Chapter 5

Consumer Markets & Consumer Buyer Behavior

Concept of Consumer Buyer Behavior

What is Consumer Market???

Model of

ENVIRONMENT

Consumer behavior BUYER’S BLACK BOX

BUYER RESPONSES

The model addresses the question of how consumers respond to various marketing efforts.

Model of Consumer behavior

Components of Consumer behavior Model:

1-Environmental Incentives:

The inputs to the consumption process include marketing incentives (Four Ps) as well as forces in the buyer’s environment: economic, technological, political, and cultural.

2-Consumer Black Box The marketer wants to understand how the incentives from the environment are changed into responses inside the consumer’s black box, which has two parts: --buyer characteristics influence how the buyer perceives and reacts to the incentives --the decision process itself affects the buyer’s behavior

3-Consumer Responses

Consumer responses include purchasing and loyalty to the brand or outlet.

What Are The Factors That Influence Consumer Behavior???

Influences on Consumer Behavior

CULTURAL

SOCIAL

PERSONAL

PSYCH.

BUYER

There are a range of variables that influence consumer behavior. It is useful to consider the scope of each influence with emphasis first on the broadest influences and then narrowing to the individual level.

Influences on Consumer Behavior

1- Cultural Influences: Three types of

cultural influence will be discussed:

Culture Subculture Social Class

A- Culture: What is Culture? A set of basic values, perceptions, wants, and behavior that learned from family and other important institutions. Culture is the broadest influence on consumers. We are rarely aware of its influence until we travel to a foreign culture.

B- Subculture: Subcultures are groups of people within a culture that share value systems based on common life experiences. Includes groups such as African Americans, Hispanics ‫الالتينيين‬, etc.

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C- Social Class: A group of people with shared value systems, interests, behaviors, and buying patterns based on an index of occupation/income/education.

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2- Social Influences

A- Groups and

Social Networks B- Family C- Roles

A- Groups

Types of Groups: There are a variety of groups that may influence a consumer’s buying behavior.

 Membership  Aspirational  Reference

Membership Groups

Groups of which a consumer is officially a member.

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Aspiration Groups

Groups to which a consumer is not a member, but aspires to join. Q: Which groups you would like to join in the future and how this aspiration may affect your buying?

Reference Groups

Groups that we refer to in making a purchase. They also serve as a comparison point. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

So….. Opinion leaders are people within a reference group who exert social influence ‫ يمارس تأتيرا اجتماعيا‬on others. In looking at groups, the focus is on how many people influence the individual. Here the opinion leader is an individual who may influence many other people. Q: Would the students consider themselves opinion leaders when they want to purchase?

Social Networks

• Opinion

leadership is sometimes referred to as word-of-mouth.

• With

social networking sites such as Facebook and Youtube, virtual opinion leadership is extremely common.

B- Family:

The family is the key reference group for most people.

Q: what brands do you purchase because it is what your parents used? Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

c- Social Roles:

Groups, family, and organizations help define roles and social status. Roles involve the expectations on us based on our position in a given situation.

3- Personal Influences Personal influences includes demographic variables such as: A. Age B. Income, C. Lifestyle, and D. Self-image or personality.

a- Age/Lifecycle A consumer’s age will have strong influence on their preferences and style of consuming. Lifecycle refers to groups such as singles, young marrieds, single parents, etc.

b- Income/ Occupation

Income and Occupation affect products desired and purchased.

c- Lifestyle/AIOs Lifestyle is a person’s pattern of living as expressed in his or her AIO dimensions. AIO stands for activities (work, hobbies, shopping, sports, social events), interests (food, fashion, family, recreation), and opinions (about themselves, social issues, business, products Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

d- Personality & Self-Concept

Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

Many marketers use a concept related to personality—a person’s self-concept (also

called self-image). The basic self-concept is that people’s possessions contribute to and reflect their identities or sense of self; that is, “we are what we buy.”

4- Psychological Influences: Four major psychological factors: A person’s buying choices are further influenced by four major psychological factors:

 a- Motivation  b- Perception  c- Learning  d- Beliefs and attitudes.

a- Motivation: Motive (drive): A need that is sufficiently pressing to direct the person to seek satisfaction of the need.

Motives Maslow

b- Perception The process by which people select, organize, and interpret information to form a meaningful picture of the world. •select

Perception

•organize •interpret

S E L E C T I V E Perception

ATTENTION

DISTORTION ‫تحريف‬

RETENTION

Perception is based on three perceptual processes 1. Selective attention: tendency for people to screen out most of the information to which they are exposed.

2. Selective distortion: tendency of people to interpret information in a way that will support what they already believe. 3. Selective retention: information that supports attitudes and beliefs.

retaining existing

C: Learning What is Learning? Learning describes changes in an individual’s behavior arising from experience.

D- Beliefs and Attitudes

• A belief is a descriptive thought that a person has about something based on knowledge, opinion, faith.

• Attitude is a person’s relatively consistent evaluations, feelings, and tendencies toward an object or idea. Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice Hall

Purchase decisions vary in terms of consumer effort and amount of deliberation )‫ (تداول‬. High involvement purchases lead to more active, careful decision making. The involvement or interest is based on perceived risks in the purchase.

A baby seat purchase is likely to be high in safety risks and a wedding dress has high levels of social risk. Both of these risks generate high involvement and more careful buying.

High Involvement

Low Involvement

Most purchases are not highly involving. For example, grocery items are bought as quickly and efficiently as possible because prices and risks are low.

Types of Buying Decision Behavior Involvement High Low High brand differences

Low brand differences

COMPLEX

DISSONANCE REDUCING

VARIETY SEEKING

HABITUAL

1- Complex buying behavior Consumers undertake complex buying behavior when they are highly involved in a purchase and perceive significant differences among brands. This is typical for expensive or selfexpressive goods.

2- Dissonance-reducing buying behavior (Dissonance-reducing) buying behavior occurs when consumers are highly involved but see little difference among brands. Dissonance refers to postpurchase regret.

3- Habitual buying behavior Habitual buying behavior occurs under low involvement with few significant brand difference. Consumers buy out of habit without much effort.

4Variety-seeking behavior

buying

Variety-seeking buying behavior occurs in situations characterized by low consumer involvement but significant perceived brand differences. In such cases, consumers often do a lot of brand switching.

The buying decision process The buying decision process consists of five stages:

The buying decision process 1- Need Recognition 2- Search 3- Evaluation/Choice

4- Purchase 5- Postpurchase Behavior

1- Need Recognition

The first stage of the process is the recognition of a new purchase need. Typically, this need results from a perceived difference between a consumer’s current state and the desired state.

2- Search

The stage of the buyer decision process in which the consumer is aroused to search for more information; the consumer may simply have heightened attention or may go into an active information search.

If the consumer does not have adequate information to make a purchase, search will occur. The amount of search is commensurate ‫ يتناسب مع‬with the level of involvement in the purchase.

Information search related to the need. For example, once you’ve decided you need a new car, at the least, you will probably pay more attention to car ads, cars owned by friends, and car conversations. Or you may actively search the Web, talk with friends, and gather information in other ways.

Consumers may acquire information from a variety of sources, as the following figure:

Information sources

PERSONAL SOURCES

COMMERCIAL SOURCES

PUBLIC SOURCES

EXPERIENTIAL SOURCES

A: Personal sources

Consumers can obtain information from any of several sources. These include personal sources (family, friends, neighbors, acquaintances).

B- Commercial sources commercial sources, such as:  advertising,  salespeople,  dealer Web sites,  packaging,  displays).

C- Public sources Public sources, such as:

 mass media  Consumer  rating organizations,  Internet searches.

D- Experiential search Experiential sources , such as:  handling,  examining,  using the product

Important Note The relative influence of the information sources varies with the product and the buyer.

3- Evaluation/Choice

The stage of the buyer decision process in which the consumer uses information to evaluate alternative brands in the choice set.

Here, the consumer makes a choice using the information acquired previously. The time and effort made here is a function of involvement level.

Some websites such as BestBuy, Pricegrabber, and Consumer Reports provide ready-made criteria for consumers to use in making a choice.

4- Purchase The buyer’s decision about which brand to purchase. Generally, the consumer will purchase the most preferred brand. However situational factors may come into play. Time pressures, shopping companions, out of stock conditions, or store layout may come between a purchase intention and the final outcome.

5- Post-purchase The stage of the buyer decision process in which consumers take further action after purchase based on their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with a purchase.

The purchase process does not end with the transaction. There are critical issues following purchase—especially satisfaction.

Consumers compare product performance against their expectations. If expectations are met or exceeded, the buyer feels satisfied. There can be many dimensions of expectations for complex products such as automobiles.

Cognitive dissonance ‫التنافر اإلدراكي بعد الشراء‬

Buyer discomfort ‫انزعاج المشتري‬ caused by postpurchase conflict.

Awareness Interest

New Product Buying

Evaluation

Trial

Adoption

Adoption

What is Adoption process: The mental process through which an individual passes from first hearing about an innovation to final adoption.

- Adoption is the mental process through

-

which a consumer passes from first learning about an innovation to final adoption. Adoption is the decision by an individual to become a regular user of the product. Consumers vary in the speed of adopting a new product. The innovators and early adopters are first, followed by the early and late majority, and finally, the laggards.

What are the Stages in the Adoption Process:

Consumers go through five stages in the process of adopting a new product:

1. Awareness: The consumer becomes aware of

the new product but lacks information about it. 2. Interest: The consumer seeks information about the new product. 3. Evaluation: The consumer considers whether trying the new product makes sense. 4. Trial: The consumer tries the new product on a small scale to improve his or her estimate of its value. 5. Adoption: The consumer decides to make full and regular use of the new product.

Individual Differences in Innovativeness

- People

differ greatly in their readiness to try new products. In each product area, there are “consumption pioneers” and early adopters. Other individuals adopt new products much later. People can be classified into the adopter categories shown in Figure 5.7.

Adopter Categorization on the Basis of Relative Time of Adoption of Innovations

The five adopter groups have differing values: 1. Innovators are venturesome—they try new ideas at some risk. 2. Early adopters are guided by respect—they are opinion leaders in their communities and adopt new ideas early but carefully.

3. The early majority is deliberate— although they rarely are leaders, they adopt new ideas before the average person. 4. The late majority is skeptical—they adopt an innovation only after a majority of people have tried it. 5. Laggards are tradition bound—they are suspicious of changes and adopt the innovation only when it has become something of a tradition itself.

This adopter classification suggests that an innovating firm should research the characteristics of innovators and early adopters in their product categories and direct marketing efforts toward them.

What are the five characteristics which are especially important in influencing an innovation’s rate of adoption???

(How to make innovation of products successful???)

The five characteristics which are especially important in influencing an innovation’s rate of adoption:

1-Relative Advantage

2-Compatibility

3-Complexity

4-Divisibility

5-Communicability

Five characteristics are important in influencing an innovation’s rate of adoption:

1. Relative advantage: the degree to which the innovation is superior to existing products

2. Compatibility: the degree to which the innovation fits the values experiences of potential consumers

and

3. Complexity: the degree to which the innovation is difficult to understand or use

4. Divisibility: the degree to which the innovation may be tried on a limited basis

5. Communicability: Observability of the innovation.