Topic 1 – Consumer’s Culture
Consumer behaviour reflects the totality of consumers’ decision with respect to the
acquisition, consumption and disposition of goods, services, activities, experiences,
people and ideas by (human) decision-making units (over time).
Marketing implication of customer behaviour:
- Making promotion and marketing communication decision
- Selecting the target market
- Developing products
- Positioning
- Making distribution decisions
- Making pricing decisions
Segmentation targeting positioning
Segmentation:
- Demographic segmentation
- Psychographic segmentation
- Geographic segmentation
- Behavioural segmentation
Targeting:
Your ideal segment is one that is actively growing, has high profitability, and has a low
cost of acquisition:
1. Size: Consider how large your segment is as well as its future growth potential.
, 2. Profitability: Consider which of your segments are willing to spend the most
money on your product or service. Determine the lifetime value of customers in
each segment and compare.
3. Reachability: Consider how easy or difficult it will be for you to reach each
segment with your marketing efforts. Consider customer acquisition costs (CACs)
for each segment. Higher CAC means lower profitability.
Positioning:
All the different factors that you considered in the first two steps should have made it
easy for you to identify your niche. There are three positioning factors that can help you
gain a competitive edge:
1. Symbolic positioning: enhance the self-image, belongingness, or even ego of
your customers. The luxury car industry is a great example of this. They serve the
same purpose as any other car, but they also boost their customer’s self-esteem
and image.
2. Functional positioning: Solve your customer’s problem and provide them with
genuine benefits.
3. Experiential positioning: Focus on the emotional connection that your
customers have with your product, service, or brand.
The most successful product positioning is a combination of all three factors. One way to
visualize this is by creating a perceptual map for your industry. Focus on what is
important for your customers and see where you and your competitors land on the map.
Consumer culture represents the commonly held social beliefs that define what is
socially gratifying within a specific society.
Culture has important functions for consumers. These functions shape the value of
consumer activities and include:
- Giving meaning to objects
- Giving meaning to activities
- Facilitating communication
Cultural norms are the rules that specifies the appropriate behaviour in a given
situation within a specific culture. Most, but not all, cultural norms are unwritten and
simply understood by members of a cultural group.
A cultural sanction refers to the penalties associated with performing non gratifying
culturally inconsistent behaviour.
,Culture is learned
Enculturation: way people learn their native culture, mostly childhood
Acculturation: process by which consumers come to learn a culture other than their
native culture
Each culture has certain role expectations for its members.
Role expectations are the specific expectations that are associated with each type of
person within a culture. An example is sex roles, those refer to the societal expectations
and the difference for men and women among members of a cultural group.
Role conflict: a situation where a consumer experiences conflicting expectations based
on cultural expectations
Divergence: a situation in which consumers choose membership in microcultures in
order to stand out or define themselves.
Values are abstract, enduring beliefs about what is right, wrong, important or good/bad.
Value system is our total value and their relative importance.
Core societal values
, Personality and Lifestyle
Lifestyles are distinctive modes of living, including how people spend their time and
money.
Psychographics are the quantitative investigations of consumer lifestyle.
VALS technique identifies different groups of consumers and classifies among two main
dimensions, motivation and resources.
Geodemographic technique provides data on consumer expeditures and socioeconomic
variables with geographic information in order to identify commonalities in
consumption patterns of households in various regions.
The most used technique is demographics such as age, ethnicity and income.
Self-congruency theory
Behaviour can be explained by congruency between a consumer’s self-concept and the
image of a typical user of the product.
Marketers can use congruency theory by segmenting markets into groups of consumers
who perceive high-self-concept congruence with the product-user image.
Mannequins
The appearance of female mannequins has mirrored society’s current notion of feminine
perfection.
During the Depression when food was scarce, mannequins appeared affluent and well
fed. In contrast, today it is considered more attractive to be thinner and thus
mannequins. (Tidy, 2012)
Standards of beauty
Indeed, there is a litany of mediums through which the normative standard of beauty is
communicated to individuals throughout society.
Consumers are inundated with visuals of what society deems as beautiful through media
and entertainment (social media, television, movies) and the fashion industry
(magazines, fashion houses, catwalks).
Consumer behaviour reflects the totality of consumers’ decision with respect to the
acquisition, consumption and disposition of goods, services, activities, experiences,
people and ideas by (human) decision-making units (over time).
Marketing implication of customer behaviour:
- Making promotion and marketing communication decision
- Selecting the target market
- Developing products
- Positioning
- Making distribution decisions
- Making pricing decisions
Segmentation targeting positioning
Segmentation:
- Demographic segmentation
- Psychographic segmentation
- Geographic segmentation
- Behavioural segmentation
Targeting:
Your ideal segment is one that is actively growing, has high profitability, and has a low
cost of acquisition:
1. Size: Consider how large your segment is as well as its future growth potential.
, 2. Profitability: Consider which of your segments are willing to spend the most
money on your product or service. Determine the lifetime value of customers in
each segment and compare.
3. Reachability: Consider how easy or difficult it will be for you to reach each
segment with your marketing efforts. Consider customer acquisition costs (CACs)
for each segment. Higher CAC means lower profitability.
Positioning:
All the different factors that you considered in the first two steps should have made it
easy for you to identify your niche. There are three positioning factors that can help you
gain a competitive edge:
1. Symbolic positioning: enhance the self-image, belongingness, or even ego of
your customers. The luxury car industry is a great example of this. They serve the
same purpose as any other car, but they also boost their customer’s self-esteem
and image.
2. Functional positioning: Solve your customer’s problem and provide them with
genuine benefits.
3. Experiential positioning: Focus on the emotional connection that your
customers have with your product, service, or brand.
The most successful product positioning is a combination of all three factors. One way to
visualize this is by creating a perceptual map for your industry. Focus on what is
important for your customers and see where you and your competitors land on the map.
Consumer culture represents the commonly held social beliefs that define what is
socially gratifying within a specific society.
Culture has important functions for consumers. These functions shape the value of
consumer activities and include:
- Giving meaning to objects
- Giving meaning to activities
- Facilitating communication
Cultural norms are the rules that specifies the appropriate behaviour in a given
situation within a specific culture. Most, but not all, cultural norms are unwritten and
simply understood by members of a cultural group.
A cultural sanction refers to the penalties associated with performing non gratifying
culturally inconsistent behaviour.
,Culture is learned
Enculturation: way people learn their native culture, mostly childhood
Acculturation: process by which consumers come to learn a culture other than their
native culture
Each culture has certain role expectations for its members.
Role expectations are the specific expectations that are associated with each type of
person within a culture. An example is sex roles, those refer to the societal expectations
and the difference for men and women among members of a cultural group.
Role conflict: a situation where a consumer experiences conflicting expectations based
on cultural expectations
Divergence: a situation in which consumers choose membership in microcultures in
order to stand out or define themselves.
Values are abstract, enduring beliefs about what is right, wrong, important or good/bad.
Value system is our total value and their relative importance.
Core societal values
, Personality and Lifestyle
Lifestyles are distinctive modes of living, including how people spend their time and
money.
Psychographics are the quantitative investigations of consumer lifestyle.
VALS technique identifies different groups of consumers and classifies among two main
dimensions, motivation and resources.
Geodemographic technique provides data on consumer expeditures and socioeconomic
variables with geographic information in order to identify commonalities in
consumption patterns of households in various regions.
The most used technique is demographics such as age, ethnicity and income.
Self-congruency theory
Behaviour can be explained by congruency between a consumer’s self-concept and the
image of a typical user of the product.
Marketers can use congruency theory by segmenting markets into groups of consumers
who perceive high-self-concept congruence with the product-user image.
Mannequins
The appearance of female mannequins has mirrored society’s current notion of feminine
perfection.
During the Depression when food was scarce, mannequins appeared affluent and well
fed. In contrast, today it is considered more attractive to be thinner and thus
mannequins. (Tidy, 2012)
Standards of beauty
Indeed, there is a litany of mediums through which the normative standard of beauty is
communicated to individuals throughout society.
Consumers are inundated with visuals of what society deems as beautiful through media
and entertainment (social media, television, movies) and the fashion industry
(magazines, fashion houses, catwalks).
