Consumer Behavior: Mental & Physical Activities

• Consumer behavior involves mental and physical activities that occur even before a purchase.

Mental Activities in Consumer Behavior

• Mental activities encompass thoughts, feelings, and knowledge about products.
• Examples include contemplating a purchase or recalling product prices.

Physical Activities in Consumer Behavior

• Physical activities involve bodily actions to acquire and consume products.

• Examples include visiting stores, clipping coupons, and testing products.

• A product refers to any physical or nonphysical item or service offering a consumer benefit.

• Consumers include anyone acquiring and using available products and services.

Need

• A need represents a discomforting human condition, either physiological or psychological.
• Physiological discomforts are sensations like hunger or cold.
• Psychological discomforts include boredom or insecurity.

Want

• A want is a desire for a specific object or product.
• Consumers believe the desired product will restore them to a satisfactory state.
• Hungry stomach pains are a need, but a desire for a specific food type is a want.
• Economic, psychological, societal, and biological factors influence consumer behavior.

Exchange

• Exchange involves resources interchanged between two parties, like a market and a consumer, for value.
• This includes an exchange of value for something the consumer values.

Marketer

• A marketer is an entity with an organizational goal of offering products or services for money or other resources.
• Commercial entities primarily seek monetary gain.
• Nonprofits offer products/services at no cost or with minimal charges.

Resources

• Resources are valued possessions that people own.
• Humans exchange them to fulfill needs and wants.

Five Resources

• Money is the most used resource for marketplace exchanges,
• Time is used to buy time-saving devices or to wait in line for a purchase.
• Knowledge is gained through books and courses.
• Energy is used in physical activities like gym workouts, enhanced by vitamins, nutrition and supplements.
• Social capital includes networks helpful in times of need, often enhanced by designer clothes.
• Social capital is used to write thanking notes and sending gifts to keep friends

Value

• Paying fees to join social clubs and associations enlarge social networks.
• This is the sum of net benefits received from an activity or exchange.
• Value is a core goal in human exchanges.
• Consumers seek four values in exchange for resources (USER MODEL).

Utilitarian value

• The set of tangible outcomes from using a product or activity.
• Utilitarian value relates to the physical consequences of a product's effects.
• It's also known as functional value; It enables managing our lives and environment.
• Example: Food nourishes, and lotions moisturize.

Social Value

• The ability to manage social worlds.
• This includes maintaining good relations, fitting in, and projecting a good outward persona.
• Wearing brand-name clothing or donating blood gives social value.

Ego/Identity Value

• Ego/identity value comes from constructing and nurturing identities.
• The identities include self-concepts, sense of ego, and ideas of who we are.
• Vegetarianism or recycling provides identity value.

Recreation Value

• Recreation value comes from recreation of moods, regeneration of mental ability, removing fatigue and boredom, senses stimulation.

• Hedonic value is obtained from wide-ranging forms of consumption, from mood lifters.

• Marketers appeal to consumers with these values/benefits.

• Five resources possessed by consumers are money, time, knowledge, energy, and social capital.

• Knowledge includes giving brand information, data.

• Consider using each of these resources in market exchange to solve consumer problems.

Consumer as Problem Solver

• Consumers seek solutions for daily needs through products/services.
• Once a solution is found, they can relax.

Consumer as Economic Creature

• Consumers manage finances and seek products at the best price, while trying to maximize utility.

Consumer as Computer

• Consumers process information like package labels.
• Instructions on product use are understood, our brains act like human computers, sorting marketplace information.

Consumer as Shopper

• Consumers may window shop simply to enjoy being at a site.

Consumer as Reveler

• Often, consumers want to enjoy themselves at events or concerts.

Anthropology

• The study of humankind's habitat, and how people develop to live.

Sociology

• The study of social systems, groups, and organizations.

Economics

• The study of goods, their production, distribution, and consumption.
• Economics helps individuals and societies allocate their resources and maximize utility.

Psychology

• The study of the human mind and its influence on behavior from perceptions, attitudes, and motivations.

Marketers

• They connect businesses to consumers hoping to meet consumer needs which requires understanding consumer behavior to make satisfying products.

Social Organizations

• Study of consumer behavior is useful to organizations to promote public well-being, not to make money.
• Political parties market candidates, the volunteers and money are marketers offering good feelings in exchange.

Public Policy Makers

• Concerns with protecting consumers both of marketers potentially deceptive practices.
• Lawmakers prevent marketers from opportunistic practices, with agencies like the Federal Trade Commission monitoring business practices.

Consumers

• The study of consumer behavior also interests them.

• It can be intetesting to understand what drives the behavior because waking hours spend so much contemplate experiencing consumption.

• The business and marketing purpose is to create value.

Explore consumer behavior, including mental activities like considering purchases and physical activities like store visits. Understand consumer needs as discomforting conditions and wants as desires for specific products to resolve those needs.