MKT 701 Chapter 5

What are the "Societal Factors" that influence the consumer buying process?

1. Culture 2. Subculture 3. Social Class 4. Reference Groups & Opinion Leaders 5. Family

Difference between want and a need?

For example, most individuals need transportation to get to work or school. But that need could be satisfied different ways, including walking, biking, taking the bus, sharing a ride, or driving a motorcycle or vehicle. While people need transportation, most want a car and a specific brand of car at that.

What are the "Mood" factors that influence the consumer buying process?

Have you ever felt like going on a shopping spree? At other times wild horses couldn't drag you to a mall. People's moods temporarily affect their spending patterns. Some people enjoy shopping. It's entertaining for them. At the extreme are compulsive spenders who get a temporary "high" from spending. Others find shopping fatiguing, and may not want to buy anything at all. Those who believe shopping is stressful may actively seek ways to reduce stress while shopping, such as stopping off for a relaxing 15-minute chair massage or a pedicure.

What are the "Situational Factors" that influence a customer behavior?

1. Design and Layout. Have you ever been in a department store and couldn't find your way out? No, you aren't necessarily directionally challenged. Marketing professionals take physical factors such as a store's design and layout into account when they are designing their facilities. 2. Store locations also influence behavior. While McDonald's has long been acknowledged as the King of retail site selection, Starbucks has done a good job selecting store locations. Starbucks has the process down to a science; you can scarcely drive a few miles down the road without passing a Starbucks. You can also buy cups of Starbucks coffee at many grocery stores and in airports—virtually any place where there is foot traffic. 3. Physical factors that firms can control, such as the layout of a store, music played at stores, the lighting, temperature, and even the smells you experience are called atmospherics. In general, a comfortable atmosphere promotes browsing and buying. Other physical factors like whether are not in a stores control. 4. Crowding is another situational factor. Have you ever left a store and not purchased anything because it was just too crowded? Some studies have shown that consumers feel better about retailers who attempt to prevent overcrowding in their stores. However, other studies have shown that to a certain extent, crowding can have a positive impact on a person's buying experience. The phenomenon is referred to as "herd behavior".

What are the "Gender, Age, and Stage of Life" factors that influence the consumer buying process?

1. Men and women need and buy different products. They also shop differently and in general, have different attitudes about shopping. 2. Your chronological age, or actual age in years, is one thing. Your cognitive age, or how old you perceive yourself to be, is another. A person's cognitive age affects his or her activities and sparks interests consistent with his or her perceived age. Cognitive age is a significant predictor of consumer behaviors, including people's dining out, watching television, going to bars and dance clubs, playing computer games, and shopping. Companies have found that many consumers feel younger than their chronological age and don't take kindly to products that feature "old folks" because they can't identify with them.

What are the "Personal Factors That Vary by Individual"?

1. Mood 2. Personality and Self-Concept 3. Gender, Age, and Stage of Life 4. Lifestyle

What are the "Psychological Factors" that influence the consumer buying process?

1. Motivation 2. Perception 3. Learning 4. Attitude

How many stages are in the consumer buying process?

1. Need Recognition 2. Information Searching 3. Evaluation of Alternatives 4. Purchase Decision 5. Post Purchase Evaluation

What is Maslow's hierarchy of needs?

1. Physiological needs (bottom) 2. Safety and Security needs 3. Love and Belonging Needs (social) 4. Self esteem 5. self actualization (top)

What factors influence customer behavior?

1. Situational Factors 2. Physical Factors 3. Social Situation 4. Time 5. Reason for the Purchase

What are the "Social Situation" that influence a customer behavior?

1. The social situation you're in can significantly affect your purchase behavior. Perhaps you have seen Girl Scouts selling cookies outside grocery stores and other retail establishments and purchased nothing from them, but what if your neighbor's daughter is selling the cookies? Are you going to turn her down or be a friendly neighbor and buy a box (or two)? 2. Certain social situations can also make you less willing to buy products. Salespeople or sales managers that demean customers or who are otherwise rude will often irritate the buyer to the point where he or she will leave the store without making a purchase. Other customers who are loud, angry, or obnoxious may cause anxiety and discomfort among other shoppers, who choose to end their shopping trip prematurely.

What are the "Social Class" that influences the consumer buying process?

A social class is a group of people who have the same social, economic, or educational status in society.28 While income helps define social class, the primary variable determining social class is an occupation. To some degree, consumers in the same social class exhibit similar purchasing behavior. In many countries, people are expected to marry within their own social class.

What are the "Subculture" that influences the consumer buying process?

A subculture is a group of people within a culture who are different from the dominant culture but have something in common with one another such as common interests, vocations or jobs, religions, ethnic backgrounds, and geographic locations. The fastest-growing subculture in the United States consists of people of Hispanic origin, followed by Asian Americans, and African Americans.

What is the "Purchase Decision" in a consumer decision - making process?

At the end of the evaluation stage consumers form an intention to buy a specific product offering. Whether or not that purchase intention translates into real behavior depends on many factors, some of which stem from the consumer, the environment, and the actions of the firm itself.

What is the "Need Recognition" in a consumer decision - making process?

At this stage of the consumer buying process, marketers must engage in research that allows them to identify and understand consumer wants. Why? "Wants" play a role in the market segmentation process and are critical to the development of the marketing mix, especially the product component. Marketers must also strive to create communication messages that trigger need recognition, and schedule communication activities when they are likely to have the greatest impact.

What are the "Attitude" that influence the consumer buying process?

Attitudes are "mental positions" or emotional feelings, favorable or unfavorable evaluations, and action tendencies people have about products, services, companies, ideas, issues, or institutions.24 Attitudes tend to be enduring, and because they are based on people's values and beliefs, they are hard to change. Companies want people to have positive feelings about their offerings.

What is the "Evaluation of Alternatives" in a consumer decision - making process?

Consumers evaluate the brands comprising the evoked set against their needs and desires (wants). HOW they go about this process is often a mystery, and understanding how consumers come to their decisions is typically the most difficult aspect of consumer behavior to comprehend and influence. Quantifying or measuring how consumers make decisions is extraordinarily difficult. In general, most consumers base their evaluation on a set of criteria, though the criteria that are important to one consumer may differ significantly from those that are important to another.

What is the "Post Purchase Evaluation" in a consumer decision - making process?

Consumers will experience one of four outcomes following the purchase of a firm's offering: 1. Delight. Consumers are delighted when the offering greatly exceeds expectations. This experience is likely to generate positive word-of-mouth and positive online reviews and often results in brand loyal consumers and long-term relationships. 2. Satisfaction. Consumers are satisfied when the product delivers what was promised and thus meets their expectations. Satisfied customers can also develop into long-term relationships. 3. Dissatisfaction. When the product's performance falls below buyer's expectations, dissatisfaction occurs. In the age of online product reviews, dissatisfied customers are increasingly likely to share their frustrations. 4. Cognitive dissonance (Buyer's Remorse). Consumers often second guess their decision and wonder whether they chose the best alternative to satisfy their needs. Called cognitive dissonance, or more commonly, buyer's remorse, this phenomena is more likely to occur when purchasing decisions are complex when the price paid is high, when the decision is emotionally involving, and when the opportunity costs associated with the rejected alternatives is high.

What are the "Culture" that influences the consumer buying process?

Culture refers to the shared beliefs, customs, behaviors, and attitudes that characterize a society. Culture is a handed down way of life and is often considered the broadest influence on a consumer's behavior. Your culture prescribes the way in which you should live and has a huge effect on the things you purchase.

What is the "Information Searching" in a consumer decision - making process?

During the second stage of the consumer buying process, consumers speak with family, friends, and other important personal sources of information, including opinion leaders who have expertise in particular product categories. Personal sources offer word-of-mouth recommendations based on their experience or other information that they have learned. The buyer may also recall memories of others who have used the products, or their own experiences, which they integrated into the information search. External sources of information include websites; literature in stores or dealerships; salespeople; advertising, newspapers, magazines, blogs, buying guides, product review websites, and even product packaging. For this reason, marketing communications should engage buyers and enhance their receptivity of marketing messages, or prompt buyers to actively search for more information from among the many external sources previously mentioned.

What are the "Learning" that influence the consumer buying process?

Learning refers to the process by which consumers change their behavior after they gain information or experience. It's the reason you don't buy a bad product twice. Learning doesn't just affect what you buy; it affects how you shop. People with limited experience about a product or brand generally seek out more information than people who have used a product before. Another kind of learning is operant or instrumental conditioning, which is what occurs when researchers can get a mouse to run through a maze for a piece of cheese. In other words, learning occurs through repetitive behavior that has positive or negative consequences. Another learning process called classical conditioning occurs by associating a conditioned stimulus (CS) with an unconditioned stimulus (US) to get a particular response. The more frequently the CS is linked with the US, the faster learning occurs, and this is what advertisers and businesses try to do.

What are the "Lifestyle" factors that influence the consumer buying process?

Many research organizations examine lifestyle and psychographic characteristics of consumers. Psychographics combines the lifestyle traits of consumers and their personality styles with an analysis of their attitudes, activities, and values to determine groups of consumers with similar characteristics. One of the most widely used systems to classify people based on psychographics is the VALS (Values, Attitudes, and Lifestyles) framework.

What are the "Culture" that influences the consumer buying process?

Most market researchers consider a person's family to be one of the most important influences on their buying behavior. Like it or not, you are more like your parents than you think, at least regarding your consumption patterns. Many of the things you buy and don't buy are a result of what your parents bought when you were growing up. Products such as the brand of soap and toothpaste your parents bought and used, and even the "brand" of politics they leaned toward (Democratic or Republican) are examples of the products you may favor as an adult.

What are the "Motivation" that influence the consumer buying process?

Motivation is the inward drive we have to get what we need. Reference Maslow's Hierarchy of Need.

What are the "Perception" that influence the consumer buying process?

Perception is how you interpret the world around you and make sense of it in your brain. You do so via stimuli that affect your different senses—sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. How you combine these senses also makes a difference. 1. Selecting information we see or hear (e.g., television shows or magazines) is called selective exposure. 2. Many people are more perceptive to advertisements for products they need. Selective attention is the process of filtering out information based on how relevant it is to you. 3. At other times, people forget information, even if it's quite relevant to them, which is called selective retention. Often the information contradicts the person's belief. A longtime chain smoker who forgets much of the information communicated during an anti-smoking commercial is an example. 4. To be sure their advertising messages get through to you, and you remember them, companies use repetition. How tired of iPhone commercials were you before they tapered off? How often do you see the same commercial aired during a single television show? It's not a marketing mistake. It's the implementation of a strategy that recognizes the need for repetition. 5. Another potential problem that advertisers (or your friends) may experience is selective distortion or misinterpretation of the intended message. 6. Using surprising stimuli or shock advertising is also a technique that works. One study found that shocking content increased attention, benefited memory, and positively influenced behavior among a group of university students. 7. Subliminal advertising is the opposite of shock advertising and involves exposing consumers to marketing stimuli such as photos, ads, and messages that cannot be perceived by the conscious mind by stealthily embedding them in movies, ads, and other media. Although there is no evidence that subliminal advertising works, the topic has fascinated researchers.

What are the "Personality and Self-Concept" factors that influence the consumer buying process?

Personality describes a person's disposition, helps show why people are different, and encompasses a person's unique traits. The "Big Five" personality traits that psychologists discuss are listed and defined in Table 5.2. Table 5.2 - Big Five Personality Traits 1. Openness - how open you are to new experiences 2. Conscientiousness - how diligent you are 3. Extraversion- how outgoing or shy (introverted) you are 4. Agreeableness - how easy you are to get along with 5. Neuroticism - how prone you are too negative mental states Do personality traits predict people's purchasing behavior? Can companies successfully target certain products to people based on their personalities? How do you find out what personalities consumers have? Are extraverts wild spenders and introverts penny pinchers? Marketers have had better luck linking people's self-concepts to their buying behavior. Your self-concept is how you see yourself—be it positive or negative. Your ideal self is how you would like to see yourself—whether it's prettier, more popular, more eco-conscious, or more "goth," and others' self-concept, or how you think others see you, also influences your purchase behavior. Marketing researchers believe people buy products to enhance how they feel about themselves—to get themselves closer to their ideal selves.

What are the "Reference Groups and Opinion Leaders" that influences the consumer buying process?

Reference groups are groups (social groups, work groups, family, or close friends) a consumer identifies with and may want to join. They influence consumers' attitudes and behavior. If you have ever dreamed of being a professional player of basketball or another sport, you have an aspirational reference group. That's why, for example, Nike hires sports celebrities to pitch the company's products. There may also be dissociative groups or groups where a consumer does not want to be associated. Opinion leaders are people with expertise in certain areas. Consumers respect these people and often ask their opinions before they buy goods and services. An information technology (IT) specialist with a great deal of knowledge about computer brands is an example. These people's purchases often lie at the forefront of leading trends. The IT specialist is probably a person who has the latest and greatest tech products, and his opinion of them is likely to carry more weight with you than any advertisement.

What is the consumer buying process?

The consumer buying process presupposes a rational, logical, and sequential set of activities. The process begins when buyers recognize a need and wish to fulfill the need.

What are the "Reason for the Purchase" that influence a customer behavior?

The reason you are shopping also affects the amount of time you will spend shopping. What if you need something for an important dinner or a project and only have an hour to get everything? Are you shopping for a gift or a special occasion? Are you buying something to complete a task/project and need it quickly? Are you making an emergency purchase?

What are the "Time" that influence a customer behavior?

The time of day, time of year, and how much time consumers feel like they have to shop affect what they buy. Researchers have even discovered whether someone is a "morning person" or "evening person" affects shopping patterns. Have you ever gone to the grocery store when you are hungry or after payday when you have cash in your pocket? When you are hungry or have cash, you may purchase more than you would at other times.