Summary Marketing 2: Consumer
behaviour
Business Economics: 2016-2017
Book: Consumer Behaviour (Hoyer, Macinnis, Pieters 7th edition)
Chapters: 2-6
Stan Paau ANR: 462880
,Chapter 2: Motivation, ability, and opportunity
Learning objectives
Show how motivation influences high-effort behaviour, high-effort information processing
and decision-making, and felt involvement.
Discuss the four types of influences that determine the consumer’s motivation to process
information, make a decision, or take an action.
Explain how financial, cognitive, emotional, physical, and social and cultural resources, plus
age and education, can affect the individual’s ability to engage in consumer behaviours.
Identify the three main types on the consumer’s opportunity to process information and
acquire, consume or dispose of products.
Consumer motivation and its effects
Motivation: An inner state of activation that provides energy needed to achieve a goal. The
motivated consumer is energized, ready, and willing to engage in a goal-relevant activity.
High effort behaviour
One outcome of motivation is behaviour that takes considerable effort. Motivation not only drives
the final behaviours that bring a goal closer but also creates willingness to expend time and energy
on preparatory behaviours.
High effort information processing and decision-making
Motivation also affects how we process information and make decisions. The amount of motivation
is dependent on the product or service you want to acquire. Motivated reasoning: Processing
information in a way that allows consumers to reach the conclusion that they want to reach. When
consumers engage in motivated reasoning, they process information in a biased way so that they can
obtain the particular conclusion they want to reach. An example of motivated reasoning is
confirmation bias.
Felt involvement
A final outcome of motivation is that it evokes a psychological state in consumers called involvement.
Felt involvement is the consumer’s experience of being motivated with respect to a product or
service, or decisions and actions about these. Four types of involvement:
Enduring involvement: Long-term interest in an offering, activity, or decision.
Situational (temporary) involvement: Temporary interest in an offering, activity, or decision,
often caused by situational circumstances.
Cognitive involvement: Interest in thinking about and learning information pertinent to an
offering, an activity, or decisions.
Response involvement: Interest in certain decisions and behaviours.
,What determines motivation?
Personal relevance
Personal relevance: Something that has a direct bearing on the self and has potentially significant
consequences or implications for our lives.
Consistency with self-concept
Any kind of offering may be personally relevant or the extent that it bears on your self-concept, or
your view of yourself and the way you think other view you. Self-concept helps us define who we are,
and it frequently motivates our behaviour.
Values
Consumers are more motivated to attend to and process information when they find it relevant to
their values (=abstract beliefs about what is right/wrong, important, or good/bad).
Needs
Consumers find things personally relevant when they have a bearing on activated needs. A need is an
internal state of tension experienced as a discrepancy between the current state and an ideal or
desired state. Maslow divides needs into five categories (importance in this order):
Physiological needs.
Safety needs.
Social needs.
Egoistic needs.
Self-actualization needs.
Types of needs:
Social needs are externally directed and relate to other individuals
Personal needs are those for which achievement is not based on other people. Our
understanding which involve only ourselves, can affect the usage of certain goods and
services.
Functional needs may be social or non-social. Functional needs motivate the search for
products that solve consumption related problems.
Symbolic needs affect how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us. Achievement,
independence, and self-control are symbolic needs because they are connected with our
sense of self.
Hedonic needs include needs for sensory stimulation, cognitive stimulation, and novelty and
needs for reinforcement, sex and play. These hedonic needs reflect our inherent desires for
sensory pleasure.
Needs for cognition and stimulation also affect motivation and behaviour. Consumers want
to understand the world themselves and see some structure in it.
Characteristics of needs
Needs can be internally or externally activated.
Need satisfaction is dynamic. Needs are never satisfied; satisfaction is only temporary.
Needs exist in a hierarchy.
Needs can conflict:
o Approach-avoidance conflict: An inner struggle about acquiring or consuming an
offering that fulfils one need but fails to fulfil another.
, o Approach-approach conflict: An inner struggle about which offering to acquire when
each can satisfy an important but different need.
o Avoidance-avoidance conflict: An inner struggle about which offering to acquire
when neither can satisfy an important but different need.
Goals
Goal: Outcome that we would like to achieve, which are more specific than needs.
Goal setting and goal pursuit
Goal setting comprises what to pursue and at what level. Consumer behaviour is a continuous cycle
of setting goals, pursuing them, determining success and failure of goal pursuit, and adapting the
goals, all with implications for marketing.
Goals and effort
Consumers may vary in how much effort they exert to achieve a goal. If you perceive that you have
failed in achieving a goal, you will be less motivated and, subsequently, may perform even more
poorly in relation to that goal. The amount of effort put into achieving a goal also depends on
whether consumers have feedback demonstrating their progress toward the goal. When there are
multiple goals, and when people are close to attaining one of their goals, they tend to reduce effort
on pursuing that goal and redirect it to other goals.
Types of goals
Promotion-focused goals: Goals on which consumers are motivated to act in ways to achieve
positive outcomes; that is, they focus on hopes, wants, and accomplishments.
Prevention-focused goals: Goals on which consumers are motivated to act in ways that avoid
negative outcomes; they focus on responsibilities, safety, and guarding against risks.
Goals and emotions
The extent to which we are successful or unsuccessful in attaining our goals determines how we feel:
We feel good when we make sufficient progress toward goal attainment or have attained our goals
and feel bad when we make insufficient progress toward goal attainment or have failed to attain our
goals.
Appraisal theory: A theory of emotion that proposes that emotions are based on an individual’s
assessment of a situation or an outcome and its relevance to his or her goals. Satiation: The process
when consumers repeat a consumption experience, and tend to like it less over time.
Self-control and goal conflict
Self-control: Process consumers use to regulate feelings, thoughts, and behaviour in line with long-
term goals, rather than to pursue short-term goals. Self-control conflicts arise when we face
decisions about actions related to goals that are in conflict. The mental effort involved in making
such a decision between which goal to pursue may result in ego depletion, which means the
consumer’s ability to control his or her behaviour is impaired.
The challenge of information processing
Consumers seeking to exert self-control are caught in a psychological conflict between desire, which
is a short-term, hedonic force and willpower, which is a long-term, more utilitarian force.
The challenge of emotion regulation
Consumers engage in consumer behaviours to experience positive emotions and avoid experiencing
negative emotions. Consumers frequently have goals about how they want to feel or do not want to
feel. Although self-control can help consumers progress toward long-term goals, exerting it can be
behaviour
Business Economics: 2016-2017
Book: Consumer Behaviour (Hoyer, Macinnis, Pieters 7th edition)
Chapters: 2-6
Stan Paau ANR: 462880
,Chapter 2: Motivation, ability, and opportunity
Learning objectives
Show how motivation influences high-effort behaviour, high-effort information processing
and decision-making, and felt involvement.
Discuss the four types of influences that determine the consumer’s motivation to process
information, make a decision, or take an action.
Explain how financial, cognitive, emotional, physical, and social and cultural resources, plus
age and education, can affect the individual’s ability to engage in consumer behaviours.
Identify the three main types on the consumer’s opportunity to process information and
acquire, consume or dispose of products.
Consumer motivation and its effects
Motivation: An inner state of activation that provides energy needed to achieve a goal. The
motivated consumer is energized, ready, and willing to engage in a goal-relevant activity.
High effort behaviour
One outcome of motivation is behaviour that takes considerable effort. Motivation not only drives
the final behaviours that bring a goal closer but also creates willingness to expend time and energy
on preparatory behaviours.
High effort information processing and decision-making
Motivation also affects how we process information and make decisions. The amount of motivation
is dependent on the product or service you want to acquire. Motivated reasoning: Processing
information in a way that allows consumers to reach the conclusion that they want to reach. When
consumers engage in motivated reasoning, they process information in a biased way so that they can
obtain the particular conclusion they want to reach. An example of motivated reasoning is
confirmation bias.
Felt involvement
A final outcome of motivation is that it evokes a psychological state in consumers called involvement.
Felt involvement is the consumer’s experience of being motivated with respect to a product or
service, or decisions and actions about these. Four types of involvement:
Enduring involvement: Long-term interest in an offering, activity, or decision.
Situational (temporary) involvement: Temporary interest in an offering, activity, or decision,
often caused by situational circumstances.
Cognitive involvement: Interest in thinking about and learning information pertinent to an
offering, an activity, or decisions.
Response involvement: Interest in certain decisions and behaviours.
,What determines motivation?
Personal relevance
Personal relevance: Something that has a direct bearing on the self and has potentially significant
consequences or implications for our lives.
Consistency with self-concept
Any kind of offering may be personally relevant or the extent that it bears on your self-concept, or
your view of yourself and the way you think other view you. Self-concept helps us define who we are,
and it frequently motivates our behaviour.
Values
Consumers are more motivated to attend to and process information when they find it relevant to
their values (=abstract beliefs about what is right/wrong, important, or good/bad).
Needs
Consumers find things personally relevant when they have a bearing on activated needs. A need is an
internal state of tension experienced as a discrepancy between the current state and an ideal or
desired state. Maslow divides needs into five categories (importance in this order):
Physiological needs.
Safety needs.
Social needs.
Egoistic needs.
Self-actualization needs.
Types of needs:
Social needs are externally directed and relate to other individuals
Personal needs are those for which achievement is not based on other people. Our
understanding which involve only ourselves, can affect the usage of certain goods and
services.
Functional needs may be social or non-social. Functional needs motivate the search for
products that solve consumption related problems.
Symbolic needs affect how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us. Achievement,
independence, and self-control are symbolic needs because they are connected with our
sense of self.
Hedonic needs include needs for sensory stimulation, cognitive stimulation, and novelty and
needs for reinforcement, sex and play. These hedonic needs reflect our inherent desires for
sensory pleasure.
Needs for cognition and stimulation also affect motivation and behaviour. Consumers want
to understand the world themselves and see some structure in it.
Characteristics of needs
Needs can be internally or externally activated.
Need satisfaction is dynamic. Needs are never satisfied; satisfaction is only temporary.
Needs exist in a hierarchy.
Needs can conflict:
o Approach-avoidance conflict: An inner struggle about acquiring or consuming an
offering that fulfils one need but fails to fulfil another.
, o Approach-approach conflict: An inner struggle about which offering to acquire when
each can satisfy an important but different need.
o Avoidance-avoidance conflict: An inner struggle about which offering to acquire
when neither can satisfy an important but different need.
Goals
Goal: Outcome that we would like to achieve, which are more specific than needs.
Goal setting and goal pursuit
Goal setting comprises what to pursue and at what level. Consumer behaviour is a continuous cycle
of setting goals, pursuing them, determining success and failure of goal pursuit, and adapting the
goals, all with implications for marketing.
Goals and effort
Consumers may vary in how much effort they exert to achieve a goal. If you perceive that you have
failed in achieving a goal, you will be less motivated and, subsequently, may perform even more
poorly in relation to that goal. The amount of effort put into achieving a goal also depends on
whether consumers have feedback demonstrating their progress toward the goal. When there are
multiple goals, and when people are close to attaining one of their goals, they tend to reduce effort
on pursuing that goal and redirect it to other goals.
Types of goals
Promotion-focused goals: Goals on which consumers are motivated to act in ways to achieve
positive outcomes; that is, they focus on hopes, wants, and accomplishments.
Prevention-focused goals: Goals on which consumers are motivated to act in ways that avoid
negative outcomes; they focus on responsibilities, safety, and guarding against risks.
Goals and emotions
The extent to which we are successful or unsuccessful in attaining our goals determines how we feel:
We feel good when we make sufficient progress toward goal attainment or have attained our goals
and feel bad when we make insufficient progress toward goal attainment or have failed to attain our
goals.
Appraisal theory: A theory of emotion that proposes that emotions are based on an individual’s
assessment of a situation or an outcome and its relevance to his or her goals. Satiation: The process
when consumers repeat a consumption experience, and tend to like it less over time.
Self-control and goal conflict
Self-control: Process consumers use to regulate feelings, thoughts, and behaviour in line with long-
term goals, rather than to pursue short-term goals. Self-control conflicts arise when we face
decisions about actions related to goals that are in conflict. The mental effort involved in making
such a decision between which goal to pursue may result in ego depletion, which means the
consumer’s ability to control his or her behaviour is impaired.
The challenge of information processing
Consumers seeking to exert self-control are caught in a psychological conflict between desire, which
is a short-term, hedonic force and willpower, which is a long-term, more utilitarian force.
The challenge of emotion regulation
Consumers engage in consumer behaviours to experience positive emotions and avoid experiencing
negative emotions. Consumers frequently have goals about how they want to feel or do not want to
feel. Although self-control can help consumers progress toward long-term goals, exerting it can be
