VITTORIO CESCHI’S SUMMARY
CM2072-Consumer Behaviour and Marketing Action
Summary
Week 1
Chapter 1
Consumer Behaviour: People in the Marketplace – it is essential to understand how people
interact with the marketing system
➢ Marketer categorize people in terms of age, gender, income, or occupation; these are
descriptive characteristics of a population, or demographics;
➢ Conversations we have with others transmit a lot of product information, or
recommendations to use or avoid particular brands; growth of internet created a lot of
online consumption communities, where members share opinions and
recommendations about anything
➢ The use of market segmentation strategies means an organization targets its product,
service, or idea only to specific groups of consumers rather than to everybody
- Brands have clearly defined images, or personalities, that different marketing
elements such as advertising, packaging… help to shape – people often purchase a
product because they like its image or because they feel like its ‘personality’
somehow corresponds to their own
- When a product or service satisfies our specific needs or desires, we may reward it
with many years of brand loyalty, which is a bond between a product and
consumers that is difficult for competitors to break
What is Consumer Behaviour? – Consumer behaviour is 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
Consumer behaviour is a process – in the early stages of its development, the field was
referred to as buyer behaviour reflecting the emphasis at that time (1960s and 1970s) on the
interaction between consumers and producers at the time of purchase – now is instead
recognized as an ongoing process
➢ The exchange is a transaction in which two or more organizations or people give and
receive something of value; emphasis on the entire consumption process, including the
issues that influence the consumer before, during, and after the purchase
➢ A consumer is a person who identifies a need or desire, makes a purchase, and then
dispose of the product during the three stages of the consumption process; purchaser
and user may not be the same person, and another person may act as influencer when
recommending certain products without buying them
, Organizations exist to satisfy needs; marketers can satisfy these needs only to the
extent that they understand the people or organizations using products and services
Consumers are different! How we divide them up – our society is evolving from a mass
culture in which many customers share the same preferences to a diverse one in which we
each have infinite number of choices
➢ Sometimes companies define market segments when they identify their most faithful
customers or heavy users; as a rule of thumb, marketers use the 80/20 rule: 20
percent of users account for 80 percent of sales – this is a guideline rather than a strict
proportion set in stone
➢ Aside from heavy usage of a product, other dimensions are used to divide the market
- Age – people from the same age group tend to share a set of values and common
cultural experiences that they carry throughout life
- Gender – often come with assumptions about what will appeal to each gender
- Family structure – family and marital status has a huge effect on consumer’s
spending priorities
- Social Class and Income – belonging to the same social class means being
approximately equal in terms of income and social standing in the community
- Race and Ethnicity – new opportunities develop to deliver specialized products to
racial and ethnic groups and introduce other groups to these offerings
- Geography – tailor offerings to appeal to consumers who live in different parts of
the country/world
- Lifestyles - The way we feel about ourselves, the things we value, the things we
like to do in our spare time help to determine which products will push our buttons
or even those that make us feel better
Segmenting by Behaviour: Relationships and “Big Data” – many marketers now realize
that a key to success is building relationships between brands and customers that will last a
lifetime – this philosophy of relationship marketing interact with customers on a regular
basis and give them solid reasons to maintain a bond with the company over time
➢ Database marketing tracks specific consumers’ buying habits closely and tailors
products and messages precisely to people’s wants and needs based on this
information; massive quantities of information enable marketers to make precise
predictions about which products or services we will buy the most
- Massive amounts of information holding tremendous value for marketers is
generated every day; the collection and analysis of extremely large datasets is
called Big Data
- In addition to the huge volume of information marketers now have to play with, its
velocity (speed) also enables companies to make decisions in real time
➢ User-Generated Content (UGC) – whereby everyone can voice their opinions about
products, brands, and companies on blogs, podcasts, and social networking sites
- This trend defines the era of 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
,Marketing’s Impact on Consumers
➢ Popular Culture is Marketing Is Popular Culture – marketers filter much of what
we learn about the world; popular culture – the music, movies, sports, books,
celebrities, and other forms of entertainment that the mass market produces and
consumes – is both a product of and an inspiration for marketers – as they play a
significant world in our view of the world and how we live in it
➢ All the World’s a Stage – the sociological perspective of role theory takes the view
that much of consumer behaviour resembles actions in a play – we as consumers seek
the lines, props, and costumes necessary to put on a good performance; because people
act out many roles, they sometimes alter their consumption decisions depending on the
particular “play” they are in at the time
- One trademark of marketing strategies today is that many organizations try very
hard to build relationships with customers; some of the types include:
• Self-concept attachment – the product helps to establish the users’ identity
• Nostalgic attachment – the product serves as a link with a past self
• Interdependence – the product is a part of the users’ daily routine
• Love – the product elicits emotional bonds of warmth, passion, or other strong
emotion
What does it mean to consume? – people often buy products not for what they do, but for
what they mean – roles products play in our lives extend well beyond the tasks they perform
- The deeper meanings of a product may 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.
- Brand Images – meanings that have been carefully crafted with the help of
legions of rock stars, athletes, slickly produced commercials, and a lot of dollars
i.e. Nike
What do we need – really? – distinction between a happy and meaningful life brings up an
important question: what is the difference between needing something and wanting it?
- A need is something a person must have to live or achieve a goal
- A want is a specific manifestation of a need that personal and cultural factors
determine
The Global “Always-on” Consumer – today we instantly access people, places, and
products with the click of a link; the majority of us now live in urban centres that bustle with
people from many countries and that offer exotic foods from around the world
➢ Megacities are metropolitan areas with a total population of more than 10 million
people
, The Digital Native: Living a Social [Media] Life – digital natives are consumers grew up
“wired” in a highly networked, always-on world where digital technology had always existed
- The digital revolution is one of the most significant influences on consumer
behaviour; we’re just entering a new era of the Internet of Things (IoT) – the
growing network of interconnected devices embedded in objects that speak to one
another – i.e. advent of autonomous vehicles to the “smart home” products that
can automatically adjust your thermostats
- We’re witnessing a revolution in M2M (machine-to-machine communication);
Artificial Intelligence (AI); Machine learning; robot companions; sexbots;
Consumer Behaviour as a Field of Study
Two Perspectives on Consumer Research – one general way to classify consumer research
is in terms of the fundamental assumptions the researchers make about what they study and
how to study it – we call a set of beliefs that guide our understandings of the world a
paradigm – some believe the discipline is in the middle of a paradigm shift, which occurs
when a competing paradigm challenges the dominant set of assumptions
➢ The basic set of assumptions underlying the dominant paradigm at this point in time is
positivism (modernism) – human reason is supreme and there is a single, objective
truth that science can discover
➢ The newer paradigm of interpretivism (or postmodernism) question these
assumptions, stressing the importance of symbolic, subjective experience, and the idea
that meaning is in the mind of the person
