Consumer Behavior Lecture and Vocabulary Notes

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering consumer behavior definitions, models, concepts, and memory structures from Chapters 1 through 10 and accompanying lecture notes.

Consumer Behavior

The totality of consumers' decisions with respect to the acquisition, consumption, and disposition of goods, services, time, places, and ideas by human decision-making units (over time)

Offering

A product, service, activity, experience, or idea offered by a marketing organization to consumers

Culture

The typical or expected behaviors, norms, and ideas that characterize a group of people

Reference Groups

A group of people consumers compare themselves with for information regarding behavior, attitudes, and values

Motivation

An inner state of activation that provides energy needed to achieve a goal

Motivated Reasoning

Processing information in a way that allows for consumers to reach the conclusion that they want to reach.

Enduring Involvement

Long-term interest in an offering, activity, or decision

Situational (temporary) involvement

Temporary interest in an offering, activity, or decision, often caused, by situational circumstances

Functional Needs

Need that motivates the search for offerings that solve consumption-related problems

Symbolic Needs

Need that relates to the meaning of our consumption behaviors to ourselves and to others. That is, how we perceive ourselves, how we are perceived by others, how we relate to others, and the esteem in which we are held by others.

Approach Avoidance Conflict

An inner struggle about acquiring or consuming an offering that fulfills one need but fails to fulfill another.

Appraisal Theory

A theory of emotion that proposes that emotions are based on an individual's assessment of a situation or an outcome and its relevance to their goals.

Ego Depletion

Outcome of decision-making effort that results in mental resources being exhausted.

Perceived Risk

The extent to which the consumer anticipates negative consequences of an action, for example, buying, using, or disposing of an offering, to emerge and positive consequences to not emerge.

Ability

The extent to which consumers have the required resources to make an outcome happen.

Exposure

The process by which the consumer comes in physical contact with a stimulus

Habituation

The process by which a stimulus loses its attention-getting abilities by virtue of its familiarity.

Absolute Threshold

The minimal level of stimulus intensity needed to detect a stimulus.

Differential Threshold

The intensity difference needed between two stimuli before they are perceived to be different.

Weber's Law

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

Perceptual Fluency

The ease with which information is processed.

Working Memory

The portion of memory where incoming information is comprehended in the context of existing knowledge and kept available for more processing.

Schema

The set of associations linked to a concept in memory

Spreading of activation

The process by which retrieving a concept or association spreads to the retrieval of related concepts or associations.

Priming

The increased sensitivity to certain concepts and associations due to prior experience based on implicit memory.

Script

A special type of schema that represents knowledge of the sequence of actions involved in performing an activity.

Prototype

The best example of a cognitive (mental) category.

Construal-level theory

A theory that describes the relationship between psychological distance and how abstract or concrete people's thinking is.

Episodic (autobiographical) memory

Knowledge we have about ourselves and our personal past experiences.

Semantic memory

General knowledge about an entity, detached from specific episodes.

Explicit memory

Memory when consumers are consciously aware that they remember something.

Implicit memory

Memory without a conscious attempt at remembering something.

Decay

The weakening of memory strength over time.

Interference

When the strength of a memory deteriorates over time because of competing memories.

Attitude

A relatively global and enduring evaluation of an object, issue, person, or action.

Central Route Processing

The attitude formation and change process when effort is high.

Peripheral-Route Processing

The attitude formation and change process when effort is low.

Counterarguments (CA's)

Thought that disagrees with the message.

Support Arguments (SA's)

Thought that agrees with the message.

Source Derogations (SD's)

Thought that discounts or attacks the source of the message.

Theory of Reasoned Action (TORA)

A model that provides an explanation of how, when, and why attitudes predict behavior.

Sleeper Effect

Consumers forget the source of a message more quickly than they forget the message.

Match-up Hypothesis

Idea that the source must be appropriate for the product/service.

Emotional Contagion

A message designed to induce consumers to vicariously experience a depicted emotion.

Terror Management Theory (TMT)

A theory which deals with how we cope with the threat of death by defending our world view of values and beliefs.

Peripheral cues

Easily processed aspects of a message, such as music, an attractive source, picture, or humor.

Thin-slice judgements

Evaluations made after very brief observations.

Frequency Heuristic

Belief based simply on the number of supporting arguments or amount of repetition.

Truth Effect

When consumers believe a statement simply because it has been repeated a number of times.

Dual-meditiation Hypothesis

Explains how attitudes toward the ad influence brand attitudes.

Consideration or evoked set

The subset of top-of-mind brands evaluated when making a choice.

Confirmation bias

Tendency to recall information that reinforces or confirms our overall beliefs rather than contradicting them, thereby making our judgment or decision more positive than it should be.

Inhibition

The recall of one attribute inhibiting the recall of another.

Anchoring and Adjustment Process

Starting with an initial evaluation and adjusting it with additional information.

Mental Accounting

Categorizing spending and saving decisions into "accounts" mentally designated for specific consumption transactions, goals, or situations.

Attraction Effect

When the addition of an inferior brand to a consideration set increases the attractiveness of the dominant brand.

Compensatory Model

A mental cost-benefit analysis model in which negative features can be compensated for by positive ones.

Noncompensatory Model

A simple decision model in which negative information leads to rejection of the option.

Conjunctive Model

A noncompensatory model that sets minimum cutoffs to reject "bad" options.

Disjunctive Model

A noncompensatory model that sets acceptable cutoffs to find options that are "good."

Lexicographic Model

A noncompensatory model that compares brands by attributes, one at a time in order of importance.

Elimination-by-Aspects model

Similar to the lexicographic model but adds the notion of acceptable cutoffs.

Endowment effect

When ownership increases the value of an item.

Representative Heuristic

Making a judgment by simply comparing a stimulus with the category prototype or exemplar.

Availability Heuristic

Basing judgments on events that are easier to recall.

Law of Small Numbers

The expectation that information obtained from a small number of people represents the larger population.

Operant Conditioning

A process of learning drive by the use of rewards to reinforce desired behavior and punishment to discourage objectionable behavior.

Zone of Acceptance

The acceptable range of prices for any purchase decision.

Optimal Stimulation Level (OSL)

The level of arousal that is most comfortable for an individual.

Hypothesis Testing

Comparing prior expectations or predictions with new information, such as evidence from experience.

Disconformation

When expectations do not match the actual brand, product, or service performance because performance is either better or worse than expected.

Attribution Theory

A theory of how individuals find explanations for events.

Equity Theory

The extent to which the balance of exchanges between consumers and companies and among consumers is perceived to be fair.

Opportunity costs

The value to the consumer of the best alternative not chosen. The opportunity costs of choosing an option are low when there are few good alternatives and none are better than the chosen option.

Behavioral costs

The money, time, effort, and emotional discomfort needed to implement one's intentions or urges to act.

System 1 (thinking fast)

operates automatically and intuitively, with little or no conscious effect - dominant mindset

System 2 (thinking slow)

Engages the deliberate, effortful thinking that requires attention and concentration

Acquisition

The process by which a consumer comes to own or experience an offering

Usage

The process by which a consumer uses or consumes an offering

Disposition

The process by which a consumer discards an offering

Values, Personality, and Lifestyle

Relatively broad and stable psychographic characteristics that influence a range of behaviors over time, but usually with a modest effect on each specific behavior

Symbols

External signs that consumers use to express their identity

Marketing

The activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings with value for individuals, groups, and society.

Cognitive Development

Interest in thinking about and learning information pertinent to an offering, an activity, or decisions

Affective Involvement

Interest in expending emotional energy and evoking deep feelings about an offering, an activity, or a decision.

Response Involvement

interest in certain decisions and behaviors

Personally Relevant

something that has a direct bearing on the self and has potentially significant consequences or implications for our lives

Self-Concepts

our mental view of who we are

Values

abstract, enduring beliefs about what is right/wrong, important, or good/bad

Need

An internal state of tension experienced when there is a discrepancy between the current and an ideal or desired physical or psychological state

Approach-Approach Conflict

An inner struggle about which offering to acquire when each can satisfy an important but different need

Avoidance-Avoidance Conflict

An inner struggle about which offering to acquire when neither can satisfy an important but different need.

Goal

Outcome that we would like to achieve

Self-control

Process consumers use to regulate feelings, thoughts, and behavior in line with long-term goals, rather than to pursue short-term goals.

Marketing Stimuli

Information about commercial offerings communicated either by the marketer (such as in ads) or by nonmarketing sources (such as via word of mouth).

Attention

The amount of mental activity a consumer devotes to a stimulus.