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Summary Consumer psychology
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Consumer psychologyLecture 1 – Introduction
What is consumer psychology?
Consumer behavior is a psychologically based study of how individuals make buying decisions and
what motivates them to make purchase. Several facets:
- How a consumer feels about brands, products, services.
- What motivates a consumer to pick one product over another and why.
- What factors in a consumers’ environment affect buying decisions or brand perceptions and why.
So more than just products: services: going to the dentist, which TV programme to watch etc.
Marketing management decisions are based on assumptions regarding consumer psychology.
You do everything based on assumptions about the consumer. What makes the consumer? Products
don’t build brands, consumers do (quote you can agree/disagree with). It is not just about having a
great product: do consumers really want or need this? Price/strategy/promotion decisions are made
based upon the understanding they have of consumers. Why/when/what do they buy = the key.
A paper bag: solid, durable, multi-use. How much would you be willing to pay? Market value is 2,22,
but many people are willing to pay only 1 euro. A Vasari paper bag: 100,200,300 or nothing? All
students say buy nothing. A designer paper bag by Vasari was sold out within a week, the value of this
was 260 euro. According to the Business Insider: the only differentiating factor between the paper
bags is the Jil Sander logo on it.
What drives these consumption decisions?
This question will be answered throughout this course: different reasons and motives. These are
beliefs, financial resources, emotions, psychological states and environment.
Lecture 2: self-concept/identity, beliefs and fundamental psychological needs.
Lecture 3: psychological deficits compensatory consumption.
Lecture 4: affects in the marketplace or within us.
Lecture 5: socio-economic status (scarcity).
Lecture 6: motives don’t only define how we consume but also shape prosocial behavior.
Lecture 7: philosophical discussion about if objects/products (materialism) can lead to happiness.
Experimental consumer research
A folder about experimentation: understanding the topic and terms.
Amateur researcher: why do people wake up in the morning with a headache? a given dataset with
variables: the more people sleep with their shoes on, the more people wake up with a headache in the
morning. But then a senior researcher: why? The dataset has other variables: is there an underlying
reason for both to sleep with shoes on and having a headache: heavy drinking. Sleeping with shoes
and a headache is a correlation, not a causation.
Need to identify whether the studies are based on correlation, or is there really causation?
Experiment lets us isolate cause and effect. Same with ice cream and sun burn: correlation. The
cause is the hot summer weather.
Experiments allow investigators to establish cause-and-effect relationships. In other words, isolate
different effects by manipulating an independent variable, and keeping other variables constant, to see
how it influences a specific outcome variable. Assign people to either sleep with their shoes on or no
shoes, and see if people have more headaches.
Does having a lot of options to choose from make us happy?
Amazon’s phone and accessories category alone contains over 82 million products. We are flooded
with choices. Once there was the idea that people want the most number of things to choose from. But
this is not true; too many choices is time consuming and you don’t know what you want anymore.
,Happiness = defined here as post-purchase satisfaction. There is a sweet spot that to the number
of choices that the consumer wants to see.
Intuition isn’t always right; sometimes exactly wrong. Choice overload
refers to a cognitive process in which people have a difficult time making a
decision. It becomes more difficult or stressful to determine which option is
best. We feel sorrow about the opportunities we forego. Also, when it is not
clear which option is best, you’re more likely to regret the decision that you
eventually make.
Paper: When choice is demotivating: can one desire too much of a good thing? Iyengar & Lepper
Field study: experiment conducted in the real world. Taste trial in supermarket: what happens when
consumers are given a lot of selection for jam or limited selection?
1. Study conducted in a supermarket = field experiment
2. Confederate: research assistants are dressed as employees (not actual researches, but know
the purpose of the research)
3. Tasting booth with either 6 or 24 flavors (this is the manipulation/IV)
4. Observer noted the amount of consumers who approached the table and consumers who did
not stop and sampled jams (dependent variable)
5. Interested shoppers received a redeemable coupon (dependent variable. So 2 DV’s) more
or less likely to redeem coupon and buy jam.
6. Two consecutive Saturdays, displays rotated hourly and counterbalanced between days to
attempt to decrease confounding variables. No differences between days or hours.
24 jams was more attractive: but this does not
translate into buying behavior.
6 jams is less attractive, but way more buying
behavior.
Also did a lab study: a field study has a lot of things
that you cannot control for. Did they control for the
music that was playing, the weather of that day?
Lab study controls everything (preferred).
Field study: strengths are that they reflect real life, natural setting; higher ecological validity. Less
likelihood of demand characteristics: participants do not know they are being studies. Limitation: less
control over extraneous variables.
Lab experiment: watch the movie 12 angry men.
Then randomly assigned to either 6 essay topics or
30 essay topics about the movie that they watched.
DV1 = % that chose to write the essay. DV2 = the
quality of the essay. Quality & completion rate
was higher in 6 essay topic condition.
Specific critique of the article: choice of the number
for the condition is not based on research: is 6
really limited, is 30 really much? You can use a
manipulation check for this.
Choice overload can leave you dissatisfied with the choice you made, what is often described as
buyer’s remorse, or lead to behavioral choice/decision paralysis: people don’t know what they
want anymore because there are so many choices.
When are consumers most likely to feel overwhelmed by their options?
,Paper 2: Chernev et al: Choice overload: a conceptual review and meta-analysis
Found 4 conditions under which consumers may experience choice overload:
1. When people don’t have the time and want to make a quick and easy choice: choice-set
complexity: is there a dominant option, is there information about each option? For example, you may
have five laptop options to choose from but see 10 pieces of information about each. Or you may be
presented 10 laptop options but only one piece of information about each. The former is a more
complex choice set, and is likelier to result in choice overload.
2. Decision-task difficulty: How difficult is the actual act of deciding? Some decisions must be made
quickly, like choosing a meal option from a menu, while others may have much longer time limits or
none at all. The lesser time you have to make a choice the more likely it will lead to choice overload.
Time or energy: all the time and energy in the world will lead to less choice overload.
3. Preference uncertainty: How much do you already know what you want? The more you know
about your preferences, the easier it is to make a choice. If you have already established that buying a
Fairtrade peanut butter is your most important consideration in choosing a peanut butter jar, for
instance, it will be easy to compare multiple options along this dimension: you as a consumer has
reduced the options. Less likely to experience choice overload.
4. Decision goal: Are you buying or browsing? What is the ultimate goal of sifting through all of
these options? If the goal is to make a conclusive choice, that may mean considering trade-offs
carefully and potentially agonizing over a decision. If, alternatively, the goal is just to gather
information that may help with a future decision—such as browsing cars or looking at potential rental
homes—then choice overload may be less likely.
So how can marketers help reduce choice overload?
- Creating a dominant option: Coolblue laptops; 618 laptops, but created a Coolblue’s choice
that is the dominant option.
- Compare options: also Coolblue, compare laptops on criteria via a button. Reducing choice-
set complexity and preferences.
- Free returns: comforting that just in case you have regret, freedom to return in case of post-
purchase regrets. Eases your mind.
- Facilitate smart navigation: filter options, categorization (Ikea based on rooms and
products). Also organized stores in rooms; if everything would have been anywhere it would
be not nice to shop.
- Use an interactive quiz to guide buyers: element of personalization. Limiting options based
on their own preferences, but also making it fun. Example: take a quiz to show which products
suit your style. Less anxiety when choosing, because it suits me. Also AI use in stores.
Too much choice leads to choice overload (buyer’s remorse or choice paralysis) if you as a retailer
can’t facilitate consumer decision making process in a sea of choices.
Lecture 2 – The self in the marketplace
Identifying one of the key factors in the marketplace, that is the self-concept.
Understanding the self-concept.
Any form of identity that means something to you is what makes you ‘you’: I am a student,
researcher, mother/sister. What you think and perceive of yourself. Some people say
characteristics (I am a runner).
You can also say open-minded. Unique characteristic or belief of yourself.
, Self-concept theory: many theories.
Multi-dimensional; multiple layers. A student
who also works and plays football. It is not
inherent but learned: raised in a religious household, but when you grew up, learned new things and
no longer a religious person. Could be influenced by biological and environmental factors; social
interaction plays a big role. Self-concept grows through childhood and early adulthood; cognitive
flexibility decreases; changing it becomes more difficult over time. Grandparents are less cognitive
flexible about changing opinions. We become more set in our beliefs. Self-concept does not always
align with reality; incongruent; researcher but not really well published while you want to be. This may
create some form of dissonance. In today’s lecture focus on how the self is multi-dimensional. In the
next lecture focus on what happens when there is an incongruency.
Roy Disney: it’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are. But where do
values come from? Education, environment, culture, reference groups. The things that lead to
values; self-construal, political ideology and religion.
How elements of the self-concept drive consumer behavior; political and religious ideologies and
cultural determinants of the self.
1. The political self
First paper: Ordabayeva & Fernandes: Better or different? How political ideology shapes preferences
for differentiation in the social hierarchy. Paper is very American oriented and black and white.
Consumption behavior = consumer differentiation; differentiate yourself from others through
consumption. Products have a functional value, but rather a psychological or symbolic value.
Because of association with other groups of consumers or differentiate; wear a football club shirt to
associate with other fans, Ralph Lauren option to put your national flag on a shirt; differentiate from
other countries.
Vertical differentiation; better than others, superior. Horizontal
differentiation; I am just different, unique, not better than others.
In the article: investigate the extent to which political ideology
influences the desire to either differentiate vertically or horizontally
through consumption.
Conservatism wants to be superior over people, one group should
hold the power more vertical differentiation.
Liberal people have different values than
conservatists. Liberal = equality,
universalism. Conservatism = personal
happiness, power. Can be generalized over
other cultures than American.
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