Lecture 1: Introduction
Consumer Behavior = a psychologically based study of how individuals make buying
decisions and what motivates them to make a purchase.
- How does a consumer feel about certain brands, products or services?
- What motivates a consumer to pick one product over another, and why?
- What factors in a consumer’s everyday environment affect buying decisions or brand
perceptions, and why?
What drives the consumption decisions?
Beliefs/Financial Resources/Emotions/Psychological states/Environment
Choice overload
The paradox of choice: Does having a lot of options to choose from make us happy?
- People dislike when the number of choices is low
- More choice is better to the happiness of the customer
- Too much choice is less (choice overload)
Choice overload refers to a cognitive process in which people have a difficult time making a
decision when faced with many options. Why?
1. Stressful/difficult to determine which option is best for you
2. Feel sorrow about the opportunities that we forego
3. Not clear which option is best for you > start getting regrets
When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing? (Iyengar &
Lepper, 2000)
To establish whether you should provide the consumer with more or less options?
Study
- Field study (supermarket), but difficult to eliminate environment factors
- Research assistants were dressed as employees
- The tasting booth has 6 or 24 options of jams
- Observer noted how many options were bought & interested in (DV)
- Interested shoppers received a redeemable coupon
- Changed manipulation every hour to balance the outcomes
,Results
More options are more attractive (coupons)
Less options are sold more
o Further research: more students completed their essay & the quality was
better when less options were given (6 options) instead of more options given
(30 topics)
Strength = real life reflection, less likelihood of demand characteristics affecting the results
Limitation = less control over extraneous variables that might bias the results, not repeatable
When Are Consumers Most Likely to Feel Overwhelmed by Their Options? (Chernev,
Böckenholt & Goodman, 2015)
1. Choice-set complexity: When the product is complex (fewer choices help the
consumer make a decision)
2. Decision-task difficulty: When people do not have the time and want to make a quick
and easy choice
3. Preference uncertainty: When you do not have any prior information
4. Decision goal: When the goal is to purchase as opposed to browse
Marketeers can help the customer to recommend a product, making categories (smart
navigation), offering filters, compare boxes, quizzes, etc.
Choice overload can leave you dissatisfies with the choice you made = buyer’s remorse.
Or it can lead to behavioral paralysis = a situation where people are faced with so many
choices that they can’t decide among them and make no choice at all.
(Chernev, Böckenholt & Goodman, 2015)
, Lecture 2: The Self in the Marketplace
How our self-concept/identity, beliefs, and fundamental psychological needs define and
drive our consumption behavior.
1) Understanding the self-concept
2) How elements of the self-concept drive consumer behavior: political and religious
ideologies and cultural determinants of the self
3) Understanding how you can apply this knowledge as marketers
Self-concept = our individual perceptions of our behavior, identities, abilities, beliefs and
unique characteristics / a mental picture of who you are as a person. Self-concept is…
- The overall idea we have about who we are and includes cognitive and effective
judgments about ourselves
- Multi-dimensional (e.g. social/religious/political/physical/spiritual)
- Learned, not inherent
- Influenced by biological and environmental factors (including social interaction)
- Develops through childhood and early adulthood
- Can be changed in later years
- Does not always align with reality
The Political Self
Better or Different? How Political Ideology Shapes Preferences for Differentiation in the
Social Hierarchy (Ordabayeva & Fernandess, 2018)
Investigate the extent to which political ideology (liberalism vs conservative) influences
consumers desires to differentiate vertically (“I am better”) or horizontally (“I am different”)
through consumption.
Theory
Liberal (peace/protection/harmony/equality)
VS
Conservative (security/power/economical/achievement/competition/hierarchy)
Conceptual model
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