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Consumer behaviour
October 24, 2007
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Consumer Behavior
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A consumer is someone who buys goods and services for his or her own household or use. Consumer behavior is the way in which external and internal forces shape peoples exchange activities.
A consumer’s buying behaviour is influenced by cultural, social, personal and psychological factors.
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Cultural factors, sub-cultural and social factors.
Cultural factors exert the broadest and deepest influence. Culture, subculture and social class are important in buying behaviour. Culture involves having a set of values, perceptions, preferences and behaviour acquired through ones family and other institutions like tribe, religion e.t.c.
Each culture consists of smaller subcultures that provide more specific identification and socialization for their members. Subculture includes nationalities, religions, social groups and geographic regions.
A particular component in culture is its core values, the ones that are pervasive and enduring. Example Muslims don’t eat pork thus a marketer if he has researched well will find the marketer for pork in a Muslim area is very low and hence he will find another market.
Sub-cultural factors
A subculture is a segment within culture that shares value and patterns of behaviour that distinguish it from those of the overall culture. When subcultures grow large and affluent, then a marketer might find it easier to meet the needs of the subculture than the overall culture.
Social factors
This consists of all the groups that have a direct (face to face) or indirect influence on a person’s attitudes or behaviour. These groups are called membership groups. Some membership groups are primary groups such as family, friends, neighbors, co-workers with whom the person interacts.
Secondary groups such as religion, professional and trade union tend to be more formal and require less continuous interaction.
These groups tend to influence a buyer to buy specific products or brands choices. People are influenced by groups which they hope to join these are called aspiration groups or groups whose value they reject dissociate groups.
Marketers of products where these groups (social groups) are strong must determine how to reach and influence opinion leaders of these groups.
E.g. the hottest trends in teenage music, fashion start with teenagers in middleclass areas.
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Family influences.
Family influences ones purchase decision and marketers basically look at a family as a basic unit of measuring consumption. Marketers should know who makes purchasing decisions in the family and which family members influence these purchases.
If the purchaser is a wife, then the marketer will make or create a different marketing mix than if the typical purchaser is the husband.
A marketer should be able to segment or identify the different segments of the family cycle so that he may be able to produce the right marketing mix that will influence the buyer of the product.
The life cycle helps to identify the needs and the ways in which these roles change as the family matures e.g. a family with young children will spend more in buying food for their kids, clothing e.t.c.
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Personal factors
A buyer’s decision may also be influenced by personal characteristics. These include a buyer’s age, occupation, economic circumstances, and lifestyle e.t.c.
Occupation may influence consumption patterns in that a blue collar worker may spend more on work clothes, lunch boxes, feeding the family while a chief executive will spend more on expensive vacations, country club membership e.t.c.
E.g. computer software companies try to develop different s/w for different occupation e.g. one for brand managers, CAD for architects, engineers’ physicians’ e.t.c.
Lifestyle is a person’s pattern of living. This is expressed in activities, interests and opinions. This may influence the buyer to buy particular products. E.g. having a ipods a while back was considered a status symbol so many people with a high lifestyle who wanted to show off bought ipods.
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Psychological factors.
A person’s buying choice is influenced by aspects of psychological factors i.e. motivation, perception, learning and beliefs/attitudes.
Motivation: A motive is a need that is sufficiently pressing to drive a person to act. Some needs are biogenic i.e. they arise from psychological states of tension e.g. hunger, trust, discomfort, others are psychogenic they cause from psychological states of tension such as the need for recognition, esteem, belonging.
The theories of motivation help a marketer to understand how various products fit into the plans, goals and lives of consumers.
Perception: Perception is the process by which a person selects, organizes and interprets information inputs to create a meaningful picture of the world. A person’s perception towards a product may lead him to purchase it or reject it. Thus a marketer needs to improve the product’s physical appearance and means or mode of advertisement to improve the product’s perceptions.
Learning involves changing an individual’s behaviour arising from experience. Learning theory teaches marketer that they can build up a demand for a product by associating it with strong drives, using motivation cues and positive reinforcement.
Beliefs and attitude: A belief is a descriptive thought that a person holds about something. People’s beliefs influence their buying decisions. An attitude is a person’s enduring favorable or unfavorable evaluations, emotional feelings and action tendencies towards some object or idea.
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