Consumer Behaviour

Front 1

Define consumer behaviour and the two perspectives.

Back 1

Consumer behaviour is the study of processes, in which an individual or group selects, purchases, uses and disposes of a product or service that satisfy their needs and desires.

There are two perspectives of consumer behaviour; the consumer perspective and the marketers perspective, each having a set of pre-purchase, purchase and post-purchase issues.

The consumer perspective asks the questions such as how is a problem recognized, what are the options to satisfy the problem, what was the process like when accumulating the product and was the product a satisfactory purchase and how will it be disposed of.

The marketers perspective involves issues of consumer recognition and how a consumer evaluates their options. The cues that a consumers shows throughout their purchase decisions and what determines customer satisfaction post purchase.

Front 2

Who are the four actors involved with consumer behaviour?

Back 2

The four actors are:

1. Purchasers

2. Users

3. Influencers

4. Organizations (families, households, etc.)

Front 3

What are the reasons to understand consumer behaviour?

Back 3

Reasons to understand consumer behaviour are:

1. Allocate and optimize resources

2. Identify and serve needs better than competitors

3. Stay profitable and survive in the market

Front 4

How can a market be segmented in order to better understand consumer behaviour?

Back 4

A market can be segmented by:

1. Demographics (age, gender, etc)

2. Geographics (location)

3. Psychographics (lifestyles, etc.)

4. Behaviours (loyalty, etc.)

Front 5

What are the types of marketing that marketers should engage in?

Back 5

In order for success, marketers should engage in relationship marketing, database marketing, public/personal policies and consumer education/protection.

Front 6

Examine consumer behaviour as a field of study.

Back 6

Consumer behaviour has many interdisciplinary influences such as economics, sociology, psychology and sciences. Consumer behaviour has macro influences, which consist of a social focus of marketing, as well as micro influences, which is marketing at the individual level.

Front 7

What are two broad perspectives on consumer research?

Back 7

Two broad perspectives of consumer research are:

1. Positivism, which sees the consumer as a rationale decision maker

2. Interpretivism, which emphasizes the individual experience and that behaviour is subjective to multiple interpretations.

Front 8

What is motivation and motivational strength?

Back 8

Motivation is the process that cause people to act the way they do. Motivation occurs when a need is activated and a person is driven to eliminate the gap by fulfilling their needs. There are aspects to motivation that involve a persons wants, needs, goals, and their drive. A want is a manifestation of a need. A goal is the desired end state for a consumer. The urge to fill the gap is called the drive.

Motivational strength is the degree to which a person is willing to satisfy one need as opposed to another. The need that a consumer chooses to fill highlights their underlying values.

Front 9

Distinguish between different needs/wants and goals.

Back 9

People like to be satisfied and live at an equilibrium (homeostasis see-saw), where at one end of the spectrum there is deprivation and the other end is satisfaction. Needs that pull a person away from equilibrium are social, psychological, physiological and biological needs. Biological needs bring drive theory into play. Drive theory is the need to satisfy biogenic needs, where an unpleasant state of arousal arises if the needs are not satisfied. Another category of needs are learned needs, which takes expectancy theory into account. Expectancy theory follows the idea that behaviour is the result of outcomes, whether they are positive or negative incentives driving them.

Four types of basic needs are biogenic, psychogenic, hedonic and utilitarian.

In order for a person to achieve their needs and wants they look towards goal attainment and goal striving. The path taken to satisfy these needs may differ according to the consumer and their abilities/resources. Types of goals that a consumer works towards are focal, superordinate and subordinate.

Front 10

What are types of motivational conflicts and theories that elaborate on them?

Back 10

Motivational conflict arises when a person chooses to satisfy one need as opposed to another (tradeoffs). Positively valued goals are approached, while negatively valued goals are avoided. Three types of motivational conflict are approach/approach, approach/avoidance, and avoidance/avoidance. Maslow elaborates on this idea with the hierarchy of needs. In order to reach a higher level of needs, the lower levels must be satisfied. The levels are as follows: biological needs, safety needs, belongingness, status, and self actualization. Freud develops this as well with his conflict between the conscious, unconscious and subconscious (ego, superego and id). Marketers can take advantage of conflicts by stressing the emotional side of a purchase towards a consumer.

Front 11

What are the implications of consumer involvement for marketing strategies?

Back 11

Consumer involvement has to do with the level of personal importance/interest evoked by a stimuli within a certain situation. There are levels of high involvement and low involvement, where factors differ according to price, time and resources spent in the pre-purchase, purchase and post-purchase stages of consumer behaviour. A marketer can appeal to a consumers level of involvement by increasing stimuli, creating unexpected stimuli, celebrity endorsements, consumer generated content and building bonds with consumers.

Front 12

Examine the difference between consumer value and consumer values.

Back 12

Consumer value is the buyers evaluation of the product purchase at the time of buying. Consumer values are consumers valuations on the consumption/ possession of products (cultural values).

Front 13

What are the types of hedonic shopping motivations?

Back 13

The different types of hedonic shopping motivations include adventure shopping (simulating adventure), role shopping (shopping for others), value shopping (shopping for sales), idea shopping (shopping for trends), gratification shopping (stress relief) and social shopping (bonding through shopping).