Ch1

Definition of Consumer behavior

The study of the processes involved when individuals or groups select, purchase, use, or
dispose of products, services, ideas, or experiences to satisfy needs and desires.

Stages in the consumption process

Consumers’ Impact on Marketing Strategy

Marketers can satisfy the needs only to the extent that they understand the people or
organizations that will use the products and services they sell. Consumer behavior helps
businesses determine if their product or service will be profitable and helps them adjust their
marketing strategy to the right target market for their good or service.

 80/20 rule: 20 percent of users account for 80 percent of sales.

 Consumer segmentation (Demographics, Geography, Lifestyle)
 Segmenting by behavior (Relationship marketing “Loyalty”, Database marketing
“interviews”, Big data)
Need Vs Want
A need is something a person must have to live
A want is a specific manifestation of a need that personal and cultural factor determine
“Objective of marketing is to create awareness, not to create needs”
o The specific way a need is satisfied depends on the individual’s unique history, learning
experiences, and his or her cultural environment.
o The particular form of consumption used to satisfy a need is termed a want.

Ch2

Materialism
A personal value that reflects the importance a consumer places on the acquisition and
possession of material objects. Refers to the importance people attach to worldly possessions.
 Materialistic people also appear to link more of their self-identity to products.
 Does advertising foster materialism? Products are designed to meet existing needs;
advertising only helps communicate their availability.
 Materialism refers to the importance people attach to worldly possessions.
 Materialists are more likely to value possessions for their status and appearance-related
meanings.

Sustainability and environmental Stewardship

A triple bottom-line orientation refers to business strategies that strive to maximize return in
three ways:
 Financial
 Social
 Environmental

Green Marketing
Strategy that involves the development and promotion of environmentally friendly products

Green washing
Companies make false or exaggerated claims about how environmentally friendly their
products are.

LOHAS
“Lifestyle of health and sustainability”
People who worry about the environment, want products to be produced in a sustainable way
2
Ch3

Sensation
Immediate response of our sensory receptions (Eye, ears, mouth, nose, fingers) to basic stimuli
like light and smell…

Perception
Process by which people select, organize, and interpret these sensations.
 The process that transforms raw stimuli into meaning
 External stimuli can be received by our brains on a number of channels>> trigger
memories from the past.

Hedonic consumption
Multisensory, fantasy, and emotional aspects of consumers’ interactions with products.
Consumers want to buy things that will provide hedonic value in addition to doing what the
product is designed to do, and will reward companies that produce great designs with loyalty.
 Hedonic goods are associated with fun, pleasure, and excitement.
 The sensations we experience are context effects that subtly influence how we think
about products we encounter.

Sensory marketing (color, sound, touch, scents, taste)

Marketer’s messages are more effective when they appeal to several senses. Where companies
think carefully about the impact of sensations on our product experiences. They communicate
meanings on the visual channel through a product’s color, size, and styling.
 Vision: Marketers rely heavily on visual elements in advertising.
 Color:
  Scents: odor can also stir emotions and memory.
 Sound: Music and sounds affect people’s feelings and behaviors.
 Sound symbolism: Process by which the way a word sound influences our assumptions
about what it describes.
 Touch: We tend to want to touch objects, feel, examine.
 Key concept of using touch:
o Endowment effect. Example: free trial “an emotional bias that cause the
consumer to value a product more than its market value.”
o Kansei engineering: A philosophy that translates customers feelings into design
elements.
 Taste: Taste is influenced by biological factors (taste receptors) and cultural factors (the
image and values associated with food influence how we experience taste).

Stages of perception

1. Exposure
Exposure occurs when a stimulus comes within the range of someone’s sensory
receptors. Consumers concentrate on some stimuli, are unaware of others, and even go
out of their way to ignore some messages.
o Sensory Thresholds
a. The science that focuses on how the physical environment is
integrated into our personal, subjective world is known as
psychophysics.
b. Measure the activation of a receptor.
c. When we define the lowest intensity of a stimulus that can be
registered on a sensory channel, we speak of a threshold for that
receptor.
d. The absolute threshold refers to the minimum amount of stimulation
that can be detected on a sensory channel (the sound emitted by a
 dog whistle is beyond our auditory absolute threshold, for example.)
Guessing point.
e. The differential threshold refers to the ability of a sensory system to
detect changes or differences between two stimuli.
- The minimum difference that can be detected between two
stimuli is known as the j.n.d. or just noticeable difference (e.g.,
marketers might want to make sure that a consumer notices that
merchandise has been discounted).

o Subliminal Perception
Stimulus below the level of the consumer’s awareness. Subconscious message.

2. Attention
Attention is the extent to which processing activity is devoted to a particular stimulus
we can have too much of a good thing. Consumers often live in a state of sensory
overload; we are exposed to far more information than we can process.
 Consumers are often in a state of sensory overload or are exposed to far more.
information than they are capable or willing to process.
 How Do Marketers Get Attention?
o Networks try to engage viewers with original content during commercial breaks.
o Rich media advertisements online use movement to get viewer attention (e.g.
LowerMyBills.com silhouetted dancers).
o Teaser ads start a story on television and ask you to go to the website for the
rest of the ad.
o Doing something novel/unexpected.
o Perceptual selection means that people attend to only small portion of stimuli to
which they are exposed.
 Stimulus Selection Factors
o Contrast
o Size- size of the stimulus itself in contrast to the competition helps to determine
if it will command attention.
o Color
o Position
o Novelty- Stimuli that appear in unexpected ways or places tend to grab our
attention
3. Interpretation
Interpretation refers to the meanings we assign to sensory stimuli.

Sensory input
Describes the response our sensory organs (such as eyes, ears, mouth, tongue, skin, etc.) have
whenever it receives stimuli.
Ch5

The Motivation Process

Refers to the processes that cause people to behave as they do. Once a need has been
activated, a state of tension exists that drives the consumer to attempt to reduce or eliminate
the need.
 Provides purpose, direction and drive to that behavior.
 Occurs when a need arises that a consumer wishes to satisfy.
 Goal: the end state that is desired by the consumer.
 Motivation can be described in terms of:
o Strength: the pull it exerts on the consumer.
o Direction: the particular way the consumer attempts to reduce motivational
tension.

Motivation
The driving force within individuals that guides them to action. This driving force is produced by
a state of tension that exists as the result an unfulfilled need. Closely linked with the start on
the decision making process

Needs can be:

Utilitarian—a desire to achieve some functional or practical benefit.
Hedonic—an experiential need, involving emotional responses or fantasies.

Drive theory
Focuses on biological needs that produce unpleasant states
of arousal (e.g., your stomach grumbles during a
morning class)
Runs into difficulty when it tries to explain why people
sometimes do things that might increase a drive state (such
as delaying gratification).
physiological needs and that a negative
state of tension is created when these
needs are not satisfied.

Expectancy theory suggests that behavior is

largely pulled by expectations of achieving
desirable outcomes—positive incentives—
rather than pushed from within.
Needs Versus Wants
The specific way a need is satisfied depends on the individual’s unique history, learning
experiences, and his or her cultural environment.
- The particular form of consumption used to satisfy a need is termed a want.

Motivational Conflicts
A goal has valence, which means that it can be positive or negative. Therefore, goals can be
sought or avoided.
Three different types of goal conflicts are:
 Approach-approach conflict—a person must choose between two desirable alternatives
such as choosing between two favorite brands of automobiles.
 Approach-avoidance conflict—many products or services we desire have negative
consequences attached to them. An example is eating fast food.
 Avoidance-avoidance conflict—a choice between two undesirable alternatives such as
having to spend more on an older car or buy a newer more expensive car.

Specific needs and buying behavior

 Need for achievement (strongly
value personal accomplishment)
 Need for affiliation (to be in the
company of other people)
 Need for power (to control one’s
environment)
 Need for uniqueness (to assert
one’s individual identity)

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

Implies that the order of development is
fixed. This hierarchy is most closely associated with product benefits that people might be
looking for. Lower order needs must be satisfied before climbing the needs ladder.
 Physiological.
 Safety.
 Social.
 Esteem.
 Self-actualization.
Consumer Involvement
 Involvement refers to “a person’s perceived relevance of the object based on their
inherent needs, values, and interests.”
 Involvement can be viewed as the motivation to process information.
 As involvement increases, people devote more attention to ads related to the product,
exert more cognitive effort to understand these ads, and focus their attention on the
product-related information in them.
 Consumer involvement relates to a consumers level of involvement in a purchase
decision.

Product personalization
 Mass customization describes the personalization of products and services for individual
customers at a mass-production price. This product involvement strategy applies to a
wide range of products and services, like newspaper Web sites that allow readers to
choose which sections of the paper they want to see.

Inertia
Inertia describes consumption at the low end of involvement, where we make decisions out of
habit because we lack the motivation to consider alternatives.

Ch7

Personality
A person’s unique psychological makeup and how it consistently influences the way a person
responds to his/her environment

Freudian Systems

a. Id: Oriented toward immediate gratification

Pleasure principle:
a. Behavior is guided by the primary desire to maximize pleasure and avoid pain.
The id is selfish, illogical, and ignores consequences
b. Superego: A person’s conscience

c. Ego: The system that mediates between the id and the superego
Reality principle: The ego finds ways to gratify the id
The big five personality traits
This is a set of five dimensions that form the basis of personality: openness to experience,
conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

Brand personality
The set of traits people attribute to a product as if it were a person. Ex. Red bull

Lifestyle
defines a pattern of consumption that reflects a person’s choices of how to spend his or her
time and money. These choices play a key role in defining consumer identity.

Psychographics
 Use of psychological, sociological, and anthropological factors for market segmentation.
 To determine how the market is segmented by the propensity of groups within the
market to make a particular decision about a product, person, ideology, or otherwise
hold an attitude or use a medium.
 Marketers often find it useful to develop products that appeal to different lifestyle
subcultures.
 When marketers combine personality variables with knowledge of lifestyle preferences,
they have a powerful lens they can focus on consumer segments.
AIOs
Most contemporary psychographic research attempts to group consumers according to some
combination of three categories of variables: activities, interests, and opinions
 80/20 Rule: Only 20 percent of a product’s users account for 80 percent of the volume
of product sold
 Researchers attempt to identify the heavy users of a product
 Heavy users can then be subdivided in terms of the benefits they derive from the
product or service.

Ch8
ABC model
The ABC model emphasizes the interrelationships among knowing, feeling, and doing. We can’t
determine consumers’ attitudes toward a product if we just identify their cognitions (beliefs)
about it.
 Affect: Feelings for an object
 Behavioral Intentions: Potential Behavior toward it
 Cognition: Beliefs about it

Red bull Case study

 Red Bull is not only a product, but also a brand and a personality. It is one of the few
brands that can create a human touch related to its name.
 Red Bull Serving reflects the symbol of self to consumers.
 Red Bull consumers use the brand as a way to express their identity. This identity can be
your true identity, or your preferred or ideal self.
 As we can see, the Red Bull logo has two bulls facing each other, colliding with each
other, showing vitality and boldness. This is what a man wants to be, full of energy and
masculinity.
 Red Bull creates a sense of belonging between consumers and brands. Red Bull does not
offer products to customers but brings them closer to products. They linked themselves
to experiences and events that are popular with target customers, thereby creating a
unique brand identity.
 Red Bull's core values include people and creativity, adventure and adventure.
 Red Bull is considered a lifestyle brand because they have reached one of its business
goals, to be known internationally as one of the most popular energy drink to
consumers most especially those who are into extreme sports that become part of their
lifestyle.