Consumer Behavior Exam 2 Review

• Consumer Behavior Exam 2 Review study notes, covering groups, reference groups, influence, opinion leaders, word of mouth, innovation, perception, memory, learning, motivation, personality, emotion, attitudes, self-concept, and lifestyle

Groups and Reference Groups

• A group is two or more individuals sharing norms, values, beliefs, and interdependent behaviors with explicit or implicit relationships
• A reference group is a group having presumed perspectives or values that an individual uses as the basis for their current behavior
• Groups can be classified by membership, the strength of social ties, the type of contact, and attraction

Brand Communities

• Brand communities can add value to the ownership of a product and build intense loyalty
• Becoming part of a brand community generally requires continuing to own and use the brand
• Engagement with brand communities cultivates intense brand loyalty

Reference Group Influence

• Reference group influence can take three forms: informational, normative (utilitarian), and identification (value-expressive)
• Reference groups have a high degree of influence when usage is visible, the product is highly relevant, individual purchase confidence is low, there's a strong individual commitment to the group, and when the item isn't a necessity

Opinion Leaders and Market Mavens

• Opinion leaders are "go-to" people for specific information; they interpret and pass along information, possessing greater knowledge and expertise
• Opinion leaders have enduring involvement and are category-specific but an opinion leader might seek opinions in another category
• A market maven is a generalized market influencer who provides significant information about various products and shopping venues

Word-of-Mouth (WOM) and Buzz

• WOM and opinion leadership occur when an individual seeks or volunteers information
• Advertising, product sampling, retailing/personal selling, and creating buzz can generate WOM and encourage opinion leadership
• Viral marketing utilizes electronic communication to spread brand messages through a widespread network
• Blogs are personalized journals where entities maintain ongoing dialogue

Innovation

• An innovation is an idea, practice, or product perceived as new by the relevant individual or group
• The spread of a new product through a market is a group phenomenon
• New products exist on a continuum from no change to radical change, based on market perception
• Innovation can be continuous, dynamically continuous, or discontinuous, each requiring different degrees of behavioral change
• Adopter categories include innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards

Perception

• Perception is the way stimuli is selected, organized, and interpreted
• The information processing model includes exposure, attention, and interpretation
• Selective exposure is a major concern for marketers because failure to gain exposure results in lost opportunities
• Voluntary exposure happens when consumers actively seek out commercials and marketing stimuli for purchase goals, entertainment, and information

Attention

• Attention can be focused or non-focused and it is determined by stimulus, individual, and situational factors
• Stimulus factors are physical characteristics; individual factors are distinguishing attributes; situational factors include environmental stimuli

Stimulus Factors

• Key stimulus factors include size, intensity, attractive visuals, and color/movement
• Position indicates that items easily found in retail stores attract attention
• High-impact zones in print ads are toward the top left
• Consumers pay more attention to stimuli that contrast with their background, with expectations that drive perceptions
• Adaptation level suggests stimuli that don't change are habituated to and can become less noticeable

Non-Focused Attention and Interpretation

• Hemispheric lateralization is activities taking place on each side of the brain
• The left brain controls activities related to rational thought
• The right brain processes images and emotions
• Program involvement relates interest in program/editorial content surrounding ads
• Meaning is compared to something else, indicating perceptual relativity
• Interpretation involves perceptual relativity, subjectivity, and can be cognitive or affective

Cognitive and Affective Interpretation

• Cognitive interpretation is placing stimuli into existing meaning categories
• Affective interpretation is the emotional response triggered by a stimulus
• Individual characteristics include traits, learning/knowledge, and expectations

Individual Characteristics

• Traits are physiological and psychological characteristics that affect stimulus interpretation; consumers differ physiologically in sensitivity and psychologically in predispositions
• Meanings attached to things like time, space, and color vary across cultures
• Consumers learn about marketer-created stimuli via experiences
• Interpretations tend to align with expectations, causing expectation bias
• Consumers evaluate well-known brands higher than identical unknown brands
• Consumer inferences are based on quality signals and interpreting images

Brand Name and Memory

• Brand name and logo development includes linguistic consideration, branding strategies, and logo design/typography
• Behavior is based on what you remember
• Learning leads to memory that affects behavior and consumption
• The information processing system has exposure, attention, and interpretation phases
• Learning is a change in long-term memory

Short-Term and Long-Term Memory

• Short-term memory (STM) is total memory that is currently active, is short-lived and has limited capacity, requiring maintenance rehearsal or elaborative activities
• Elaborative activities redefine or add elements to memory with concepts and imagery
• Long-term memory (LTM) is total memory for permanent storage.
• Semantic memory represents basic knowledge
• Episodic memory represents sequences of events.
• Long-term memory is stored in schemas and retrieved through association

Classical and Operant Conditioning

• Classical conditioning: more habitual, passively observing stimuli
• Operant conditioning: having to take affirmative action to get a reward
• Classical conditioning occurs when a stimulus leads to pleasant feelings relating to a different stimulus
• Operant conditioning entails rewarding desirable behaviors to reinforce them

Cognitive Learning

• Iconic rote learning occurs when associations between concepts are learned without conditioning
• Vicarious learning/modeling occurs when behaviors are learned by watching others or imagining outcomes
• Analytical reasoning happens when individuals restructure existing and new information to form associations

Forgetting and Interference

• Conditioned learning extinction: desired responses decay if not reinforced
• Cognitive learning retrieval failure: it is when information in LTM cannot be retrieved
• Strength of learning is enhanced by importance, message involvement, mood, reinforcement, repetition, and dual coding

Memory Interference

• Memory interference happens when consumers have difficulty retrieving information because related information gets in the way
• A common interference in marketing is competitive advertising which makes recalling given advertisements harder
• Marketers can avoid competing advertising, strengthen initial learning, reduce similarity, and provide retrieval cues to decrease interference
• Brand Image is the schematic memory of a brand

Brand Positioning and Repositioning

• Product positioning is a marketers decisions to achieve a defined brand image relative to competition
• An important part of brand image is appropriate usage situations
• Perceptual mapping offers a technique for measuring/developing position
• Product repositioning is deliberate changing of market view, changing performance, emotion, usage, or user

Motivation

• A motive is a construct representing an unobservable inner force providing specific direction for a response

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

• Self-actualization: morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice, acceptance of facts
• Esteem: self-esteem, confidence, achievement, respect of others
• Love/belonging: friendship, family, sexual intimacy
• Safety: security of body, employment, resources, morality, family, health, property
• Physiological: breathing, food, water, sex, sleep, homeostasis, excretion
• Involvement is a motivational state created by consumer perceptions that a product, brand, or advertisement is relevant or interesting

Motivational Conflicts

• Approach-Approach motivational conflict is the choice between two attractive alternatives
• Approach-Avoidance motivational conflict is a choice with both positive and negative consequences
• Avoidance-Avoidance motivational conflict is a choice with only undesirable outcomes

Personality

• Personality is an individual's characteristic response tendencies across situations, guiding consumer behavior and goal achievement
• The Five-Factor Model of personality is used: extroversion, instability, agreeableness, openness to experience, and conscientiousness

Single-Trait Approach

• Consumer ethnocentrism reflects propensity to bias against foreign products
• Need for Cognition (NFC) reflects propensity to engage in and enjoy thinking
• Need for uniqueness Reflects propensity to pursue difference relative to others

Brand Image, Brand Personality, and Emotion

• Brand image is what people think and feel when they hear/see a brand name
• Brand personality is human characteristics associated with a brand ad
• Emotion is the identifiable specific feeling;

Emotion, Needs, and Personality

• Emotions are relatively uncontrolled feelings that affect behavior and are strongly linked to needs/motivation/personality
• Unmet needs create motivation leading to an arousal component of emotion
• Personality influences emotion, a consumer trait referred to as affect intensity

Emotional Arousal and Regulatory Forces Theory

• Dominance refers to emotional arousal as a product benefit
• Gratitude is emotional appreciation for benefits which leads to increased consumer trust and consumer purchases
• Regulatory forces theory suggests that consumers react differently depending on which broad set of motives are most salient

Attitudes

• An attitude is an enduring organization of motivational, emotional, perceptual, and cognitive processes
• Attitude is the way someone sees or feels about something, it can be positive, indicating consumption, or negative, indicating no consumption
• Components of attitudes are ABC (affective, behavioral, cognitive)

Attitude Component Consistency and Beliefs

• Consistency can be affected by lack of need/ability, failure to consider alternatives, and ambivalence
• Feature beliefs and benefit beliefs exist
• Features are objective
• Benefits are subjective
• Affective components are feelings, behavioral are intentions, and cognitive are beliefs

Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)

• Rewards change behavioral intentions through operant conditioning
• Persuasion changes attitudes
• It suggests two routes to persuasion: central and peripheral
• Central cues (CC): high involvement, important and interesting
• Peripheral cues (PC) low involvement

Peripheral Cues

• Attitudes formed under the peripheral route are weaker, less resistant, less accessible, and less predictive
• Peripheral Cues (PCs) influence persuasion under low involvement
• Central Cues (CCs) influence persuasion under high involvement but not low involvement
• The relevance of cues defines PC/CC, like an attractive model in ads

Competitive Situations and Brand Attacks

• A competitive Situation is when PCs influence persuasion under high involvement when central cues neutralize, or attribute tradeoffs occur
• Brand attacks are resisted by discrediting, discounting, or containment
• Affective attitude is a component of attitude based on likes

Communication Characteristics

• Communication includes source, appeal, and message structure
• Source characteristics who delivers the message, appeal is how and message structure is how it is presented
• Value-expressive is the IMAGE and utilitarian is the product attributes
• Framing includes single attribute and goal framing
• Persuasion has the goal to get a person to switch their opinion

Self-Concept

• Private self is how I actually see myself (actual), how I like to see myself (ideal)
• Social self is how others see me (actual), how others like to see me (ideal)
• Independent self-concept tends to be individualistic, egocentric, autonomous and self-reliant
• Interdependent self-concept tends to be obedient, sociocentric, holistic, connected, and relation oriented
• An extended self consists of the self plus possessions
• A peak experience is an experience that surpasses the usual level of intensity, meaningfulness and richness, and produces feelings of joy and self-fulfillment

Measurement of Lifestyle

• Lifestyle expresses your self-concept and how you enact it
• It determined by past experiences, innate characteristics, and current situation
• Lifestyle is measured with psychographics, including Attitudes, Values, Activities & Interests, Demographics, Media Patterns, and Usage Rate
• Technology Bridges the gap, defining Lifestyle
• Two general lifestyle schemes are VALS and Geo-Lifestyle Analysis (Claritas PRIZM)
• Vals provides systematic classification of U.S. adults into eight distinct consumer segments
• VALS is based on psychological characteristics correlating with purchase patterns

Consumer Motivation

• Motivation = Needs
• Consumers with achievement motivation are strongly driven toward a clear social position influence by actions, approval, opinions, and the purchase of status symbols
• Geo-Lifestyle organizes 68 segments into social/life stage groups
• Psychographics measure consumers' lifestyles