Consumer Behavior and Marketing Action
Week 1. Introduction
Solomon – Consumer Behavior, Buying, Having and Being
Chapter 1. Buying, Having, and Being: An Introduction to
Consumer Behavior
Consumer behavior: the study of the processes involved when individuals or groups
select, purchase, use, or dispose of products, services, ideas, or experiences to satisfy
needs and desires
- Before - Buyer behavior (exchange theory): focused only the interaction between
consumers and producers at the time of purchase
- Now – ongoing process: emphasizes the entire consumption process, which
includes the issues that influence the consumer before, during, and after a
purchase
Stages in the consumption process
Consumer: person who identifies a need or desire, makes a purchase, and then disposes
of the product during the three stages of the consumption process;
however, different people play a part:
§ Purchaser and user of a product might not be the same person (e.g. parents buying
children’s clothes) à you must attract both the purchaser and the user
§ Another person may act as an influencer when he or she recommends certain
products without actually buying or using them (e.g. a friend’s opinion, celebs)
§ Consumers may take the form of organizations or groups: one or several persons may
select products that many will use (e.g. purchasing agent who orders a company’s
office supplies or designers who have a say)
,Consumer behavior as marketing strategy: organizations exist to satisfy needs;
Marketers can satisfy these needs only to the extent that they understand the people
or organizations that will use the products and services they sell
- Our society is evolving from a mass culture in which many consumers share the
same preferences to a diverse one in which we each have almost an infinite
number of choices; this change makes it more important than ever to identify
distinct market segments and to develop specialized messages and products for
those groups
Market segmentation: an organization targets its product, service, or idea only to
specific groups of consumers rather than to everybody; segmented according to:
§ Product usage: 80/20 rule; 20 percent of users account for 80 percent of sales --
> because of heavy users/brand loyalty: a bond between product and consumer
that is difficult for competitors to break
§ Demographics: statistics that measure observable aspects of a population; the
changes and trends that demographic studies reveal are of great interest to
marketers because they can use the data to locate and predict the size of
markets for many products
– E.g. age, gender, family structure (marital status, children), social class and income,
race and ethnicity, geography
§ Pyschographics: psychological and lifestyle characteristics
Relationship marketing: building relationships between brands and customers that will
last a lifetime
- Marketers will interact with their customers on a regular basis and give them solid
reasons to maintain a bond with the company over time
§ Self-concept attachment: the product helps to establish the user’s identity, co
§ Nostalgic attachment: the product serves as a link with a past self
§ Interdependence: the product is a part of the user’s daily routine
§ Love: the product elicits emotional bonds of warmth, passion, or other strong
emotion
Database marketing: tracks specific consumers’ buying habits closely and tailors
products and messages precisely to people’s wants and needs based on this
information
- Big Data: the collection and analysis of extremely large datasets; huge volume and
velocity (speed) of information
Web 2.0: the rebirth of the internet from its original roots as a form of one-way
transmission from producers to consumers to a social, interactive medium
- User-generated content: everyone can voice their opinions about products,
brands, and companies on blogs, podcasts, and social networking sites à the
biggest marketing phenomenon of this decade
- Internet of Things (IoT): the growing network of interconnected devices
embedded in objects that speak to one another; e.g. autonomous vehicles, smart
home
,Marketing’s impact on our choices
Popular culture: the music, movies, sports, books, celebrities, and other forms of
entertainment that the mass market produces and consumes
- Both a product of and an inspiration for marketers: many people do not seem to
realize how much marketers influence their preferences
- Affects our lives in more far-reaching ways, ranging from how we acknowledge
cultural events such as marriage, death, or holidays to how we view social issues
such as climate change, gambling, and addictions
Role theory: much of consumer behavior resembles actions in a play
- We as consumers seek the lines, props, and costumes necessary to put on a good
performance
- People act out many roles and alter their consumption decisions depending on the
particular play they are in at the time: the criteria they use to evaluate products
and services in one of their roles may be quite different from those they use in
other roles --> important for marketers to provide each of us “actors” with the
props we need to play all of our varied roles
Motivations to consume
Brand images: meanings that have been carefully crafted with the help of legions of
rock stars, athletes, slickly produced commercials, and many millions of dollars
- People often buy products not for what they do, but for what they mean
- The deeper meanings of a product help it to stand out from other similar goods
and services; all things being equal, we choose the brand that has an image (or
even a personality) consistent with our underlying needs
§ Helps us to form bonds with others who the same preferences: our allegiances to
sneakers, musicians, and even soft drinks help us define our place in modern
society, and these choices also help each of us to form bonds with others who
share similar preferences
§ Convey image or personality: when you buy a Nike “swoosh,” you are doing more
than choosing shoes to wear to the mall; you also make a lifestyle statement about
the type of person you are or wish you were
Need: something a person must have to live or achieve a goal
Want: a specific manifestation of a need that personal and cultural factors determines
– E.g. hunger is a basic need that all of us must satisfy, but the way a person chooses
to reduce it can take a lot of forms
, Consumer behavior research
§ Experimental psychology: product role in perception, learning, and memory processes
§ Clinical Psychology: product role in psychological
adjustment
§ Microeconomics/Human Ecology: product role in
allocation of individual or family resources
§ Social Psychology: product role in the behavior of
individuals as members of social groups
§ Sociology: product role in social institutions and
group relationships
§ Macroeconomics: product role in consumers’
relations with the marketplace
§ Semiotics/Literary Criticism: product role in the
verbal and visual communication of meaning
§ Demography: product role in the measurable
characteristics of a population
§ History: product role in societal changes over time
§ Cultural Anthropology: product role in a society’s beliefs and practices
Paradigm: a set of beliefs that guide our understanding of the world
Paradigm shift: occurs when a competing paradigm challenges the dominant set of
assumptions
Positivism (modernism): paradigm that emphasizes that human reason is supreme and
that there is a single, objective truth that science can discover; the consumer as a
rational decision maker.
Interpretivism (postmodernism): stresses the subjective meaning of the consumer’s
individual experience and the idea that any behavior is subject to multiple
interpretations rather than to one single explanation
- Rational view of behavior denies or ignores the complex social and cultural world
in which we really live;
- Consumer Culture Theory: consumption from a social and cultural point of view
rather than more narrowly as an economic exchange
- The world in which we live is a pastiche: a mixture of images and ideas
- Positivism puts too much emphasis on material well-being and that its logical
outlook is directed by an ideology that stresses the homogenous views of a culture
dominated by (dead) white males
Consumer trends: underlying values that drive consumers toward certain
products and services and away from others
- Because companies often need substantial lead time to launch a new product or
reposition an existing one, it’s crucial to track not just where consumers are, but
where they’re going
– E.g. focus on acquiring physical objects is shifting toward the consumption of
experiences instead
