Individual Characteristics, Culture, and Social Influence in Consumer Behavior

Flashcards covering core concepts of consumer behavior including culture, social influence, perception, memory, attitude theories, motivation, and decision-making heuristics.

Culture

Characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people, encompassing language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music, and arts; it shapes norms, values, behaviors, and interpretations.

Need

The discrepancy between the actual and desired state of a consumer.

External Search

The gathering of information from marketer sources like advertising and websites, or non-marketer sources like family, friends, media, and government.

Social Class

A status hierarchy where individuals or groups are classified on the basis of prestige acquired through economic success and level of wealth.

Upward Social Mobility

The degree to which individuals rise in social status within a culture.

Trickle down effect

A phenomenon where something occurring in the upper class makes its way into the lower class.

Aspirational reference group

A set of people to which an individual is not yet a member but desires to belong, such as a rich-kid or athlete fraternity.

Conformity

The act of changing one’s behavior in response to information or pressure from others to learn or be included.

Informational Social Influence

Going along with others because their comments or information guide what is perceived as correct and proper, often leading to private attitude change.

Normative Social Influence

Going along with others in pursuit of social approval or belonging and to avoid disapproval; can lead to mere public compliance.

Compliance

A type of social influence that involves responding favorably to a direct request from another person.

Halo effect

A cognitive bias where one's physical attractiveness leads others to more likely comply with them.

Mere exposure effect

The phenomenon where familiarity with a stimulus boosts liking for it.

Chameleon effect

The mimicry of postures, mannerisms, facial expressions, and other behaviors.

Reciprocity

A social norm where people feel compelled to repay in kind what another has provided, such as free samples or home inspections.

Pluralistic ignorance

A situation, also known as the bystander effect, where individuals follow the lead of others because a situation is ambiguous or uncertain.

Exposure

The process by which a consumer comes in contact with a marketing stimulus.

Selective exposure

The control consumers exercise over their exposure to marketing stimuli, such as avoiding commercial breaks or blocking online ads.

Absolute threshold

The minimum level of intensity a stimulus must exceed to be perceived; the difference between nothing and something.

Just-noticeable difference (jnd)

The minimal proportion of change in a stimulus that can be detected by an individual.

Weber’s law

The principle that the stronger the initial stimulus, the greater the additional intensity needed for a second stimulus to be perceived as different.

Law of Proximity

A Gestalt law stating that objects that are close to each other appear to form groups.

Miller’s rule

The principle that working memory capacity is limited to $7 \pm 2$ units of information.

Associative Network Theory

The theory that knowledge or nodes are stored in memory and connected by associations or links, where activation of one node spreads to others.

Script

A special schema representing knowledge of a sequence of actions involved in performing a specific activity.

Points-of-parity

Attributes communicated to a target market to show that a product or service meets their basic, essential needs.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

A theory suggesting that tension arises when attitude components (affect, beliefs, or conation) contradict each other.

Integral affect

Affective responses toward an object that are elicited by specific features of that object.

Control beliefs

An individual's beliefs about the presence of factors that may facilitate or hinder the performance of a behavior, related to self-efficacy.

Equifinality

A property of a goal system where a single goal is associated with multiple means of achievement.

Multifinality

A property of a goal system where multiple goals are associated with the same means.

Dilution effect

The decreased perception of instrumentality of a multifinal means with respect to each individual goal.

Laddering

A research technique using in-depth interviews to connect concrete product features to functional benefits, emotional benefits, and goal attainment.

Additive Difference Model

A compensatory model where consumers compare two brands by attribute, compute difference scores, and sum them to identify the superior brand.

Conjunctive Model

A noncompensatory model where a consumer sets a minimum cutoff for each attribute and eliminates any brand that fails to meet the cutoff on all attributes.

Lexicographic Strategy

A noncompensatory strategy where brands are compared on the most important dimension; ties are resolved by comparing the second most important dimension.

Status-quo bias

A cognitive bias where individuals prefer to keep things as they are to avoid stress and responsibility.

Anchoring and Adjustment

A heuristic where people start from an initial numeric value and then make an often insufficient correction to form a judgment.

Endowment Effect

The tendency of individuals to attribute more value to items they own compared to identical items they do not own.

Asymmetric Dominance

A context effect, also known as the decoy effect, where the inclusion of a third, less attractive option makes another option look more desirable.

Prospect Theory

A theory stating that perception of value and probability is biased, specifically that losses loom larger than equivalent gains (loss aversion).