Consumer Markets And Buying Behavior PDF

CONSUMER MARKETS AND BUYING BEHAVIOR CHAPTER-3  3.1 Characteristics Affecting Consumer Behavior CONTENTS AS 3.2 Types of Buying- PER T AND A Decision Behavior PLAN 3.3 The Buyer Decision Process ...

CONSUMER MARKETS AND BUYING BEHAVIOR CHAPTER-3  3.1 Characteristics Affecting Consumer Behavior CONTENTS AS 3.2 Types of Buying- PER T AND A Decision Behavior PLAN 3.3 The Buyer Decision Process  Consumer buyer behavior- refers to the buying behavior of final consumers –individuals and households that buy goods and services for personal consumption. INTRODUCTION Consumer market- All the individuals and households that buy or acquire goods and services for personal consumption MODEL OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOR  Consumers make many buying decisions every day, and the buying decision is the focal point of the marketer’s effort.  Marketers want to understand how the stimuli are changed into responses inside the consumer’s black box, which has two parts. First, the buyers characteristics influence how her or she perceives and reacts to the stimuli. These characteristics include a variety of cultural, social, personal, and psychological factors. Second the buyer’s decision process itself affects his or her behavior. CHARACTERISTICS Consumer purchases are influenced by cultural, social, personal, and psychological AFFECTING characteristics. For the most part, marketers CONSUMER cannot control such factors, but they must take them into account. BEHAVIOR Characteristics Affecting Consumer Behavior Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education Ltd. All Rights Reserved.  Cultural factors exert a broad and deep influence on consumer behavior. Marketers need to understand the role played by the buyers culture, subculture, and social class. Culture- Culture is the most basic cause of a person’s wants and behavior. Human behavior is largely CULTURAL learned. Growing up in a society, a child learns basic values, perceptions, wants, and behaviors from his or FACTORS her family and other important institutions. Marketers are always trying to spot cultural shifts so as to discover new products that might be wanted. For example, cultural shift toward greater concern about health and fitness has created a huge industry for health and fitness. Subculture-Each culture contains smaller subcultures. A group of people with shared value systems based on common life experiences and situations, Subcultures include nationalities, religions, racial groups, and geographic regions. Many subcultures make up important market segments, and marketers often design products and marketing programs tailored to their needs. Social class- social classes are society’s relatively permanent and ordered divisions whose members share similar values, interests and behaviors.  A consumer’s behavior is also influenced by social factors, such as the consumer’s small groups & social networks, family, and social roles and status.  Many small groups & social networks influence a person’s behavior. People are often influenced by reference groups to which they do not belong. Marketers try to identify the reference groups of their target markets. SOCIAL FACTORS  Word of mouth influence can have a powerful impact on consumer buying behavior. The personal words and recommendations of trusted friends, family, associates, and other consumers tend to be more credible than those coming from commercial sources, such as advertisements or salespeople. Opinion leaders- A person within a reference group who, because of special skills, knowledge, personality, or other characteristics, exerts social influence on others. Marketers of brands subjected to strong group influence must figure out how to reach opinion leaders. When these opinion leaders talk, consumers listen. Marketers try to identify opinion leaders for their products and direct marketing efforts toward them. Family members can strongly influence buyer behavior. The family is the most important consumer buying organisation in society, and it has been researched extensively. Marketers are interested in the roles and influence of the husband, wife, and children on the purchase of different products and services. Roles and Status- People usually choose products appropriate to their roles and status. Consider the various roles a working mother plays. In her company, she may play the role of a brand manager; in her family, she plays the role of wife and mother; at her favourite sport event, she plays the role of avid fan. As a brand manager, she will buy the kind of clothing that reflects her role and status in her company. At the same time, she buy clothes that reflect her role as mother and a fan. PERSONAL FACTORS A buyers decisions also are influenced by personal characteristics such as the buyer’s occupation, age and stage, economic situation, lifestyle, and personality and self concept. OCCUPATION A person’s occupation affects the goods and services bought. Blue-Collar workers tend to buy more rigged work clothes, whereas executives buy more business suits. Marketers try to identify the occupational groups that have an above-average interest in their products and services. A company can even specialise in making products needed by a given occupational group. 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. The stages through which families might pass as they mature over time. ECONOMIC SITUATION A person’s economic situation will affect his or her store and product choices. Marketers watch trends in spending, personal income, savings, and interest rates. LIFESTYLE People coming from the same subculture, social class, and occupation may have quite different lifestyles. Lifestyle is a person’s pattern of living as expressed in his or her psychographics. Marketers look for lifestyle segments with needs that can be served through special products or marketing approaches. PERSONALITY AND SELF-CONCEPT Each person’s distinct personality influences his or her buying behavior. Personality refers to the unique psychological characteristics that distinguish a person or group. Personality is usually described in terms such as self-confidence, dominance, sociability, autonomy, defensiveness, adaptability, and aggressiveness.  PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS A person’s buying choices are further influenced by four major psychological factors: 1) Motivation 2) Perception 3) Learning, and 4) Beliefs and attitudes MOTIVATION A need becomes a motive when it is aroused to a sufficient level of intensity. A motive is a need that is sufficiently pressing to direct the person to seek satisfaction. PERCEPTION Perception is the process by which people select, organise, and interpret information to form a meaningful picture of the world. However, each of us receives, organizes, and interprets this sensory information in an individual way. LEARNING When people act, they learn. Learning describes changes in an individual’s behavior arising from experience. Learning theorists say that most human behavior is learned. Learning occurs through the interplay of drives, stimuli, cues, responses, and reinforcement. BELIEFS AND ATTITUDES Through doing and learning, people acquire beliefs and attitudes. These in turn, influence their buying behavior. A belief is a descriptive thought that a person holds about something. Beliefs may be based on real knowledge, opinion, or faith and may or may not carry an emotional charge. Marketers are interested in the beliefs that people formulate about specific products and services because these beliefs make up product and brand images that affect buying behavior. People have attitudes regarding religion, politics, clothes, music, food, and almost everything else. Attitude describes a person’s relatively consistent evaluations, feelings, and tendencies toward an object or idea. BUYING DECISION BEHAVIOR AND THE BUYER DECISION PROCESS Types of Buying Decision Behavior Buying behavior differs greatly for a tube of toothpaste, a smartphone, financial services, and a new car. More complex decisions usually involve more buying participants and more buying deliberation. Let us understand the three types of consumer buying behavior based on the degree of buyer involvement and the degree of differences among brands.  Consumers undertake Complex Buying Behavior when they are highly involved in a purchase and perceive significant differences among brands. Consumers may be highly involved when the product is expensive, risky, purchased infrequently, and highly self expressive. For example, some one buying a new car might not know what models, attributes, and accessories to consider or what prices to expect. COMPLEX BUYING BEHAVIOR DISSONANCE REDUCING BUYING BEHAVIOR Dissonance Reducing Buying Behavior occurs when consumers are highly involved with an expensive, infrequent, or risky purchase but see little difference among brands. For example, Consumers buying carpeting may face a high involvement decision because carpeting is expensive and self expressive. Yet buyers may consider most carpet brands in a given price range to be the same.  Habitual Buying Behavior occurs under conditions of low-consumer involvement and little significant brand differences. For example, table salt. Consumers have little involvement in this product category- they simply go to the store and reach for a brand, If they keep reaching for the same brand, it is out of habit rather than strong brand loyalty. HABITUAL BUYING BEHAVIOR VARIETY SEEKING BUYING BEHAVIOR Consumers undertake variety seeking buying behavior in situations characterised by low consumer involvement but significant perceived brand differences. In such cases, consumers often do a lot of brand switching. For example, when buying cookies, a consumer may hold some beliefs choose a cookie brand without much evaluation, and then evaluate that brand during consumption. But the next time, the consumer might pick another brand out of boredom or simply to try something different. THE BUYER DECISION PROCESS The buyer decision process consists of five stages: Need recognition Information search Evaluation of alternatives The purchase decision and Post purchase decision The Buyer Decision Process Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Need recognition is the first stage of the buyer decision process, in which the consumer recognizes a problem or need triggered by: Internal stimuli External stimuli Information search is the stage of the buyer decision process in which the consumer is motivated to search for more information. Alternative evaluation is the stage of the buyer decision process in which the consumer uses information to evaluate alternative brands in the choice set. Purchase decision is the buyer’s decision about which brand to purchase. Post purchase behavior is the stage of the buyer decision process in which consumers take further action after purchase, based on their satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education Ltd. All Rights Reserved.