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Chapter 8 Outline

 
Consumer Buying Behavior
Buying behavior is the decision process and acts of people involved in buying and using products.

Consumer buying behavior refers to the buying behavior of ultimate consumers.

  1. Level of Involvement and Consumer Problem-Solving Processes
    2.
    1. Level of involvement is an individual’s intensity of interest in a product and the importance he or she places on a product.
      1. Levels of involvement are classified as low, high, enduring, and situational.
      2. A consumer’s level of involvement is a major determinant of the type of problem-solving process employed.
    2. Routinized response behavior is the type of consumer problem-solving process that requires very little search-and-decision effort; it is used for products that are low priced and bought frequently.
    3. Limited problem solving is a type of consumer problem-solving process that buyers use when they purchase products occasionally or need information about unfamiliar brands in a familiar product category; it requires a moderate amount of time for information gathering and deliberation.
    4. Extended problem solving is the consumer problem-solving process employed when unfamiliar, expensive, or infrequently bought products (such as homes, automobiles, and furniture) are purchased; buyers use many criteria to evaluate brands and spend more time searching for information and deciding on the purchase.
    5. Impulse buying, in contrast, is an unplanned buying behavior involving a powerful urge to buy something immediately.
  2. Consumer buying decision process
    3.
    1. The consumer buying decision process is a five-stage purchase decision process that includes problem recognition, information search, evaluation of alternative, purchase, and postpurchase evaluation.
      1. The actual act of purchase is only one stage in the process and is a later stage.
      2. Not all decision processes, once initiated, lead to an ultimate purchase; the individual may terminate the process at any stage.
      3. Not all consumer buying decisions include all five stages.
    2. Problem Recognition
      3.
      1. This stage occurs when a buyer becomes aware of a difference between a desired state and an actual condition.
      2. The individual may be unaware of the problem or need.
      3. Marketers may use sales personnel, advertising, and packaging to trigger recognition of needs or problems.
      4. Recognition speed can be slow or fast.
    3. Information Search
      4.
      1. This stage begins after the consumer becomes aware of the problem or need.
      2. The search for information about products will help resolve the problem or satisfy the need.
      3. There are two aspects to an information search: internal search and external search.
        1. In the internal search, buyers first search their memories for information about products that might solve the problem.
        2. In the external search, buyers seek information from outside sources.
          1. An external search occurs if buyers cannot retrieve enough information from their memories for a decision.
          2. Buyers seek information from friends, relatives, or public sources such as government reports or publications.
      4. Wearout results when consumers begin to pay less attention to repetitious commercials, for example, that supply external information.
    4. Evaluation of Alternatives
      5.
      1. When successful, an information search yields a consideration (evoked) set of products or a group of brands that the buyer views as possible alternatives.
        1. In this stage, the consumer establishes a set of evaluative criteria against which to compare the characteristics of the products in the evoked set.
        2. The consumer rates and eventually ranks the brands in the consideration set by using the criteria and their relative importance.
      2. Marketers can influence consumers’ evaluation by framing the alternatives–that is, by the manner in which they describe the alternatives and attributes.
    5. Purchase
      6.
      1. The consumer selects the product or brand to be purchased.
      2. Product availability, seller choice, and terms of sale may influence the final product selection.
      3. The actual purchase is made unless the process has been terminated earlier.
    6. Postpurchase Evaluation
      1. The buyer begins to evaluate the product after purchase, based on many of the criteria used in the evaluation of alternatives stage.
      2. Cognitive dissonance is a buyer’s doubts shortly after a purchase about whether it was the right decision.
  3. SITUATIONAL influences on the buying decision process
    4.
    1. Situational influences are factors resulting from circumstances, time, and location that affect the consumer buying decision process.
      1. Can influence a consumer’s actions in any stage of the buying process
      2. Can shorten, lengthen, or terminate the buying process
    2. Situational factors can be divided into five categories: physical surroundings, social surroundings, time perspective, purchase reason, and the buyer’s momentary mood and condition.
      1. These include store atmosphere, product scarcity, weather, and momentary moods.
      2. Marketers go to considerable trouble and expense to create physical settings conducive to purchasing decisions.
  4. Psychological influences on the buying decision process
    5.  Psychological influences are those that operate in part to determine people’s general behavior, thus influencing their behavior as consumers.
    1. Perception

      2. Perception is the process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting information inputs to produce meaning.
      1. An individual selects some pieces of information and ignores others.
        1. Information inputs are the sensations received through the sense organs.
        2. Selective exposure is the process of selecting some inputs to be exposed to our awareness while ignoring others.
          1. An input is more likely to reach a person’s awareness if it relates to an anticipated event.
          2. A person is likely to let an input reach consciousness if the information helps satisfy current needs.
        3. The selective nature of perception also results in selective distortion and selective retention.
          1. Selective distortion is an individual’s changing or twisting of received information when it is inconsistent with personal feelings or beliefs.
          2. Selective retention is remembering information inputs that support personal feelings and beliefs and forget-ting inputs that do not.
      2. The second step in the perceptual process is perceptual organization–to organize the information that does reach awareness, integrating the new information with what is already known.
      3. Third, an individual’s interpretation of information inputs, necessary to reduce mental confusion, is the assignment of meaning to what has been organized; interpretation is usually based on what is expected or familiar.
      4. Marketers try to influence consumers’ perceptions but some-times fail.
        1. A consumer’s perceptual process may operate such that a seller’s information never reaches the consumer’s awareness.
        2. A buyer may receive a seller’s information and perceive it differently from the way the marketer intended.
        3. When buyers perceive information inputs that are inconsistent with prior beliefs, they are likely to forget the information quickly.
    2. Motives
      3.
      A motive is an internal energizing force that directs a person’s behavior toward satisfying needs or achieving goals.
      1. A buyer’s actions at any time are affected not by just one motive but by a set of motives, some stronger than others.
      2. Motives affect the direction and intensity of behavior.
        1. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs are the five levels of needs humans try to satisfy, from most to least important.
        2. Once needs at one level are met, humans try to fulfill needs at the next level.
        3. The levels of needs are: physiological needs, safety needs, social needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization needs.
      3. Patronage motives are motives that influence where a person purchases products on a regular basis.
    3. Learning

      4. Learning refers to changes in an individual’s thought processes and behavior that are caused by information and experience.
      1. The learning process is strongly influenced by the consequences of an individual’s behavior; behaviors with satisfying results tend to be repeated.
      2. Inexperienced buyers use different types of information than experienced shoppers familiar with the product and purchase situation.
      3. Consumers learn about products directly by experiencing them or indirectly through information from salespersons, friends, relatives, and advertisements.
    4. Attitudes

      5. An attitude is an individual’s enduring evaluation, feelings, and behavioral tendencies toward an object or idea.
      1. Attitudes are learned through experience and interaction with other people.
      2. Attitudes remain generally stable, but they can be changed.
      3. An attitude consists of three major components: cognitive, affective, and behavioral.
      4. Consumers’ attitudes toward a firm and its products strongly influence the success or failure of the organization’s marketing strategy.
      5. Marketers use several approaches to measure consumer attitudes toward dimensions such as prices, package designs, brand names, advertisements, salespeople, repair services, store locations, features of existing or proposed products, and social responsibility activities.
        1. Direct questioning of consumers
        2. Projective techniques
        3. Attitude scales are means of measuring consumers’ attitudes by gauging the intensity of individuals’ reactions to adjectives, phrases, or sentences about an object.
      6. Changing people’s negative attitudes is a long, expensive, and difficult task and may require extensive promotional efforts.
    5. Personality and Self-Concept
      6.
      1. Personality is a set of internal traits and distinct behavioral tendencies that result in consistent patterns of behavior.
          2. >
        1. The uniqueness of one’s personality arises from hereditary background and personal experiences.
        2. When advertisements focus on certain types of personalities, the advertiser uses personality characteristics that are valued positively.
      1. Self-concept is a perception or view of oneself.
        1. Buyers purchase products that reflect and enhance their self-concept.
        2. A person’s self-concept may influence whether he or she buys a product in a specific product category and may have an impact on brand selection.
    6. Lifestyles

      7. Lifestyle is an individual’s pattern of living expressed through activities, interests, and opinions.
      1. Patterns include the way people spend time, extent of interaction with others, and general outlook on life and living.
      2. People partially determine their lifestyle, but lifestyles are influenced by other factors.
      3. Lifestyles influence product needs.
  5. Social Influences on the buying decision process

    6. Social influences are the forces that other people exert on buying behavior.
    1. Roles
      2.
      1. A role is a set of actions and activities that an individual in a particular position is supposed to perform, based on the expectations of the individual and surrounding persons.
      2. Each individual has many roles.
    2. Family Influences
      3.
      1. An individual’s roles, particularly family roles, to some extent influence that person’s behavior as a buyer.
      2. Consumer socialization is the process through which a person acquires the knowledge and skills to function as a consumer.
    3. Reference Groups and Opinion Leaders
      4.
      1. A reference group is a group–large or small–that positively or negatively affects a person’s values, attitudes, or behaviors.
      2. Families, friends, church groups, and professional groups are examples of reference groups.
      3. There are three major types of reference groups: membership, aspirational, and disassociative.
      4. A reference group is an individual’s point of comparison and a source of information.
      5. How much a reference group influences a purchasing decision depends on the individual’s susceptibility to reference-group influence and strength of involvement with the group.
      6. Reference-group influence may affect the product decision, the brand decision, or both.
      7. A marketer sometimes uses reference-group influence in advertisements to promote the message that people in a specific group buy the product and are highly satisfied with it.
      8. In most reference groups, one or more members stand out as opinion leaders; an opinion leader is a reference group member who provides information about a specific sphere that interests reference-group participants.
    4. Social Classes

      5. A social class is an open group of individuals with similar social rank.
      1. The criteria used to group people into classes vary from one society to another.
      2. In our society we group according to many factors, including occupation, education, income, wealth, race, ethnic group, and possessions; analyses of social class in the United States divide people into three to seven categories.
      3. To some degree, individuals within social classes develop common patterns of behavior.
      4. Because social class influences so many aspects of a person’s life, it also affects
        1. Buying decisions
        2. Spending, saving, and credit practices
        3. Type, quality, and quantity of products
        4. Shopping patterns and stores patronized
    5. Culture and Subcultures
      6.
      1. Culture is the accumulation of values, knowledge, beliefs, customs, objects, and concepts that a society uses to cope with its environments; culture includes
        1. Tangible items such as food, clothing, furniture, buildings, and tools
        2. Intangible concepts such as education, welfare, and laws
        3. The values and a broad range of behaviors accepted by a specific society
      2. The concepts, values, and behavior that make up a culture are learned and passed from one generation to the next.
      3. Because cultural influences affect the ways people buy and use products, culture affects the development, promotion, distribution, and pricing of products.
      4. International marketers must take into account tremendous global cultural differences.
        1. People in other regions of the world have different attitudes, values, and needs.
        2. International marketers must adapt to different methods of doing business and must develop different types of marketing mixes.
      5. Subcultures are groups of individuals whose values and behavior patterns are similar and differ from those of the surrounding culture.
        1. Subcultural boundaries are usually based on geographic designations and demographic factors.
        2. Marketers recognize that the growth in the number of U.S. subcultures has resulted in considerable variation in consumer buying behavior.
          1. African-American Subculture
            1. Largest racial or ethnic subculture
            2. Shop more often, use less coupons, prefer ads specifically targeting African-Americans
            3. Research shows a positive response to ads that reflect heritage
          2. Hispanic Subculture
            1. Purchasing power will almost double in less than four years
            2. Strong family values, need for respect affects buying trends
            3. Concern for product quality and strong brand loyalty
          3. Asian-American Subculture
            1. Fastest growing, most affluent, and perhaps most diverse American subculture
            2. Individual language, religion, and value system of each group influences purchasing decisions
            3. Some cross-culture traits include an emphasis on hard work, strong family ties, and high value placed on education
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