Consumer Behavior

CONSUMER BEHAVIOR 1. Consumer Orientation: A group of actions taken by a business to support its sales and service staff in considering client needs and satisfaction their major priorities. Business strategies that tend to reflect a customer orientation might include: developing a quality product appreciate by consumers; responding promptly and respectfully to consumer complaints and queries; and dealing sensitively with community issues 2. Learning: Measurable and relatively permanent change in behavior through experience, instruction, or study.

Whereas individual learning is selective, group learning is essentially political its outcomes depend largely on power playing in the group. Learning itself cannot be measured, but its results can be. In the words of Harvard Business School psychologist Chris Argyris, learning is “detection and correction of error” where an error means “any mismatch between our intentions and what actually happens. ” 3. Habit: A settled or regular tendency or practice, esp. one that is hard to give up. 4.

Motivation: Internal and external factors that stimulate desire and energy in people to be continually interested and committed to a job, role or subject, or to make an effort to attain a goal. Motivation results from the interaction of both conscious and unconscious factors such as the (1) intensity of desire or need, (2) incentive or reward value of the goal, and (3) expectations of the individual and of his or her peers. These factors are the reasons one has for behaving a certain way. An example is a student that spends extra time studying for a test because he or she wants a better grade in the class. . Personality; The combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual’s distinctive character. Qualities that make someone interesting or popular. 6. Interpersonal Influences: “communication that takes place between two persons who have an established relationship; the people are in some way ‘connected’” (thus, as interpersonal communication can occur between romantic partners, business Associates, doctors and patients, etc. , it permeates our lives. Often, you devote your interpersonal interactions to attempts at influencing the other individual in some way. 7.

Opinion Leadership: Opinion leadership is leadership by an active media user and who interprets the meaning of media messages or content for lower-end media users. Typically the opinion leader is held in high esteem by those who accept his or her opinions. 8. Cross Culture Influence: 9. Environment 10. Limited Problem Solving : a problem-solving process in which consumers are not motivated to search for information or to rigorously evaluate each alternative; instead they use simple decision rules to arrive at a purchase decision. 11. High Involvement feeling Situation High involvement means just what it says.

Your audience will get very much involved with a buying decision. Low involvement is the opposite. It’s something your audience will buy, but is a product or service they don’t really consider seriously. 13. Dissonance Reducing: Dissonance means anxiety after purchase. This happens in the case of high involvement purchases where there are few differences between brands and the consumer does not have enough information based on which to make a decision. Therefore the consumer will try to reduce his/her anxiety by disbelieving any negative information about the brand purchased. 4. Post Purchase Search: The behavior after a product purchase is called Post purchase behavior. Generally after a product purchase the buyer undergoes post purchase dissonance means the buyer regrets his /her purchase. But if the performance of the product is good the customer is satisfied Now based on the satisfaction or dissatisfaction the consumer will rebuy the product or discontinue the product. Example: – A customer buys toothpaste and doesn’t like the taste, this will cause dissonance and he will discontinue the product and use some other brand. 15.

Percieved Risk; Consumer’s level of uncertainty regarding the outcome of a purchase decision, especially in case of high priced item such as a car, or a complex item like a computer. Consumers attempt to reduce their anxiety by collecting more information and by seeking the recommendations of a peer group or an entity (person or consumer advocacy group) considered an expert on the subject matter. Manufacturers and marketers try to reduce this risk with reassuring guaranties, by obtaining the backing or recognized groups or opinion leaders, or by hiring a well-known and respected spokesperson 16.

Absolute Threshold: The absolute threshold is the minimum intensity of stimulus required to be perceived. In other words, it is the intensity amount which is needed to detect the difference between nothing and something. It is the lowest level at which an individual can experience a sensation. 17. Acculturation: Acculturation explains the process of cultural and psychological change that results following meeting between cultures. [1] The effects of acculturation can be seen at multiple levels in both interacting cultures. At the group level, acculturation often results in changes to culture, customs, and social institutions.

Noticeable group level effects of acculturation often include changes in food, clothing, and language. At the individual level, differences in the way individuals acculturate have been shown to be associated not just with changes in daily behavior, but with numerous measures of psychological and physical well-being. 18. Aggressive Personality:  aggressive behavior stems from an inability to express anger in a healthy way. A person’s feelings may be so repressed that they don’t even realize they are angry or feeling resentment. 19. Cognitive Learning:

Cognitive learning is a powerful mechanism that provides the means of knowledge, and goes well beyond simple imitation of others. Conditioning can never explain what you are learning from reading our web-site. This learning illustrates the importance of cognitive learning. Cognitive learning is defined as the acquisition of knowledge and skill by mental or cognitive processes —; the procedures we have for manipulating information ‘in our heads’. Cognitive processes include creating mental representations of physical objects and events, and other forms of information processing. | | 20.

Defensive Mechanism: People who cannot cope with frustration often mentally redefine their frustration in order to protect their self-images and self-esteem. Eg: rationalization, regression, aggression, withdrawal, projection, daydreaming etc. 21. Dogmatism: Dogmatism is a personality trait that measures the degree o rigidity an individual displays toward the unfamiliar and toward information that is contrary to their established beliefs. Consumers low in dogmatism is more likely to prefer innovative products to established ones. Consumers high in dogmatism are more accepting of authority based ads for new product. 2. Early Majority: The first sizable segment of a population to adopt an innovative technology. The early majority tends to be roughly 34% of the population, and will adopt a new product after seeing it used successfully by either “innovators” or “early adopters” that they know personally. People in this segment are less affluent and less educated than innovators and early adopters, but are willing to take a chance with a new product. 23. ID: 24. Instrumental Conditioning: Instrumental conditioning is another term for operant conditioning, a learning process first described by B.

F. Skinner. In instrumental conditioning, reinforcement or punishment are used to either increase or decrease the probability that a behavior will occur again in the future. For example, if a student is rewarded with praise every time she raises her hand in class, she becomes more likely to raise her hand again in the future. If she is also scolded when she speaks out of turn, she becomes less likely to interrupt the class. In these examples, the teacher is using reinforcement to strengthen the hand-raising behavior and punishment to weaken the talking out of turn behavior. 5. Learning Curve: Graphical representation of the common sense principle that more one does something the better one gets at it. Learning curve shows the rate of improvement in performing a task as a function of time, or the rate of change in average cost (in hours or dollars) as a function of cumulative output. Used in resource requirements planning, learning curves are also employed in setting incentive rate schemes based on the statistical findings that as the cumulative output is doubled, the average unit cost declines by a constant percentage.

For example, an 80 percent learning curve means the per unit average cumulative cost (in hours or dollars) falls to 80 percent of the previous per unit average cumulative cost as the cumulative output doubles. Learning curves are, however, not universally applicable but show most promise in situations where non-mechanized, repetitive assembly operations predominate and which largely use direct labor. Also called improvement curve, progress curve. 26. Safety Needs: With their physical needs relatively satisfied, the individual’s safety needs take precedence and dominate behavior.

In the absence of physical safety – due to war, natural disaster, violence, childhood, etc. – people may (re-)experience post-traumatic stress disorder or Trans generational trauma. In the absence of economic safety – due to economic crisis and lack of work opportunities – these safety needs manifest themselves in ways such as a preference for job security, grievance procedures for protecting the individual from unilateral authority, savings accounts, insurance policies, reasonable disability accommodations, etc. This level is more likely to be found in children because they generally have a greater need to feel safe.

Safety and Security needs include: Personal security Financial security Health and well-being Safety net against accidents/illness and their adverse impacts 27. Split Brain Theory: The Split Brain theory emphasizes that, the right and left hemispheres of brain process different kinds of information. The left is concerned with activities like reading, speaking and other verbal activities and the right takes care of other nonverbal and pictorial information. 28. Webber’s law: Weber’s Law suggests that consumers’ ability to detect changes in stimulus intensity appear to be strongly related to the intensity of that stimulus to begin with.

That is, if you hold an object weighing one pound in your hand, you are likely to notice it when that weight is doubled to two pounds. However, if you are holding twenty pounds, you are unlikely to detect the addition of one pound—a change that you easily detected when the initial weight was one pound. You may be able to eliminate one ounce from a ten ounce container, but you cannot as easily get away with reducing a three ounce container to two (instead, you must accomplish that gradually—e. g. , 3. 0  –> 2. 7 –> 2. 5 –> 2. 3 –> 2. 15 –> 2. 00). 29.

Why Are Consumers Needs And Goals Constantly Changing The needs and goals of consumers change simply because life and its demands are constantly changing. Consumers often find themselves in a new or unexpected situation, and therefore must alter their goals in order to effectively adapt. Additionally, the goods and services available to consumers are always changing, leading to new opportunities for consumers and inevitably some will pursue them. The economic environment can also change needs and goals, as the financial situation of the consumer changes. * Globalization

Globalization is one ongoing phenomenon that has lead to the goals and needs of consumers changing. With the development of the Internet, buyers and sellers gain access to a wider worldwide market. This expands the range of goods and services available to customers, and can lower the prices of goods as information to all parties improves. What’s more, as globalization causes countries to become more interlinked, trading opportunities increase along with job opportunities. Consumers may alter their career goals because of this if they see a potential job opportunity has become available in another country of the world. The nature of the human 1. The nature of the human being itself could be one element that causes the needs and goals of consumers to constantly change. The human mind is adapted to making short term survival decisions, even though most people do try to plan for the long run. People often easily change their minds; it could be said that the nature of the human is very fickle. The challenge of the seller is to provide for the consumer taking into consideration the fact that consumer opinions can quickly change.

Of course, one easy way in which retailers can exploit this is by employing persuasive salespeople, who will entice consumers into buying goods they don’t really want or need. Every individual has needs; some are innate, others are acquired. 2. Innate needs are physiological or biogenic, and include food, water, air, clothing, shelter, and sex. a) These needs (innate) are considered primary needs or motives. 3. Acquired needs are needs that we learn in response to our culture or environment and include the need for self-esteem, prestige, affection, power, and learning. ) Because acquired needs are generally psychological (i. e. , psychogenic), they are considered secondary needs or motives. c) They result from the individual’s subjective psychological state and from relationships with others. 4. Motives or needs can have a positive or negative direction. We may feel a driving force toward some object or condition or a driving force away from some object or condition. 5. Some psychologists refer to positive drives as needs, wants, or desires and to negative drives as fears or aversions. . However, although positive and negative motivational forces seem to differ dramatically in terms of physical (and sometimes emotional) activity, they are basically similar in that both serve to initiate and sustain human behavior. 7. For this reason, researchers often refer to both kinds of drives or motives as needs, wants, and desires. 8. Some theorists distinguish wants from needs by defining wants as product-specific needs. Others differentiate between desires, on the one hand, and needs and wants on the other. 9.

There is no uniformly accepted distinction among the terms needs, wants, and desires. 1. Goal selection by individuals depends on: a) Their personal experiences. b) Physical capacity. c) Prevailing cultural norms and values. d) The goal’s accessibility in the physical and social environment. 2. Like needs, goals can be positive or negative. 3. A positive goal is one toward which behavior is directed; thus it is often referred to as an approach object. 4. A negative goal is one from which behavior is directed away and is referred to as an avoidance object. 5.

Because both approach and avoidance goals are the results of motivated behavior, most researchers refer to both simply as goals. 6. Many studies applied goal selection into consumption situations. 7. One study found that approach-oriented and avoidance-oriented consumers are likely to respond differently to promotional appeals. 8. Goals are also related to negative forms of consumption behavior. 30. Classical conditioning Early classical conditioning theorists regarded both animal and humans as relatively passive entities that could be taught certain behaviours through repetition or conditioning (Schiffman et al. 008a, 187). As a process, classical conditioning occurs when a stimulus that elicits a response is paired with another stimulus that initially does not elicit any response on its own. In the course of time, the second stimulus produces an equal response because it is associated with the first stimulus (Solomon et al. 1999, 66). Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, was the first to demonstrate this phenomenon in the behaviour of dogs and proposed it as a general model on how learning occurs.

Pavlov induced classical conditioning learning by pairing a neutral stimulus (a bell) with a stimulus known to cause salivation response in dogs; he squirted meat powder into their mouths. The powder was an unconditioned stimulus (UCS) because it was naturally capable of causing the response. After many repetitions of the test, the bell became a conditioned stimulus (CS). This means that despite it did not initially cause salivation after the repetitions the dog learned to associate the bell with the meat powder. Finally the ringing sound caused the salivation.

The response of the dog over the sound, now mentally linked to the feeding time, is called conditioned response (CR) (Solomon et al. 1999, 66). According to Solomon et al. (1999, 66), the basic form of classical conditioning is primarily associated with responses controlled by the autonomic (e. g. salivation) and nervous (e. g. eye blink) systems. This means that classical conditioning focuses on visual and olfactory cues that induce, for example, hunger or sexual arousal. In general, when these certain cues are continually paired with conditioned stimuli (e. g. rand names) consumers may learn for example to feel thirsty when later exposed to a beverage brand cue. There are three basic concepts that are fundamental to classical conditioning: repetition, stimulus generalisation, and stimulus discrimination. Repetition increases the strength of association between the conditioned stimulus (CS) and unconditioned stimulus (UCS). It also decelerates the process of forgetting. However, when a product is overexposed in the market the effects of prior conditioning can start to reduce until they finally disappear. This phenomenon is called extinction or marketing wearout (Schiffman et al. 008a, 189). Stimulus generalization refers to the ability of stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus (CS) to evoke similar conditioned responses. In his research, Pavlov noticed that the dogs would, in some cases, salivate when they heard noises resembling a bell. In the same way, people react to stimuli similar to the original stimulus showing the same paired conditioned response. Stimulus discrimination 7 refers to a situation when a stimulus similar to the CS is not followed by a UCS. In this kind of situations, responses are weakened with high risk of disappearing (Solomon et al. 1999, 66).