Consumer Behavior: Group Influence & Motivation

• These notes cover consumer behavior topics related to group influence, word-of-mouth, innovation, perception, memory, attitudes, motivation, personality, emotion and self concept and lifestyle.

Group Influence and Reference Groups

• A group consists of two or more individuals sharing norms, values, beliefs, and interdependent behaviors.
• A reference group are groups whose perspectives or values are used by individuals as the basis for current behavior.
• Groups are classified based on membership, strength of social tie, type of contact, and attraction.
• Brand communities add value to product ownership and intensify brand loyalty through continued ownership and use.
• Reference group influence has three forms: informational, normative (utilitarian), and identification (value expressive).
• Reference group influence has a high degree of visible usage, high relevance to the group, low purchase confidence, strong commitment to the group, and considered a non-necessary item

Word-of-Mouth (WOM) and Opinion Leadership

• Opinion leaders are the "go-to" people for specific information, filtering and interpreting it.
• Opinion leaders are more knowledgeable and expert because they possess enduring involvement for specific product categories
• Opinion leaders are category specific and can often be opinion seekers in other categories.
• WOM and opinion leadership occur when individuals seek or volunteer information.
• Market mavens are generalized market influencers that provide information about products and shopping venues.
• Technology and the internet have significantly shaped market mavens.
• Advertising, product sampling, retailing/personal selling, and creating buzz generate WOM and encourage opinion leadership.
• Viral marketing is an online strategy that uses electronic communication to spread brand messages.
• Blogs are personalized journals where people/organizations maintain dialogues.

Innovation

• Innovation is the perception of an idea, practice, or product as new by a relevant individual/group
• New product spreads through the market and can range from no change to radical change.
• Continuous innovation requires minor behavioral changes that are unimportant to the customer.
• Dynamically continuous innovation requires moderate change in an important behavior or major change in a behavior of low/moderate importance.
• Discontinuous innovation requires major changes in behavior of significant importance.

Adopter Categories

• Innovators have high education, social interaction, opinion leadership, social status, are young, have high social integration and group memberships.
• Other adopter categories include early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards.

Perception

• Perception is the information processing model that goes through stimuli, attention and interpretation to create a meaning
• Perception is how stimuli are selected, organized, and interpreted.
• The stages of the information-processing model that constitute perception are exposure, attention, and interpretation.
• Selective exposure is a major concern for marketers because failure to gain exposure leads to lost communication and sales.
• Consumers actively seek voluntary exposure for purchase goals, entertainment, and information.
• Two kinds of attention: focused and non-focused.
• Attention is determined by stimulus, individual, and situational factors.
• Stimulus factors are the physical characteristics of the stimulus.
• Individual factors are characteristics that distinguish an individual from another.
• Situational factors include stimuli in the environment and temporary individual characteristics.
• Stimulus factors include size, intensity, attractive visuals, color and movement.
• Items easy to find in retail stores attracts attention, such as end-caps and kiosks
• High attention impact zones are towards the top left.
• Consumers pay more attention to stimuli that contrast with their background.
• Expectations drive perceptions of contrast and ads that are different often motivates attention
• Adaptation level theory indicates diminished notice if there isn't a change of stimuli over time
• Hemispheric lateralization refers to activities on each side of the brain.
• The left and right sides of the brain controls rational and emotional thoughts, respectively
• Program involvement reflects interest in the program or editorial content around ads.
• Idea that different parts of the brain are better suited for focused vs non-focused attention is called hemispheric lateralization
• Interpretation tends to be a relative process rather than an absolute, known as perceptual relativity
• Interpretation is generally subjective and can be a cognitive process or an affective process.
• Cognitive interpretation is the the process of stimuli that are placed into existing categories to create meaning
• Affective interpretation is the emotional/feeling response by a stimulus, such as an ad

Individual Characteristics

• Traits, learning and knowledge, and expectations are three contributing characteristics
• Traits drive needs and desires. How traits interpret stimuli, can differ physiologically and psychologically
• Meanings such as time, space, realtionships, and colors are learned across culture
• Consumers learn about marketer-created stimuli via experieces
• Interpretations are consistent with expectations, known as expectation bias.
• Consumers highly evaluate a well-known brand or identical products compared to unknown brands

Memory

• Behavior is based entirely on what the consumer remembers
• Any change in long term memory will result in a change of behavior and consumption of products
• The information processing systems has exposure, attention, and interpretation (short-term memory)
• Any change in long-term memory is learning.
• Short-term memory (STM) or working memory is the portion of total memory activated or in use.
• Consumers use constant information refreshing due to short-lived STM, known as maintenance rehearsal
• STM has limited capacity and occurs during elaborative activities
• Elaborative activities redefines or adds new elements to memory with imagery
• Long-term memory (LTM) is dedicated to permanent information storage.
• LTM has a semantic memory of feelings/knowledge and episodic memory of an event sequence
• Long-term memory is stored in schemas and scripts can retrieve from LTM
• Memory is constructed through association
• Factors that enhance learning include importance, message involvement, mood, reinforcement, repetition, and dual coding.
• Memory interference occurs when consumers have difficulty retrieving specific information due to related information.
• Marketers should avoid competitive advertising, strengthen initial learning, reduce similarity to competing ads, and provide external retrieval cues to decrease this interference
• Brand image refers to a brand's schematic memory
• Product positioning aims to achieve a defined brand image relative to competitors.
• Perceptual mapping offers a technique for measuring and developing a product's position.
• Product repositioning involves altering the market view of a product, based on performance, feelings, situations, and users
• Short-term memory, or working memory, is the portion of total memory that is actively used

Conditioning

• Conditioning is the process an individual uses to create memory
• Classical conditioning relates more habitual actions that you passively watch
• Operant conditioning needs reward to get something done
• Classical conditioning creates process using established relationship between stimulus and response
• Operant conditioning involves rewarding behavior with positive outcome
• Stimulus leads to desired response, reinformcement (pleasant taste) and increases probability of a certain response

Motivation

• Motivation is the reason for behavior and an unobservable inner force that stimulates and compels a behavioral response
• Two useful motivation theories are the Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and McGuire's Psychological Motives.
• Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs progresses from physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem, to self-actualization.
• McGuire's Psychological Motives can be broken down into cognitive preservation, cognitive growth, affective preservation and affective growth
• Involvement is a motivational state caused by consumer perceptions that a product, brand, or advertisement is relevant/interesting
• Consumer involvement increases attention, analytical processing, information search, and word of mouth.
• Three motivational conflict types incluce approach-approach, approach-avoidance, and avoidance-avoidance.

Personality and Emotion

• Personality drives how well an individual can respond across all situations.
• Motivations energize and direct behavior, while personality directs how to achieve goals.
• Multi-trait approach is commonly used to market the Five-Factor Model by defining traits that are formed by genetics and learning
• Traits of the Five-Factor Model include extroversion, instability, agreeableness, openness to experience, and conscientiousness.
• Single-trait Approaches include consumer ethnocentrism, need for cognition, and need for uniqueness.
• Brand image is comprised of what people think of and feel about a brand; Brand personality is the human traits associated with it.
• Regulatory forces theory dictates how the broad sets of motives are most salient and how consumers will react
• Emotion is the identifiable feeling and specific affect is is a a liking for a something that can affect behavior
• Emotions are linked to needs, motivation, and personality, where unmet needs create arousal.
• A consumer's trait can be more emotional or less emotional
• Emotional benefits can be a product, primary or secondary use
• Gratitude and consumer outcome leads to consumer trust.
• Emotion can be reduced as a product benefit and position many producs to prevent or reduce such emotional arousal
• An attitude is the way to see and feel about something and are formed positively or negatively
• Attitudes have an enduring organization of motivational, emotional, cognitive and perceptual processes

Attitudes and Persuasion

• The components of that drive attitudes come from affect, behavior, and cognitive
• There needs to be consistency to drive an attitude
• Failure to have such attitude can be due to lack of need, financial situation, ability and ambivilance (mixed feelings)
• Feature beliefs derive from objective perspectives, whereas benefit beliefs are subjective and evaluated
• Rewards influence behavioral intentions and operant conditioning.
• Persuasion changes attitudes.
• ELM Model has 2 routes to persuade people: central (stronger) and peripheral
• Depending on which way a person is persuaded will create strong, resistance and accessbility within the memory.
• Peripheral cues influence low involvement and High involvement influences central cues
• Central cues equalize homogeneity and attribute tradeoffs can alleviate or support
• Discrediting or discounting the information can resist damage to brands
• You can find the attitude with the 5 appeal charachteriscs
• How you present the message is determined by communication charachteristics

Self-Concept and Lifestyle

• Self-concept is the thoughts and feelings that reference oneself as an object
• Ideal self is how someone see's themselves or others, while actual self drives the actuals
• Independent self-concept is individualistic
• Interdependent self-concept is holistic
• The extended self consists of the self plus possessions.
• Peak experiences surpass the usual level of intensity by displaying joy and self-fulfillment
• Lifestyle is and outward expression of self-concept, determined by past experieces and characterisitcs
• Psychographics measure lifestyle through attitudes, values, activities, interests, data, and media patterns.
• VALS is a systemic data scheme from US adults into segments that measure the needs and motivations based on the relationships to purchasing
• Consumers driven by achievement motivation want a clear social position and are strongly influenced by others' opinions.
• Marketers can gauge customer lifestyles based on physochographics
• PRIZM organizes 68 segments into different ways, based on urbanization