Consumer Behavior Exam 1

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

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

Consumer behavior is a _____ process

Dynamic

• Sequence of acquisition, consumption, and disposition can happen over time

• Major life events have an impact on consumer behavior

Consumer behavior can involve ______

Many people

• It does not necessarily reflect the action of a single individual

• Individuals engaging in consumer behavior can take on one or more roles

Consumer behavior involves _____ decisions

Many

• Decisions are often related to personal goals, safety concerns, or a desire to reduce economic, social, or psychological risk

• Decisions can be affected by subtle cues in our environment

Ways of acquiring an offering

• Buying

• Trading

• Renting/Leasing

• Bartering

• Gifting

• Finding

• Sharing

• Stealing

Ways of disposing of an offering

• Find a new use for it

• Get rid of it temporarily

• Get rid of it permanently

Model of Consumer Behavior

• The Psychological Core

• The Process of Making Decisions

• The Consumer’s Culture

• Consumer Behavior Outcomes and Issues

The Psychological Core

• Motivation, ability, and opportunity

• Exposure, attention, perception, and comprehension

• Prior knowledge, long-term memory, and retrieval (remembering)

• Attitude formation and change

The Process of Making Decisions

• Problem recognition and information search

• Judgement and decision-making

• Post-decision processes

The Consumer’s Culture

• Social influences on consumer behavior

• Consumer diversity

• Household and social class influences

• Psychographics: values, personality, and lifestyles

Consumer Behavior Outcomes & Issues

• Innovations: adoption, resistance, and diffusion

• Symbolic consumer behavior

• Marketing, ethics, and social responsibility in a consumer society

What affects consumer behavior

• Motivation, ability, and opportunity

• Exposure, attention, perception, and comprehension

• Memory and knowledge

• Forming and changing attitudes

What is the process of making decisions

• Problem recognition and the search for information

• Making judgements and decisions

• Making postdecision evaluations

Culture

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

Reference Group

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

• Social, diversity, household, and social class influences

• Values, personality, and lifestyle

Motivation

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

• Enhances the effort that people exert to achieve a goal

• Affects how much effort is exerted to process information, make decisions, or engage in an activity

Motivated Reasoning

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

A final outcome of motivation is that it evokes a psychological state called:

Involvement

Four types of involvement

• Enduring involvement

• Situational (temporary) involvement

• Cognitive involvement

• Affective involvement

Enduring involvement

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

Situational involvement

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

Cognitive involvement

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 decision

Response involvement

Interest in certain decisions and behaviors

What determines motivation

• Personal relevance

• Self concept

• Values

• Needs

• Goals

Personal relevance

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

Self-concept

• Our mental view of who we are

• Consistency determines motivation

Values

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

Needs

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

Goals

Outcomes that we would like to achieve

How can needs be categorized

• Functional

• Symbolic

• Hedonic

Functional need

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

Symbolic need

Need that relates to the meaning of our consumption behaviors to ourselves and others

• 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

Hedonic need

Need that relates to sensory pleasure

Needs:

• can be internally or externally activated

• satisfaction is dynamic

• exist in a hierarchy

• can conflict

Approach-avoidance conflict

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

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

Promotion-focused goals

Consumers are motivated to act in ways to achieve positive outcomes

Prevention-focused goals

Consumers are motivated to act in ways that avoid negative outcomes

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

What determines motivation

• Self-control

• Ego depletion

Self-control

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

• self-control conflicts arise when we face decisions about actions related to goals that are in conflict

Ego depletion

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

• challenges deplete a consumer’s mental energy, which in turn reduces decision quality

Perceived risk

The extent to which the consumer anticipates negative consequences of an action to emerge and positive consequences to not emerge

• ex: buying, using, or disposing of an offering

Six types of risk

• Performance risk

• Financial risk

• Physical/safety risk

• Social risk

• Psychological risk

• Time risk

Final factor affecting motivation

The extent to which new information is consistent with previously acquired knowledge or attitudes

Ability

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

• Financial resources

• Cognitive resources

• Emotional resources

• Physical resources

• Social and cultural resources

Exposure

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

Marketing stimuli

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

Factors that can influence the likelihood that consumers will be exposed to the marketer’s brand

• Position of an ad within a medium

• Product placement

• Product distribution and shelf placement

Selective exposure

• Skipping

• Zipping

• Zapping

• Cord-cutting

• Opting out

• Blocking

Skipping

Avoiding exposure by leaving the room during commercials

Zipping

Fast-forwarding through or skipping commercials and ads

Zapping

Avoiding ads by switching to other channels during commercials

Cord-cutting

Dropping cable or satellite subscriptions in favor of streaming services

Opting out

Choosing not to have cookies placed on computers or phones

Blocking

Using ad blockers on computers or phones

Attention

The amount of mental activity a consumer devotes to a stimulus

Four characteristics of attention

• Attention is limited

• Attention is selective

• Attention can be divided

• Attention is subject to habituation

Habituation

Consumers can become so familiar with marketing stimuli that they no longer pay attention to them

Marketers can attract consumers’ attention by making the stimulus:

• Personally relevant

• Pleasant

• Surprising

• Easy to process

Prominence

The intensity of stimuli that causes them to stand out relative to the environment

Concreteness

The extent to which a stimulus is capable of being imagined

Perception

The process of taking in (encoding) a stimulus using vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch

Sensory memory

Input from one or more of the five senses stored temporarily in memory

Echoic memory

Sensory memory of things we hear

Iconic memory

Sensory memory of things we see

Olfactory memory

Sensory memory of things we smell

Perceiving through vision

• Size and shape

• Lettering

• Pictorials

• Color

• Appearance

Perceiving through hearing

• Auditory stimuli depends on its intensity

• Sonic identity; using specific music or sounds to identify a brand

• Low-pitch = more risk-averse

Perceiving through smell

• Smells can entice consumers to try or buy a food product

• A pleasant-smelling environment can encourage consumers to pay attention to stimuli that they encounter and linger longer

Perceiving through touch

• Consumers prefer goods they can touch in stores

• The temperature or weight of a product can be a factor

Sensory marketing

The process of systematically managing consumers’ perception and experiences of marketing stimuli

Absolute threshold

The minimal level of stimulus intensity needed to detect a stimulus

Differential threshold/just noticeable difference (jnd)

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

Comprehension

The process of extracting higher-order meaning from what we have perceived in the context of what we already know

Source identification

The process of determining what the perceived stimulus actually is; what category it belongs to

Objective comprehension

The extent to which consumers accurately understand the message a sender intended to communicate

Subjective comprehension

What the consumer understands from the message, regardless of whether the understanding is accurate

Working memory

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

Prior knowledge

The information that we have learned in the past and stored in memory

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

Three dimensions that associate with schemas

• Favorability

• Uniqueness

• Salience

Brand image

Specific type of schema that captures what a brand stands for and how favorably it is viewed

Brand personality

The set of associations included in a schema that reflect a brand’s personification

Script

A special type of schema that represents knowledge of the sequence of actions involved in performing an activity; describes how to do someting

Why are schemas helpful for customers

• Helps customers understand what a new offering is, what it can do fir them, and how it differs from competing offerings

• Helps customers understand the types of products offered

Brand extension

Using the brand name of a product with a well-developed image on a product in a different category

• ex: Coca Cola → Cherry Coke → Coke Zero

Taxonomic categories

How consumers classify a group of objects in memory based on their similarity to one another

Prototype

The best example of a cognitive category

Prototypicality

The extent to which an object is representative of its category

Goal-derived category

Things viewed as belonging in the same category because they serve the same goals