Learning Theory to Marketing Decisions • Shaping: process of applying a series of rewards and reinforcements to permit more complex behavior to evolve over time

26. Self-Concept • A person’s multifaceted picture of himself or herself, composed of the: • Real self • Self-image • Looking-glass self • Ideal self

27. The Consumer Decision Process Problem Opportunity Recognition • Consumers complete a step-by-step process when making purchase decisions • High-involvement purchase decisions are those with high levels of potential social or economic consequences • Low-involvement decisions are routine purchases that pose little risk to the consumer Search Alternative Evaluation Purchase Decision Purchase Act Post-purchase Evaluation

28. Integrated Model of the Consumer Decision Process

29. Problem or Opportunity Recognition • Consumer becomes aware of a significant discrepancy between the existing situation and the desired situation • Motivates the individual to achieve the desired state of affairs

30. Search • Consumer gathers information related to their attainment of the desired state of affairs • Identifies alternative means of problem solution • May cover internal or external sources of information • Brands that a consumer actually considers buying before making a purchase decision are known as the evoked set

31. Evoked Set Model All Brands Known Brands Unknown Brands EvokedSet AcceptableBrands UnacceptableBrands OverlookedBrands InertSet PurchasedBrand Rejected Brands

32. Evaluation of Alternatives • Consumer evaluates the evoked set • Difficult to completely separate the second and third steps, since some evaluation takes place as the search progresses • Outcome of the evaluation stage is the choice of a brand or product (or possibly a decision to renew the search) • Evaluative criteria: features that a consumer considers in choosing among alternatives

33. Purchase Decision and Purchase Act • Consumer narrows the alternatives down to one • The purchase location is decided

34. Postpurchase Evaluation • After the purchase, consumers are either satisfied or experience post-purchase anxiety • Cognitive dissonance: Post-purchase anxiety that results from an imbalance among an individual’s knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes after an action or decision is taken

35. Classifying Consumer Problem-Solving Processes • Three categories of problem-solving behavior • Routinized Response Behavior • Limited Problem Solving • Extended Problem Solving