Principles of Marketing: Consumer Behavior

Cultural Factors

Culture is the most basic cause of a person's wants and behavior

Marketers try to spot cultural shifts

Subcultures are groups of people with shared value systems based on common life experiences and situations

Examples of subcultures:

Hispanic market: over 55 million consumers

African-American market: over 44 million consumers with $1.3 trillion in annual buying power

Asian Americans: most affluent U.S. demographic segment

Total market strategy: including ethnic themes and cross-cultural perspectives in mainstream marketing

Social Classes

Social classes are society's relatively permanent and ordered divisions whose members share similar values, interests, and behaviors

Social class is determined by a combination of factors, including occupation, income, education, wealth, and other variables

Major American social classes:

Upper Class

Middle Class

Working Class

Lower Class

Social classes show distinct product and brand preferences in areas such as clothing, home furnishings, travel, and leisure activities, financial services, and automobiles

Social Factors

Groups and Social Networks:

Many small groups, including membership groups, aspirational groups, and reference groups, influence an individual's behavior

Opinion leaders exert social influence on others within a reference group

Online social networks are online communities where people socialize or exchange information and opinions

Family:

The family is the most important consumer buying organization in society

Family members influence each other's buying behavior

Roles and Status:

A role consists of the activities people are expected to perform

Each role carries a status reflecting the general esteem given to it by society

Personal Factors

Age and Life Stage:

People change the goods and services they buy over their lifetimes

Tastes in food, clothes, furniture, and recreation are often age-related

Buying is also shaped by the stage of the family life cycle

Occupation:

A person's occupation affects the goods and services they purchase

Economic Situation:

A person's economic situation will affect store and product choice

Information Sources:

Personal sources (family, friends, neighbors, acquaintances)

Commercial sources (advertising, salespeople, Web sites, dealers, packaging, displays)

Public sources (mass media, consumer-rating organizations, Internet searches)

Experiential sources (handling, examining, using the product)

Purchase Decision

Evaluation of Alternatives:

How consumers process information to arrive at brand choices

Depends on the individual consumer and the specific buying situation

Purchase Decision:

Generally, the consumer's purchase decision will be to buy the most preferred brand

Two factors can come between the purchase intention and the purchase decision:

Attitudes of others

Unexpected situational factors

Postpurchase Behavior

The difference between the consumer's expectations and the perceived performance of the item purchased determines the degree of consumer satisfaction

Cognitive dissonance, or discomfort caused by postpurchase conflict, occurs in most major purchases

This quiz covers the factors that influence consumer behavior, including cultural and subcultural factors, and how marketers analyze these factors to understand their target audience.