5.

Consumer markets and consumer buyer behaviour

1. Model of consumer behavior
- Consumer buyer behaviour:
the buying behaviour of final consumersindividuals and
households that buy goods and services for personal consumption.
- Consumer market:
all the individuals and households that buy or acquire goods and
services for personal consumption.
Models of consuming behavior

Review the black box model of buyer behavior. Which buyer

characteristics that affect buyer behavior influence the most when
selecting a restaurant? Are those the same characteristics that
would influence a customer when making a smartphone purchase?
Explain your answer
Stimulus-response model
- Environment (stimulus)
We can measure the inputs to consumer buying decisions
Marketing stimuli: Four Ps (product, price, promotion, place)
Other stimuli: major forces and events
ex: economic, technological, political and cultural
- Black box:
Whys of consumer behavior
How stimuli are changes into response
Buyers characteristics influence how he perceives and reacts
to stimuli
2. Characteristics affecting consumer behavior
- Factors affecting consumer behavior

Culture
Culture
= the learned values, perceptions, wants and
behaviours from family and other important institutions.
Try to spot cultural shifts
ex towards health and fitness lifestyle
hofstede
Subculture
= are groups of people within a culture with shared value systems
based on common life
experiences and situations.
Hispanic American
African American
Asian American
Mature consumers
Ex: nationalities, religions, racial groups and geographic regions
Social classes
= relatively permanent and ordered divisions in a society whose
members share similar
values, interests and behaviours.
Measured by a combination of occupation, income,
education, wealth and other variables

Social class

Groups and social networks

Reference groups serve as direct or indirect points of
comparison or reference in forming a persons attitude or
behavior

Expose to new behavior, lifestyle, influence the persons attitudes

and self-concept (pressure to conform
Aspirational group (group you wish to belong to)
Word-of mouth influence and buzz marketing
o Opinion leaders are people within a reference group who
exert social
influence on others.
o Also called influential or leading adopters.
o Marketers identify them to use as brand ambassadors.
Ex Playstation use communities to get new videos out and
encourage fans to share them
Online social networks
= online communities where people socialize or exchange
information and
opinions.
Include blogs, social networking sites (Facebook) and virtual
worlds (second life).
Family
is the most important consumer-buying organisation in society.
But avoid insensitive stereotyping
Social roles and status
= the groups, family, clubs
and organisations that a person belongs to that can
define role and social status.

Personal factors
-

Age and life-cycle stage

Life style changing events (marriage, having children, divorce..)
RBC Royal Band stages
o Youth: younger than 18
o Getting started: 1835
o Builders: 3550
o Accumulators: 5060
o Preservers: over 60
Occupation affects the goods and services bought by consumers.
Economic situation includes trends in:

Lifestyle
= a persons pattern of living as expressed in his or her
psychographics.

Measures a consumers AIOs (activities, interests, opinions) to

capture information about a persons pattern of acting and
interacting in the environment.
Personality and self-concept
= Personality refers to the unique psychological characteristics
that lead to consistent and lasting responses to the
consumers environment.

Brand personality
=specific mix of human traits that may be attributed to a
particular brand
Self-concept
=peoples possessions contribute and reflect their identities
(we are what we have)

Psychological factors
-

Motivation
A motive = a need that is sufficiently pressing to direct the
person to seek satisfaction.
Motivation research
=qualitative research designed to probe consumers hidden,
subconscious motivations.
Uncover underlying emotions and attitudes towards brands and
buying situations

Perception
= the process by which people select, organise and interpret
information to form a
meaningful picture of the world from three perceptual
processes:

Selective attention
= the tendency for people to screen out most of the
information to which they are exposed.
Selective distortion
= the tendency for people to interpret information in a
way that will support
what they already believe.
Selective retention
= the tendency to remember good points made about a
brand they favour and forget good points about
competing brands.
Subliminal advertising
=affected by marketing messages without even knowing it
Learning
= the change in an individuals behavior arising from
experience and occurs through the interplay of
Drives
Stimuli
Cues
Responses
Reinforcement
A drive is a strong internal stimuli that calls for action
a drive becomes a motive when it is directed towards a
particular stimulus object
Cues are minor stimuli that determine when, where an how a
person responds
Beliefs and attitudes
Belief is a descriptive thought that a person holds about
something based on
Knowledge
Opinion
Faith
Attitudes describe a persons consistently favorable or
unfavorable evaluations, feelings and tendencies toward an
object or idea.

3. Types of buying decision behavior

- Complex buying behavior
Expensive, risky purchased infrequently and highly self-expressive
Much to learn about the product category
Cycle of information gathering and brand evaluation process
(belief-attitude-behavior)
- Dissonance-reducing buying behavior

Good pricing or purchase convenience

Ex carpeting
Habitual buying behavior
Brand familiarity
Price differences and promotions
Ex table salt
Variety-seeking buying behavior
A lot of brand switching
Ex cookies
Encouraging habitual buying behavior by dominating shelf space,
keeping shelves fully stocked and running frequently reminder
advertising
New firms: offer low prices, special deals, coupons, free samples
to encourage variety seekers

4. The buyer decision process

1) Need recognition
Occurs when the buyer recognizes a problem or need
triggered by:
o Internal stimuli
ex hunger
o External stimuli
ex advertisement
2) Information sources
Personal sourcesfamily and friends
Commercial sourcesadvertising, Internet
Public sourcesmass media, consumer organisations
Experiential sourceshandling, examining, using the
3) Evaluation of alternatives
= How the consumer processes information to arrive at
brand choices.
4) Purchase decision
= The act by the consumer to buy the most preferred
brand.
can be affected by:
o attitudes of others

o unexpected situational factors.

5) Postpurchase behavior
The satisfaction or dissatisfaction that the
consumer feels about the purchase.
Relationship between:
o Consumers expectations
o Products perceived performance.
The larger the gap between expectation and
performance, the greater the consumers
dissatisfaction.
Cognitive dissonance is buyer discomfort
caused by postpurchase conflict
Customer satisfaction
= a key to building profitable relationships with consumersto
keeping and growing
consumers and reaping their customer lifetime value
5. The buyer decision process for new products
- Adoption process
= the mental process an individual goes through from first learning
about an innovation to
final regular use.

Individual differences in innovativeness

Innovators: try new things at some risk

Early adopters: quided by respect; they are opinion leaders
Early majority: deliberate

Late majority: skeptical

Laggards: tradition bound
New-product marketers often target innovators and early
adopters, who in turn influence later adopters
Influence of products characteristics on rate of adaptation
Relative advantage
Appears superior to existing products
positive relation
Compatibility
=fits into your behavior and your other product experience,
can integrate it easily into your life
than rate of adoption is going up
Complexity
f too difficult to use dont buy it
=>Philips slogan = simplicity
Divisibility
Can try it on a limited basis and you can talk/ communicate
about this new innovation
Communicability
Result can be observed or described to others
=>Ex IKEA wants furniture that can charge your phone

Certain characteristics can affect its rate of adiption. Which characteristics

will impact how quickly the new services described above and explain why
=> first mention the 5 characteristics and prove it with sentences of the text
Book p 67
1. Four Ps (marketing mix): Promotion and environmental factors , black box
= Stimulus response model
in that black box there are different characteristics that affect buying
behavior
cultural/social/personal/psychological
-

Clothing: social because of the reference group

Computer: personal education ex technological model, income

2. opinion leader
= people in a reference group and their opinion will affect the rest of the
reference because they have special skills, knowledge, other characteristics..
=> they try to identify the opinion leaders and through this medium they try
to influence reference group ex become brand ambassadors (blogs)

3. Name and describe the types of consumer buying behaviour

- complex : lot of differences between the brands

ex choosing a mobile phone : high involvement and a lot of different products
- dissonance-reducing
- variety-seeking
frozen diner: you have a lot of differences between the brands but low
involvement
- habitual
4. Explain the stages of the consumer buyer decision process

Need for recognition

idea missing something: internal/external stimuli
- Information search
commercial, relatives or family, public sources
- Evaluation of alternatives
See model in book
- Purchase decision
- Postpurchase behavior
post purchase conflict
6. Name and describe the adopter categories and explain how a marketer
of 3D television can use this knowledge in its marketing targeting
decisions
- Innovators
- Opinion leaders= Early adopters
- ..
- ..
7. Trigger events
ex having a child (car seats, baby furniture), wedding, divorce (IKEA:
single market), death

Ex apple: lifestyle
dell: service, technology
HP:
All different atmosphere, whole branding is different