Marketing summary chapter 1 - 6
Chapter 1 Understanding consumer behavior
Consumer behavior: reflects the totality of consumers’ decisions with respect to the acquisition,
consumption, and disposition of goods, services, activities, experiences, people, and ideas by
(human) decision-making units over time.
- Consumer behavior involves more than buying.
Acquiring an offering: Acquisition also includes renting, leasing, trading, and sharing.
It involves decisions about time, as well as money.
Using an offering: After consumers acquire an offering, they use or consume it, which
is why usage is at the very core of consumer behavior. The customer experience is
very critical, as consumers interact with firms through a myriad of touch points.
Disposing of an offering: How consumers get rid of an offering can have important
implications for marketers. Consumers can give their used possessions away, recycle
them, sell them, rent them or lend them to others.
Managing money and making financial decisions: There are four segments of
consumers in terms of financial well-being: stretched spenders (live paycheck to
paycheck and feel anxious about their financial situation), carefree spenders (live
paycheck to paycheck and do not feel anxious about their financial situation),
security seekers (don’t live paycheck to paycheck yet feel anxious about their
financial situation), and cushioned saver (don’t love paycheck to paycheck and do not
feel anxious about their financial situation).
Offering = a product, service, activity, experience, or idea offered by a marketing organization to
consumers.
Acquisition = the process by which a consumer comes to own or experience an offering
- Consumer behavior is a dynamic process. Entire markets are designed around linking one
consumer’s disposition behavior with another’s acquisition behavior. Environmental attitudes
and actions are changing, which means marketers must take into account consumers’ goals
and priorities, perception of brands, and internal processes when planning marketing efforts.
- Consumer behavior can involve many people. Moreover, the individuals engaging in
consumer behavior can take on or more roles. For example, several family members may be
involved when purchasing a car, gathering information, actually paying for the car, as end
users and the disposal of the car.
- Consumer behavior involves many decisions.
Whether to acquire/use/dispose of an offering
What offering to acquire/use/dispose of
Why acquire/use/dispose of an offering
Why an offering is not acquired/used/disposed of
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, Marketing summary chapter 1 - 6
How to acquire/use/dispose of an offering: 3 ways of
disposing of an offering (find a new use for it, get rid
of it temporarily, get rid of it permanently.)
When to acquire/use/dispose of an offering
Where to acquire/use/dispose of an offering
How much, how often, and how long to
acquire/use/dispose of an offering
- Consumer behavior involves many emotions and coping:
positive and negative emotions as well as specific emotions
affect how customers think, the choices they make, how they
feel after making a decision, what they remember, and how
much they enjoy an experience.
There are four broad domains that affect consumer behavior.
(1) The psychological core,
(2) The process of making decisions,
(3) The consumer’s culture, and
(4) Consumer behavior outcomes.
Who benefits from consumer behavior?
- Marketing managers
- Ethicists and advocacy groups
- Public policy makers and regulators
- Academics
- Consumers and society
Marketing = the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering,
and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners and society at large.
Consumer research helps marketers to develop product-specific plans, as well as broader strategies
for market segmentation, targeting, and positioning, and to make decisions about the components of
the marketing mix.
Developing and implementing customer-oriented strategy: marketing is designed to provide value to
customers. Marketers must conduct research to develop a strategy and need to determine how well
it is working and whether it is delivering the expected results. The following questions are important
to understand this.
- How is the market segmented?
- How profitable is each segment?
- What are the characteristics of consumers in each segment?
- Are customers satisfied with existing offerings?
Developing products: marketers apply consumer research when making a number of decisions about
products and branding.
- What ideas do consumers have for new products?
- What attributes can be added to or changed in an existing offering?
- How should the offering be branded?
- What should the packaging and logo look like?
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, Marketing summary chapter 1 - 6
Positioning: deciding how an offering should be positioned in consumers’ minds and what messages
will effectively support this image. The positioning should suggest that the product is superior in one
or more attributes valued by the target market.
- How are competitive offerings positioned?
Marketers sometimes conduct research to see how consumers view other brands in comparison with
their own and then plot the results on a graph called a perceptual map. These are used to determine
how their offerings can be positioned as distinct and different from competing offerings.
- Should our offerings be repositioned?
Making promotion and marketing communication decisions
- What are our communication objectives?
- What should our marketing communications look like?
- Where should advertising be placed?
- When should we advertise?
- Has our advertising been effective?
- What about sales promotion objectives and tactics?
- Have our sales promotions been effective?
- How can salespeople best serve customers?
Making pricing decisions: how consumers react to price and to use this information in pricing
decisions, a topic also covered in later chapters.
Endowment effect = a circumstance in which an individual places a higher value on an object that
they already own than the value they would place on that same object if they did not own it.
- What price should be charged?
- How sensitive are consumers to price and price changes?
- When should certain price tactics be used?
Making distribution decisions: how products are distributed and sold to consumers in retail stores.
- Where and when are target consumers likely to shop?
- What do customers want to see in stores?
- How should stores be designed?
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Part 2 the psychological core
Chapter 2 motivation, ability and opportunity
Motivation = inner state of activation that provides energy needed to achieve a goal.
Motivation enhances the effort that people exert to achieve a goal.
- High-effort information and decision-making highly motivated to achieve a goal
Motivated reasoning: Processing information in a way that allows consumers to reach the conclusion
that they want to reach.
- Confirmation bias = the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a
way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values.
Involvement: final outcome of motivation is that it evokes a psychological state.
Types of involvement:
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