Consumer buyer behavior: The buying behavior of final consumers- individual and households who buy goods and

services for personal consumption. Consumer market: All the individuals and households who buy or acquire goods and services for personal consumption. Consumers around the world vary tremendously in age, income, education level, and tastes. They also buy an incredible variety of goods and services. Now we will categorize buyer behavior into a model: Marketing and other stimuli Marketing Product Price Place Promotion Other Economic Technological Political Cultural

Buyers Black box Buyer decision process

Buyers characteristics

Buyers responses Product choice Brand choice

Dealer choice Purchase timing Purchase amount

Consumer purchases are influenced strongly by cultural, social, personal, psychological, characteristics. Now we will discuss about these:

Cultural Factors: Cultural factors exert a broad and deep influence on consumer behavior. The marketer needs to understand the role played by the buyers culture, subculture, and social class. Culture: The set of basic values, perception, wants, and behaviors learned by a member of society from family and other important institutions. For example, different cultures assign different meanings to colors. White is usually associated with purity and cleanliness in Western countries. However, it can signify death in Asian countries. Subculture: A group of people with shared value systems based on common life experiences and situations. For example, in Bangladesh Chakma, Garo, Rohinga has different shape of culture then the rests. Social classes: Relatively permanent and ordered divisions in a society whose members share similar values, interests, and behaviors. Social class is not determined by a single factor such as income, but is measured as a combination of occupation, income, education, wealth, and other variables. Marketers are interested in social class because People within a given social class tend to exhibit similar buying behavior.

Social Factors: Groups: Two or more people who interact to accomplish individual or mutual goals.

Opinion Leader: Person within a reference group who, because of special skills, knowledge, personality, or other characteristics, exerts influence on others. Family: Family member can strongly influence buyer behavior. 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: A person belongs to many group- family, clubs, and organizations. The persons position in each group can be defined in terms of both role and status.

Personal Factors: A buyers decisions also are influenced by personal characteristics such as the buyers age and life cycle stage, occupation, economic situation, lifestyle, and personality and self concept. Life-Cycle Stage: People change the goods and services they buy over their lifetimes. Tastes in food, clothes, furniture, and recreation are often age related. Occupation: It affects the goods and services bought. Blue collar workers tend to buy more rugged work clothes, whereas executive buy more business suits. Economic Situation: It affect in product choice. A person can buy an expensive Nikon if he/she has enough spendable income, savings and interest rates. Lifestyle: A persons pattern of living as expressed in his or her activities, interests, and opinions. People coming from the same subculture, social class, and occupation may have quite different lifestyle. Lifestyle captures something more than the persons social class or personality. It profiles a persons whole pattern of acting and interacting in the world. Several research firms have developed lifestyle classifications. The most widely used is the SRI Consultant's Values and Life-styles (VALS) model.

High resources

High innovation

Fulfilleds

Achievers

Experiencers

Believers

Strivers

Makers

Low resources

Low innovation

VALS - lifestyle classifications

Personality and Self-Concept: A persons distinguishing psychological characteristics that lead to relatively consistent and lasting response to his or her own environment. Moreover, Brand personality is specific mix of human traits that may be attributed to a particular brand. Each persons distinct personality influences his or her buying behavior. Personality is usually described in terms of traits such as self-confidence, dominance, sociability, autonomy, defensiveness, adaptability and aggressiveness. Personality can be useful in analyzing consumer behavior for certain product or brand choice. For example, coffee marketers have discovered that heavy coffee drinkers tend to be high on sociability. Thus, to attract customers, Starbucks and other coffeehouses create environment in which people can relax and socialize over a cup of steaming coffee.

The idea is that brands also have personalities, and that consumers are likely to choose brands whose personalities match their own. A brand personality is the specific mix of human traits that may be attributed to a particular brand. One researcher identified five brand personality traits:

1. Sincerity (down-to-earth, honest, wholesome, and cheerful) 2. Excitement (daring, spirited, imaginative, and up-to-date) 3. Competence (reliable, intelligent, and successful) 4. Sophistication (upper class and charming) 5. Ruggedness (outdoorsy and tough)

The researcher found that a number of well known brands tended to be strongly associated with one particular trait: Levis with ruggedness, MTV with excitement, CNN with competence, and Campbells with sincerity. Hence, these brands will attract persons who are high on the same personality traits.

Psychological Factors: A persons buying choices are further influenced by four major psychological factors: motivation; perception; learning; and beliefs and attitudes. Motivation: A needs that sufficiently pressing to direct the person to seek satisfaction of the need. A person has many needs at any given time. Some are biological arising from states of tension such as hunger, thirst, or discomfort. Others are psychological arising from the need for recognition, esteem, or belonging. A need becomes motive when it is aroused to a sufficient level of intensify. Psychologists have developed theories of human motivation. Perception: A motivated person is ready to act. How the person acts is influenced by his or her own perceptions of the situation. All of us learn by the flow of information through our five senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste. However, each of us receives, organizes and interprets this sensory information in an individual way. Perception is the processes by which people select, organize, and interpret information to form a meaningful picture of the world.

 Learning: When people act, they learn. Learning describes changes an individuals behavior arising from experience. Learning occurs through the interplay of drives, stimuli, cues, responses, and reinforcement. A drive is a strong internal stimulus that calls for action. Drive becomes motive when it is directed toward a particular stimulus object. Cues are minor stimuli that determine when, where and how the person responds. Beliefs and Attitudes: A belief is a descriptive thought that a person holds about something. Attitude is a persons consistently favorable evaluations, feelings, and tendencies toward an object or idea. People have attitudes regarding religion, politics, clothes, music, food, and almost everything else. Attitudes describe a persons relatively consistent evaluations, feelings and tendencies toward an object or idea. Attitudes put people into a frame of mind of liking toward or away from them.