CONSUMER MARKETS AND CONSUMER BUYING

BEHAVIOUR

Basic Beliefs (Premises) about Consumer Behaviour

i. Consumer behavior is purposeful and goal oriented

ii. The consumer has free choices
iii. Consumer behavior is a process
iv. Consumer behavior can be influenced
v. There is a need for consumer education

A Model of Consumer Behaviour

Marketing Other Stimuli Buyer’s black box Buyer’s responses

Product Economic Buyer Buyer
Product choice

Price Political Charact- Descion

Brand choice

Place Cultural eristic process

Dealer choice

Promotion Technology
Purchase timing

Purchase amount

The company that really understands how consumers will respond to different product features,
prices and advertising appeals has a great advantage over the competitors

The marketing stimuli consist of the 4P’s and other stimuli include major forces and events in the
buyers’ environments such as economic, technology, political and cultural.

All these stimuli enter the buyers’ “black box” where they are turned into dealer choices,
purchase timing and purchase amount.

Marketers must understand how the stimuli are changed into responses inside the consumers’
black box

The black box has two parts; a buyer’ characteristics and buyers decision process. Buyer
characteristics influence how one perceives and reacts to stimuli. Buyer decision process in itself
effects outcomes.

Personal Characteristics affecting Consumer Behavior

Consumer purchases are strongly influenced by cultural, social, personal and psychological
characteristics.Factors Influencing Behaviour
 Cultural Social Personal Psychological

-Age and life cycle -Motivation

stage
-Perception
-Occupation
-Reference groups -Learning
-Economic
- Culture -Family circumstances -Beliefs and
attitudes
-Sub-culture -Roles and status -Life style BUYER

-Social class -Personality and

self concept

1. Cultural

They exert the greatest and is the most basic determinant of a person want and behaviors’ it
comprises the basic value, perception and behaviors that a person learns continuously culture is
dynamo marketers try continue identify cultural shifts in order to devise new product and service
that may find a receptive market.

Sub culture

Each culture has based or common experience and may include nationality, religion race,
geographic region. Although consumers in different contact may have something in common,
their value, attitude and often vary

2. Social factors

Can strongly affect consumer responses and may include consumer gaps, family, social role and
status.

Groups

i. membership groups

Those to which the person belongs that have a direct influence they include primary group such
as family, friends, and neighbor and co-workers. There is regular but informal communication.

ii. Secondary groups

Are less influential

iii. reference group

Have a direct [face to face] influence

How

i. They expose the person to new behaviors and lifestyle

ii. Influence a person attitude and self consent
iii. Create pressure to conform that may affect a person brand and vendor choices.

Iv. Aspiration group

A group to which a person wishes to belong

Opinion leader

Are people within a ref. group who base of special skills, knowledge, personality or other
characteristics exert influence on others

Family

Family members have a strong influence to buyers behaviors marketers are interested in the roles
and influence of the husband, wife and children on the purchase of different goods and services.

Role and status

Role - Consist of activities that a person is expected to perform according to persons around him
or her. Each role carries a status reflecting a general esteem given to it by society

3. Personal factors

This may include; age and life cycle stage, occupation, economic situation, lifestyle personality
and self concept.

i. Age and life cycle stage

The types of goods and services people buy change during their lives. As people older and
mature the product they desire change. The makeup of the family also affects purchasing
behaviors e.g family with young children dines out at fast food restaurant.

ii. Occupation
A person occupation affect the goods and services boat marketers try and identify occupational
group that have above average interest in their product .

iii. Economic situation

This greatly affects product choice and decision to purchase a particular product. Consumers cut
back on restaurant meal, entertainment and vacation during recession. Period of economic
prosperity create opportunity. Marketers need to watch trend in personal income. Saving and
interest rate if economic indicators point to a recession they can redesign, reposition and re-price
their products

iv. Lifestyles

A person’s pattern of living as expressed in his or her activities interested and opinion it portrays
the whole person interacting with his or her environment. It can help the marketers
understanding changing consumer values and how they affect buying behavior

NOTE: lifestyle classification is by no means universal.

Personality and self concept

Personality - Refers to distinguishing psychological characteristic that disclose persons relatively

individualized consistent and enduring responses to the environment, is useful in analyzing
consumer behaviors for some product or brand choice

Self Concept/[self image] - complex mental picture people have of themselves. Behavior tend to
be consistence with that self-image

4. Psychological factors
i. Motivation - a need become a motive its aroused creating tension

Motive [drive] refer to a need that sufficient pressing to direct a person to seek satisfaction

ii. Perception - Is the process by which a person selects, organizes and interpret
information to create a meaningful picture of the word

Perception courses

People can emerge with different perception or the same object base of 3 factors

i. selective attention
ii. selective distortion
iii. selective retention
I. Selective attention
Marketers have to work to attract consumers notice. People are more likely to notice
stimuli that relate to a current need. People are more likely to notice stimuli that they
 anticipate. People are more likely to notice stimuli whose deviations are large in relation
to the normal role of stimuli.
II. Selective Distortion

The tendency to twist information into personal and interpretive information in a way that will fit
our perceptions

III. Selective Retention

People forget much that they learn but will tend to retain information that supports their attitude
and beliefs. Marketers use repetition in sending messages to their target market

Learning

Describes changes in a person’s behavior arising from experience. Learning occurs through the
interplay of drives, stimuli, cues, responses and reinforcements

Beliefs and Attitudes

A belief is a descriptive thought that a person holds about something. Beliefs reinforce products
and brand images, people act on beliefs.

Attitudes – is a person’s enduring favorable or unfavorable cognitive evaluation, emotional

feelings and action tendencies and action tendencies towards some object or idea. Attitudes put
people into a frame of mind, liking or disliking themes and moving towards or away from them

THE BUYER DECISION PROCESS

Attitude of others

Evaluation of alternatives Purchase intentions Purchase decisions

Unexpected
situational factors

Model of Buyer Decision Process

Need recognition Information search Evaluation of alternatives Purchase decisions Post purcha
behaviour
NOTE: The buying process starts long before and continues after the actual process. In routine
purchases, consumers skip or reverse some of the stages in the buyer decision process. This is
referred to as an automatic response loop.

1) Need Recognition

The buying process begins when the buyer recognizes the need. It can be triggered by internal
stimuli, eg, an individual is motivated towards objects that can he/she knows will satisfy it. Also
can be triggered by external stimuli eg, an individual passes a restaurant and the aroma of freshly
baked bread stimulates hunger.

Marketers must determine the factors and situations that trigger consumer problem recognition

2) Information Search

Aroused consumers may or may not search for more information. How much searching
searching the consumer does will depend on the strength of the drive, the amount of individual
information, value placed on additional information and the satisfaction one gets from the
information.

Sources of Information to a Consumer

i. Personal information

May include friends, neighbors, acquaintances

ii. Commercial Sources

Adverts, sales people, dealers, displays, packaging etc

iii. Public Places

Restaurant reviews, editorials from the travel sections, consumer rating information

With hospitality and travel products, personal and public sources of information are more
important than adverts, and the company should therefore develop a strong word of mouth
sources

Advantages of word of Mouth Sources

 Are more convincing

 The costs are low
Marketers should carefully identify consumer sources of information and the importance of each
source

3) Evaluation of Alternatives

There is no single and simple evaluation process used by all consumers in all buying situations

Consumer Evaluation Process

i. Assume that each consumer sees a product as a bundle of product attributes

ii. The consumer attaches different degrees of importance to each attribute
iii. The consumer is likely to develop a set of beliefs where each brand stands on each
attribute
iv. The consumer is assumed to have a utility function for each attribute
v. The consumer arrives at attitudes towards the different brands through some evaluation
procedure
4) Purchase Decision

The consumer ranks brands in the choice made and forms purchase intentions. Generally the
consumer will buy the most preferred brand.

5) Post-purchase

Following a purchase the consumer will be satisfied or dissatisfied and be involved in post
purchase of significance to the marketer. If the product perceived performance matches the
consumers’ expectations the consumer is satisfied. If it falls short, the consumer will experience
dissatisfaction. Consumers base expectations on past experiences and on messages they receive
from sellers, friends and other information sources.

Almost all major purchases results in cognitive dissonance – the discomfort caused by post
purchase conflict.

Possible Actions Taken By Dissatisfied Customers

i. Return the product

ii. Complain to the company
iii. Ask for refund or exchange
iv. Initiate a law suit
v. Stop purchasing the product
vi. Complain to an organization or group that can help solve
vii. Discourage purchase by friends and family
 Unique Aspects of Travel and Hospitality Consumers

i. Rely more on personal sources

ii. Post purchase evaluation of services is important. The intangibility of services makes it
difficult to judge a service before hand
iii. Customers often use price as an indication of quality. When using price to create brand,
care must be taken to ensure that one does not create wrong consumer perceptions about
quality of other products
iv. Customers often perceive some risk in the purchase, customers tend to be loyal to
restaurants that have met their needs
v. Customers of Hotel and travel products often blame themselves upon dissatisfaction.
Employees must be aware that dissatisfied customers do complain