Consumption to Satisfaction Study Guide
Consumption, Value, and Satisfaction Fundamentals
The Centrality of Consumption: Consumption is at the heart of all consumer behavior. Consumers use or experience products and receive value in return. Without consumption, there is no value.
Consumption Leading to Value: Consumption experiences possess the potential to produce both utilitarian and hedonic value.
Potential Value: Benefits that are not yet realized from a service because they have yet to be consumed.
Basic Consumption Process: Outlined in Exhibit 14.1, this represents the standard flow from need/want to consumption and finally to value.
Product Classification and Consumption: * Durable Goods: Goods that are typically expensive and usually consumed over a long period of time. * Nondurable Goods: Goods that are typically inexpensive and usually consumed quickly. * Consumption Frequency: The number of times a product or service is consumed in a given period of time. * Classification of Services: Services and experiences are usually classified as nondurable by default.
Situational Impacts and Consumer Reactions
Influence of Settings: Consumption situations and settings impact the consumer experience significantly.
Key Influential Factors: The temporal factors, antecedent conditions, and the physical environment are particularly influential on the consumption experience.
Authenticity: The degree to which an object, person, place, or experience seems real, genuine, unique, and part of history or tradition. Authenticity is often difficult to detect.
Meaning Transference: The process through which cultural meaning is transferred to a product and subsequently onto the consumer. This process begins with culture, and value is largely affected by the meaning of goods, services, and experiences.
Transformative Consumption Experience: These are instances where consumption offers extreme value so that consumers’ lives are forever changed. * Basic Needs Example: At the basic levels of the hierarchy of needs, utilitarian value through basic consumption can be transformative. Examples include the consumption of electricity and running water.
Perspectives on Value and Experience
Consumption Outcomes and Emotions: Consumers choose products, services, and experiences they believe will deliver value by addressing wants and needs. They anticipate good outcomes; otherwise, they would make different choices. Emotions influence Consumer Behavior (CB) before, during, and after consumption, affecting value both directly and indirectly.
Value in Experience vs. Value in Use: * Value in Use: Typically linked to utilitarian value where the product produces value through use as a means to an end. Example: An Oculus Quest provides access to virtual reality and augmented reality internet content. * Value in Experience: Typically linked to hedonic value where the experience itself provides rewards directly linked to the consumption of time spent interacting. Example: The virtual reality video game "Half-Life: Alyx" projects the consumer into a horror film capable of producing intense emotions.
Defining Consumer Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction
The Role of Satisfaction in Business: Many companies strive to satisfy customers. Performance is often tracked by the American Consumer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), which plots scores for major companies across industries.
Top-line Performance: A business term referring to sales growth, where sales are reported at the top of an earnings statement.
Consumer Satisfaction: A mild, positive emotion resulting from a favorable appraisal of a consumption outcome. * It is a post-consumption phenomenon because it is a reaction to an outcome. * It results from a cognitive appraisal. * As an emotion, it is relatively mild and does not create strong behavior motivations.
Consumer Dissatisfaction: A mild, negative affective reaction resulting from an unfavorable appraisal of a consumption outcome. * Consumers react differently to losses than to gains, meaning dissatisfaction explains behaviors that satisfaction cannot.
Other Post-Consumption Reactions: Emotions such as delight, disgust, surprise, exhilaration, and anger are often overlooked. An angry consumer exhibits much more noticeable and persistent behavior than one with low satisfaction.
Expectancy/Disconfirmation Theory
Theory Definition: The satisfaction formation theory that proposes consumers use expectations as a benchmark against which performance perceptions are judged.
Core Components: * Positive Disconfirmation: A perceived state wherein performance perceptions exceed expectations. * Negative Disconfirmation: A perceived state wherein performance perceptions fall short of expectations.
Defining Expectations: The pre-consumption beliefs of what will occur during an exchange and consumption of a product. Expectations have two components: (1) the probability that something will occur and (2) an evaluation of that potential occurrence.
Types of Expectations: * Predictive Expectations: What a consumer thinks will actually occur during an experience. * Normative Expectations: What a consumer thinks should happen based on past experiences. * Ideal Expectations: What a consumer really wants to happen if everything were ideal. * Equitable Expectations: What a consumer thinks ought to happen given the level of work they put into the experience.
Sources of Expectations: Word-of-mouth (WOM) communication, previous experience, explicit promises (advertisements/promotions), and personal factors.
Performance Perceptions and Judgment Bias
Performance Perceptions: These directly influence how a consumer interacts with the world. They can influence satisfaction formation independent of the disconfirmation process, especially when a consumer has no previous experience with a product.
Confirmatory Bias: The tendency for expectations to guide performance perceptions.
Self-Perception Theory: States that consumers are motivated to act in accordance with their attitudes and behaviors.
Service Quality: The overall goodness or badness of a service experience, often measured by the SERVQUAL instrument. * SERVQUAL: A questionnaire that measures service quality by capturing consumers' disconfirmation of service expectations.
Desires: The level of a particular benefit that will lead to a valued end state. Desires directly impact satisfaction beyond disconfirmation.
Equity and Attribution Theories
Equity Theory: A theory proposing that people compare their own level of inputs and outcomes to those of another party in an exchange. * Distributive Fairness: The way a consumer judges the outcomes of an exchange. * Interactional Fairness: Perception of how fairly consumers believe they were treated when dealing with service personnel to resolve issues.
Inequitable Treatment: Service providers must ensure all customers are treated fairly in public to maintain positive equity perceptions.
Inequitable Consumers: If inequity favors the consumer, they may be satisfied, but their actions might disadvantage others or be considered unethical.
Attribution Theory: Proposes that consumers look for the cause of consumption experiences when arriving at satisfaction judgments. Key elements include: * Locus: Judgments of who is responsible for an event. * Control: The extent to which an outcome was controllable or not. * Stability: The likelihood that an event will occur again in the future.
Cognitive Dissonance
Definition: An uncomfortable feeling that occurs when a consumer has lingering doubts about a decision.
Conditions for Occurrence: Dissonance is more likely when: * There are many attractive alternatives offering comparable value. * The decision is difficult to reverse. * The decision is important and involves risk. * The consumer has low self-confidence.
Relation to Satisfaction: While satisfaction is felt after consumption, dissonance may be experienced even before consumption begins due to the uncertainty of events.
Dissonance Reduction Strategies: Outlined in Exhibit 14.5, these are methods consumers use to resolve lingering doubts.
Measuring Satisfaction and Statistical Issues
Measurement Approaches: The three common approaches include direct measures, difference scores, and disconfirmation.
Scale Types: * Direct, Global Measure: Asks for an overall assessment (e.g., "How do you rate your overall satisfaction with your stove?"). * Attribute-Specific: Assesses satisfaction with specific components (e.g., "How satisfied are you with the heat of the burners?"). * Disconfirmation: Compares expectations vs. performance (e.g., "Compared to my expectations, this stove performs…").
Improving Accuracy: Satisfaction is difficult to measure accurately because marketers often measure only existing patrons, leading to results where of consumers choose "satisfied" or "completely satisfied."
Data Distribution: Satisfaction surveys often produce left-skewed data, where most responses cluster at the positive end of the scale.
Improving Statistical Properties: Utilizing a to -point scale or multiple scale items can increase variance and predictive usefulness.
Disposal of Consumption Refuse
Consumer Refuse: Any packaging no longer necessary for consumption or the actual good that no longer provides value.
E-waste: The mass of discarded electronics, including old cell phones, computers, and tablets.
Disposal Methods: Recycling, converting to another use, trading, reselling, or donating to nonprofits.
Emotional Bonds and Symbolism: Consumers often develop emotional bonds with possessions. Disposing of goods can feel like losing a part of oneself.
Packrats: Consumers with a high level of a lifestyle trait leading to a strong tendency to retain consumption-related possessions.
Value in Disposal: Selling an item is one method, acknowledging that even emotional value has a price.