Chapter 3: Consumer Behaviour - How People Make Buying Decisions

Vocabulary flashcards covering the situational, personal, psychological, and societal factors influencing consumer behaviour, as well as the different levels of involvement and stages of the buying process.

Atmospherics

Physical factors that firms can control, such as the layout of a store, music played at stores, the lighting, temperature, and smells.

Herd behaviour

A phenomenon where consumers follow the actions of others, such as joining a line to buy something because many others are doing so.

Openness

One of the 'Big Five' personality traits describing how open a person is to new experiences.

Conscientiousness

One of the 'Big Five' personality traits describing how diligent a person is.

Extraversion

One of the 'Big Five' personality traits describing how outgoing or shy a person is.

Agreeableness

One of the 'Big Five' personality traits describing how easy a person is to get along with.

Neuroticism

One of the 'Big Five' personality traits describing how prone a person is to negative mental states.

Self-concept

How a person sees themselves, which can be positive or negative.

Ideal self

How a person would like to see themselves, such as more popular, eco-conscious, or pretty.

Chronological age

A person's actual age in years.

Cognitive age

How old a person perceives themselves to be, which is a significant predictor of consumer behaviours like dining out or shopping.

AIO statements

Questionnaires about a consumer's activities, interests, and opinions used to understand their lifestyle.

Psychographics

A field that combines the lifestyle traits of consumers and their personality styles with an analysis of their attitudes, activities, and values.

VALS

The Values, Attitudes, and Lifestyles framework, which is a system used to classify people based on psychographic and demographic information.

Motivation

The inward drive that people have to get what they need.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

The theory that people fulfill basic physiological needs (food, water, sleep) before moving to higher-level needs like safety, social, esteem, and self-actualization.

Perception

How a person interprets the world and makes sense of it in their brain via the senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste.

Selective exposure

The process of selecting specific information to see or hear, such as choosing certain television shows or magazines.

Selective attention

The process of filtering out information based on how relevant it is to the individual.

Selective retention

The phenomenon where people forget information even if it is relevant to them, often because it contradicts their beliefs.

Selective distortion

The misinterpretation of an intended message, such as believing one will look like a model after using a weight loss product.

Subliminal advertising

Exposing consumers to marketing stimuli such as photos, ads, and messages by stealthily embedding them in other media to be perceived subconsciously.

Learning

The process by which consumers change their behaviour after they gain information or experience.

Operant/Instrumental conditioning

Learning that occurs through repetitive behaviour that has positive or negative consequences, such as rewards for purchasing.

Classical conditioning

A learning process that occurs by associating a conditioned stimulus (CS) with an unconditioned stimulus (US) to get a particular response.

Attitudes

Mental positions, emotional feelings, or action tendencies people have about products, services, or ideas that are enduring and hard to change.

Culture

The shared beliefs, customs, behaviours, and attitudes that characterize a society and prescribe how one should live.

Subculture

A group of people within a culture who are different from the dominant culture but share common interests, religions, or ethnic backgrounds.

Social class

A group of people who have the same social, economic, or educational status in society, primarily determined by occupation.

Reference groups

Groups such as workgroups, family, or close friends that a consumer identifies with and may want to join.

Opinion leaders

People with expertise in certain areas whose opinions are respected and sought by consumers before making purchases.

Level of involvement

The degree to which a consumer is personally important or interested in consuming a product and how much information they need for a decision.

Routine response behaviour

Automatic purchase decisions based on limited information or past experiences, common in low-involvement buy decisions.

Impulse buying

Low-involvement purchases made with no planning or previous thought.

Extended problem solving

A process where consumers spend a lot of time comparing features, prices, and warranties for high-involvement, high-risk products.

Postpurchase dissonance

A feeling of anxiety or buyer's remorse that occurs when a consumer is unsure about a purchase or if the product fails to meet expectations.

Limited problem solving

A decision-making process where consumers have some information about a product but search for a little more before deciding.

Evaluative criteria

Certain characteristics that are important to a consumer, such as price, size, or color, used to narrow down product choices.

Choice heuristics

Rules of thumb or mental shortcuts providing a systematic way to choose among alternatives.

Planned obsolescence

A deliberate effort by companies to make their products obsolete or unusable after a period of time to improve repeat sales.