Family Influences on Consumer Behavior

Family Influences

• Family is a social unit that influences consumer behavior
• Family members exert reciprocal influence on each other in the decision-making process
• Three main family influences: father, mother, and other family members
• Each member has their own motives, beliefs, and predispositions that affect the decision-making process

Family Decision-Making

• Family decision-making involves the following stages:
  • Problem recognition
  • Search for information
  • Evaluation of alternatives
  • Final decision
• Family roles in decision-making:
  • Instrumental role: taken by the head of the family for achieving special goals
  • Expressive role: undertaken by the wife and other family members to provide emotional support
• Important buying roles:
  • Initiator: person who suggests the idea of a product/service
  • Influencer: person who has a direct or indirect influence on the final purchase decision
  • Decider: person who makes the final decision
  • Purchaser: person who buys the product
  • Consumer: person who uses the product

Family Life Cycle Stages

• Bachelor stage: young and single, no married, no children
• Newly married couples: young, married, no children
• Full nest 1: young, married, with children
• Full nest 2: older, married, with children
• Full nest 3: older, married, with dependent children
• Empty nest: older, married, with no children living with them
• Solitary survivor: older, single, retired people

Personal Influences

• Personal influences are internal determinants that influence consumption patterns
• Factors that affect personal influences:
  • Age and life cycle stage
  • Occupation
  • Economic circumstances
  • Lifestyle and pattern of living
  • Personality
  • Self-concept

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Addition: Diffusion of Innovation

• Diffusion is the process by which the acceptance of an innovation/new product is spread through communication to members of a social system over a period of time
• Innovation is an idea, practice, or product perceived to be new by an individual or group
• Types of innovation:
  • Firm-oriented
  • Product-oriented
  • Market-oriented
• Diffusion process:
  • Fast diffusion
  • Typical diffusion
  • Slow diffusion
• Factors affecting the rate of spread of innovation:
  • Type of group
  • Perceived risk
  • Type of decision
  • Marketing effort
  • Trial
  • Fulfillment of felt need
  • Compatibility
  • Relevant advantage
  • Complexity
  • Observability

Classification of Adopters

• Innovators (2.5%): venture-some, risk-takers, younger, more educated, and socially mobile
• Early adopters (13.5%): take calculated risks, opinion leaders, and provide information to groups
• Early majority (34%): continuous, use products after innovators and early adopters, elders, well-educated, and less socially mobile
• Late majority (34%): doubtful about innovation, adopt products due to pressure, less educated, and less socially mobile
• Laggards (16%): traditional, skeptical, and least educated, with lowest social status and income### Information Processing for Consumer Decision-making
• When a person is exposed to a stimulus, their attention is drawn towards the object, and the nerves transmit the sensation to the brain for processing.
• Interpretation is the assignment of meaning to the received sensations, which is retained by the memory.
• This leads to consumption behavior, which may have positive or negative feedback for the individual.

Exposure

• Exposure occurs when a stimulus comes under the range of sensory receptors, and nerve exposure occurs.
• Most of the stimuli to which an individual is exposed are self-selected, and we deliberately seek and avoid information of our interest.

Attention

• Attention occurs when the sensory receptor nerves are activated by the stimulus, and the brain registers sensations for processing.
• The market offers a variety of goods, and we selectively choose and attend to products and messages.
• Attention is determined by three factors: stimulus, individual, and situation.

Interpretation

• The same message can be interpreted in different ways, and it is how we assign meaning to sensations.
• Interpretation involves a competitive or factual component and an effective or emotional response.

Memory and Misinterpretation of Marketing Messages

• The marketeer must present messages in a way that they are not misinterpreted, but interpreted accurately.
• Memory is the storage factor, which could be of long-term or short-term memory.

Perception and Marketing Strategies

• Marketing strategy consists of directing the 4 Ps (Product, Price, Place, and Promotion) on the target market.
• The product, its brand name, style, packaging, and other features should be such that a proper image or meaning is perceived by the individual.

Personality

• Personality is an internal determinant that influences our consumption pattern.
• Personality may be defined as those inner psychological characteristics that determine and reflect how a person responds to their environment.
• Personality reflects individual differences and can be categorized into groups based on few traits.

Trait Theory

• A trait is defined as a predisposition to respond in a particular way.
• Traits are used to define the behavior of consumers.
• There are 16 traits given by Raymond Cattell, which can be used to measure the degree of traits possessed by an individual.

The Psychoanalytic Theory of Freud

• Sigmund Freud proposed that every individual's personality is the product of struggle among three interacting forces: Id, Ego, and Super Ego.
• The Id is a source of strong, basic, and instinctive drives and urges that demand instant gratification.
• The Ego operates on a reality principle and seeks to achieve the pleasurable demands of the Id in a realistic way.
• The Super Ego is the individual's moral code and helps in striving for perfection.

Emotions

• Emotions control our behavior and are relatively uncontrolled feelings that affect our behavior.
• Emotions have been categorized into eight types: fear, anger, joy, sadness, acceptance, disgust, expectancy, and surprise.
• Emotions are mostly associated with behavior and can be used to arouse the interest of the consumer.

Self-Concept

• Self-concept can be described as how one perceives himself and his behavior in the marketplace.
• Self-concept is not very realistic because an unconscious component is always present.
• Self-concept can be divided into six types: actual self, ideal self, social self, ideal social self, expected self, and situational self.

Motivation

• Motivation plays an important part in making a decision and is an inner feeling that stimulates the action to be taken by an individual.
• Motivation provides a specific direction or results in a response.
• Maslow's Theory of Motivation is a macro theory that accounts for most human behavior in general.

McGuire's Psychological Motives

• McGuire's classification of motives is more specific and used more in marketing.
• The motives are: need for consistency, need for novelty, need for affiliation, need to categorize, need for self-expression, need for ego defense, need for assertion, need for reinforcement, and need for modelling.

Marketing Strategies Based on Motivation

• Consumers do not buy products, they buy motive satisfaction or problem solutions.
• Marketeers try to find the motives for buying and build their products and marketing mixes around these motives.
• A marketeer tries to find out the motive for buying, how to formulate a strategy to fulfill these motives, and how to reduce conflict between motives.### Motivational Research
• Motivational research is a method to find out motives by asking indirect questions to elicit information from respondents
• It involves unstructured disguised interviews or questionnaires to design marketing strategies around appropriate motives

Motivational Conflicts

• Consumers have multiple motives, leading to conflicts in their minds about which motive to prioritize
• There are three types of motivational conflicts:
  • Approach-Approach Motivational Conflict: two equally attractive choices
  • Approach-Avoidance Motivational Conflict: positive and negative consequences
  • Avoidance-Avoidance Conflict: two undesirable consequences

Involvement

• Involvement is the intensity of interest with which consumers approach their dealings in the market place
• Characteristics of involvement:
  • Related to consumer's values and self-concept
  • Varies in individuals depending on different situations
  • Related to some form of arousal
• Types of involvement:
  • Routinized Response Behavior or Least Involvement: low-involvement, routine purchases
  • Low Involvement Decision Making: medium-involvement, occasional purchases
  • High Involvement Decision Making: high-involvement, infrequent purchases

Information Processing

• Consumers process information from various sources to make purchasing decisions
• The 5 major ways consumers use information:
  • Evaluating products and services
  • Justifying previous product choices
  • Deciding whether to buy or postpone
  • Satisfying needs from available products
  • Serving as a reminder to purchase products
• Information processing involves 4 stages: stimuli, stages of processing, situation, and executive system

Learning and Memory

• Learning is a change in the content or organization of long-term memory
• Types of learned behavior:
  • Physical behavior
  • Symbolic learning and problem solving
  • Affective learning
• Elements of learning:
  • Purpose or intention
  • Cues
  • Response
  • Reinforcement
• Factors influencing learning:
  • Importance
  • Reinforcement
  • Repetition
  • Imagery

E-Business and Consumer Behavior

• E-Business provides benefits such as:
  • No geographical boundaries
  • Targeting individual clients is less costly
  • Fewer middlemen
  • Quicker order execution
  • Faster realization of money
  • Greater customer choice
• Advantages of e-business to consumers:
  • Convenience
  • Low prices
  • Good quality
  • Proper service
• Applications of e-business:
  • Interorganisational (business to business)
  • Intraorganisational (within a business)
  • Business to customer (B2C)
• The World Wide Web (WWW) is a standard for navigating, publishing information, and executing transactions
• E-Business provides consumers with more information and alternatives to solve problems, influencing their decision-making process