Buyer Behavior

(Consumer and Organizational Buying Behavior)

Chapter 3
 Consumer Markets and Consumer Buying
Behavior

• Consumer Buying Behavior refers to the

buying behavior of final consumers- individuals
and households that buy goods and services
for personal consumption.
• The term consumer behavior is defined as the
behavior that consumers display in searching
for, purchasing, using, evaluating, and
disposing of products and services that they
expect will satisfy their needs.
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 Consumer Markets and Consumer Buying
Behavior

• Marketers spend more money than ever to study

consumers, trying to learn more about consumer
behavior. Who buys? How do they buy? When
do they buy? Where do they buy? Why do
they buy?
• Marketers must fully understand
both the theory and reality of
consumer behavior.
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 Consumer Markets and Consumer Buying
Behavior

• The central question for marketers is; how do

consumers respond to various marketing
stimuli that the company might use?

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 Model of Consumer
Behavior

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Characteristics Affecting Consumer
Behavior

5
 Factors Influencing
Buyer Behavior
• A consumer’s buying behavior is
influenced by cultural, social, personal,
and psychological factors.
• Marketers cannot control such factors,
but they must take them into account.

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I. Cultural Factors
• Cultural factors exert the broadest and deepest
influence on consumer behavior.
 The marketer needs to understand the role
played by the buyer's culture, subculture and
social class
• Culture, subculture, and social class are
particularly important influences on
consumer buying behavior.
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 A. Culture
 Culture is the most fundamental determinant
of a person’s wants and behavior.
 The set of basic values, perceptions, wants and
behaviors learned by a member of society
from family and other important institutions
 Values such achievement and success, activity,
efficiency and practicality, progress, material
comfort, individualism, freedom, external comfort,
humanitarianism, and youthfulness.

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 B. Subculture
 Each culture consists of smaller
subcultures that provide more specific
identification and socialization for their
members.
Groups of people with shared value systems
based on common life experiences and
situations
 Subcultures include nationalities, religions,
groups, and geographic regions.
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 B. Subculture
• When subcultures grow large and
affluent enough, companies often design
specialized marketing programs to serve
them
Many subcultures make up important
market segments, leading marketers to
tailor products and marketing programs
to their needs.
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 C. Social Class
 Social classes are relatively homogeneous and
enduring divisions in a society.
 They are hierarchically ordered and their
members share similar values, interests, and
behavior
Social class is not determined by a single
factor, such as income, but is measured as
a combination of occupation, income,
education, wealth and other variables.
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 II. Social Factors
A consumer’s behavior is influenced by such
social factors as reference groups, family, and
social roles and status.
A. Reference Groups
 Reference groups consist of all of the groups that
have a direct (face-to-face) or indirect influence on
a person’s attitudes or behavior.
 Groups that have a direct influence on a person
are called membership groups.

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 II.Social Factor
• Membership Group: Groups that have a
direct influence and to which a person
belongs.
Some are Primary groups - with whom there
is regular but informal interaction (like family,
friends, coworkers, neighbors).
Some are Secondary groups, which are more
formal and have less regular interaction (like
religious, professional and trade union
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groups).
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 II.Social Factor
Reference groups influence a person at least in
three ways:
 They expose the person to new behaviors and
lifestyles.
 They influence the person's attitudes and self-concept
because he or she wants to 'fit in'.
 They also create pressures to conform that may affect
the person's product and brand choices

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 II.Social Factor
B. Family
The family is the most important
consumer buying organization in
society, and family members
constitute the most influential
primary reference group.
• There are two families in the buyers
life.
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 II.Social Factor
• The family of orientation consists of
parents and siblings.
 From parents a person acquires an
orientation toward religion, politics,
and economics and a sense of
personal ambition, self-worth, and
love.

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 II.Social Factor
• A more direct influence on
everyday buying behavior is the
family of procreation namely, the
persons spouse and children.
 Now traditional purchasing roles are
changing, and marketers would be
wise to see both men and women as
possible targets.
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 II.Social Factor
• Another shift in buying patterns is an increase
in the amount of birr spent and the direct and
indirect influence wielded by children and
teens.
 Research has shown that more than two-thirds of
13- to 21-year-olds make or influence family
purchase decisions on audio/video equipment,
software, and vacation destinations
 Television can be especially powerful in reaching
children, and marketers are using it to target them
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 II.Social Factor
• Role and Status
 Groups often are an important source
of information and help to define
norms for behavior.
 We can define a persons position in
each group in terms of role and
status.
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 II.Social Factor
• A role consists of the activities a person
is expected to perform.
• Each role in turn connotes a status (general
esteem given to role by society).
 People choose products that reflect and
communicate their role and their actual or
desired status in society.
 Marketers must be aware of the status-symbol
potential of products and brands.
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 III. Personal Factors
The third factor is personal
characteristics, including the buyer’s age,
stage in the life cycle, occupation,
economic circumstances, lifestyle,
personality, and self-concept.
 Because many of these have a direct
impact on consumer behavior, it is
important for marketers to follow
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 III. Personal Factors
A) Age and Stage in the Life Cycle
Tastes in food, clothes, furniture and
recreation are often age related.
Family life cycle - the stages through
which families might pass as they
mature over time.
 People change the goods and services
they buy over their lifetimes.
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 III. Personal Factors
A) Age and Stage in the Life Cycle
 Consumption is also shaped by the family life cycle
and the number, age, and gender of people in the
household at any point in time.
 In addition, psychological life-cycle stages may
matter.
 Marketers should also consider critical life
events or transitions marriage, childbirth, illness,
relocation, divorce, first job, career change,
retirement, death of a spouses giving rise to new
needs.
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 III. Personal Factors
B) Occupation and Economic Circumstances
• Occupation also influences consumption
patterns.
 A blue-collar worker will buy work clothes and
lunchboxes, while a company president will buy
expensive suits and a country club membership.
• Marketers try to identify the occupational groups that
have above-average interest in their products and
services and even tailor products for certain
occupational groups:
 Computer software companies, for example, design different
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 III. Personal Factors
B) Economic Circumstances
A person's economic situation will affect
product choice.
The income that he/she earns, the
attitude towards spending and saving,
and the borrowing power affect his/her
buying decision.

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 III. Personal Factors
C)Lifestyle and Value
 Lifestyle is a person's pattern of living
as expressed in his/her activities,
interests and opinions.
 Activities (work, hobbies, shopping, sports,
social events)
 Interests (food, fashion, family recreation)
 Opinions (about themselves, social issues,
business, Product)
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 III. Personal Factors
C)Lifestyle and Value
 Marketers search for relationships
between their products and lifestyle
groups.
 Lifestyles are shaped partly by
whether consumers are money
constrained or time constrained.
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 III. Personal Factors
D)Personality and Self Concept
• Personality: the unique psychological characteristics that
lead to relatively consistent and lasting responses to one's
own environment including buying behavor.
• Personality is usually described in terms of traits such as
self-confidence, dominance, sociability, autonomy,
defensiveness, adaptability and aggressiveness.
• The attitude of people or mental picture towards
themselves is also called self-concept or self-image.
Thus, people buy products which fit their assumed self -
image.
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 III. Personal Factors
D)Personality and Self Concept
• Personality can be a useful variable
in analyzing consumer brand
choices.
• Brands also have personalities, and
consumers are likely to choose
brands whose personalities match
their own.
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IV. Psychological Factors
• A person's buying choices are further
influenced by four important
psychological factors: motivation,
perception, learning, and beliefs and
attitudes.

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IV. Psychological Factors
A) Motivation:
 A need becomes a motive when it is
aroused to a sufficient level of
intensity to drive us to act.

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IV. Psychological Factors
B) Perception
 A motivated person is ready to act-
how is influenced by his or her
perception of the situation.
 In marketing, perceptions are more
important than reality, because
perceptions affect consumers actual
behavior.
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IV. Psychological Factors
B) Perception
 Perception is the process by which we
select, organize, and interpret information
inputs to create a meaningful picture of the
world.
 One person might perceive a fast-talking
salesperson as aggressive and insincere;
another, as intelligent and helpful.
 Each will respond to the salesperson
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differently.
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IV. Psychological Factors
B) Perception
 People emerge with different
perceptions of the same object
because of three perceptual processes:
selective attention, selective
distortion, and selective retention.

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IV. Psychological Factors
C) Learning
• It is the process of changes in an individual’s behavior
that arise from (the result of) experience.
• learning is produced through the interplay of drives,
stimuli, cues, responses, and reinforcement.
 A drive is a strong internal stimulus that calls for action.
 Cues are minor stimuli that determine when, where and how the
person responds.
. The practical significance of learning theory for marketers
is that they can build up demand for a product by associating
it with strong drives, using motivating cues and providing
positive reinforcement.
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IV. Psychological Factors
D) Beliefs and Attitudes
 A belief is a descriptive thought that a person
holds about something. These beliefs may be
based on real knowledge, opinion or faith, and
may or may not carry an emotional charge.
. Marketers are interested in the beliefs that
people formulate about specific products and
services, because these beliefs make up
product and brand images that affect buying
behavior.
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IV. Psychological Factors
D) Beliefs and Attitudes
Attitude: describes a person's relatively consistent evaluations, feelings
and tendencies towards an object or idea. It is a learned
predisposition.
. Attitudes put people into a frame of mind of liking or disliking
things, of moving towards or away from them.
 Attitudes are difficult to change. A person's attitudes fit into a pattern
and to change one attitude may require difficult adjustments in many
other attitudes.
 Thus, a company would be well advised to fit its product into
existing attitudes rather than to try to change people’s attitudes. Of
course, trying to change attitudes can pay off occasionally.
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 The Buying Decision
Process

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 The Buying Decision
Process
• Smart companies try to fully understand
customers buying decision process-the
experiences in learning, choosing, using, and
even disposing of a product
• Consumers don’t always pass through all five
stages, they may skip or reverse some.
 When you buy your regular brand of
toothpaste, you go directly from the need
to the purchase decision, skipping
11/30/2022 information search and evaluation.
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 The Buying Decision
Process
• Problem Recognition
 The buying process starts when the buyer
recognizes a problem or need triggered by
internal or external stimuli.
 Marketers need to identify the
circumstances that trigger a particular need
by gathering information from a number of
consumers.
 They can then develop marketing strategies that
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 The Buying Decision
Process
• Information Search
 Major information sources to which
consumers will turn fall into four groups:
 Personal: Family, friends, neighbors,
acquaintances
 Commercial: Advertising, Web sites,
salespersons, dealers, packaging, displays
 Public: Mass media, consumer-rating
organizations
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 Experiential: Handling, examining, using the
product 13 - 45
 The Buying Decision
Process
• Information Search

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 The Buying Decision
Process
• Evaluation of Alternatives
 Some basic concepts will help us
understand consumer evaluation processes:
 First,the consumer is trying to satisfy a need.
 Second, the consumer is looking for certain
benefits from the product solution.
 Third, the consumer sees each product as a
bundle of attributes with varying abilities to
deliver the benefits.
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 The Buying Decision
Process
• Purchase Decision
 In the evaluation stage, the consumer forms
preferences among the brands in the choice
set and may also form an intention to buy
the most preferred brand.
 In executing a purchase intention, the
consumer may make up to five sub
decisions: brand (brand A), dealer (dealer
2), quantity (one computer), timing
(weekend), and payment method (credit
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card) 13 - 48
 The Buying Decision
Process
• Post purchase Behavior
 After the purchase, the consumer might
experience dissonance from noticing certain
disquieting features or hearing favorable
things about other brands and will be alert
to information that supports his or her
decision.
 Marketingcommunications should supply beliefs
and evaluations that reinforce the consumer’s
choice and help him or her feel good about the
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 The Buying Decision
Process
• Post purchase Behavior
 Marketers must monitor post
purchase satisfaction, post purchase
actions, and post purchase product
uses and disposal.

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 The Buying Decision
Process
• Post purchase Behavior: Post
Purchase Satisfaction
 Satisfaction is a function of the
closeness between expectations and
the products perceived performance

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 The Buying Decision
Process
• Post purchase Behavior: Post Purchase Actions
 satisfied consumer is more likely to purchase the
product gain and will also tend to say good things
about the brand to others.
 Dissatisfied consumers may abandon or return the
product. They may seek information that confirms
its high value. They may take public action by
complaining to the company, going to a lawyer, or
complaining to other groups (such as business,
private, or government agencies).
 Private actions include deciding to stop buying the
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Types of Buying Decision
Behavior
 Assael distinguished four types of consumer
buying behavior, based on the degree of
buyer involvement and the degree of
differences among brands:
1. Complex buying behavior
2. Dissonance reducing buying behavior
3. Habitual buying behavior
4. Variety seeking buying behavior
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 Four types of Buying
Behavior
High involvement Low involvement
Complex buying behavior— Variety-seeking buying behavior—applies
applies when product is expensive, when buyer switches brands for the sake
Significant d/ces

bought infrequently, risky, and self of variety rather than dissatisfaction;

expressive; buyer first develops buyer has some beliefs about the
b/n Brands

beliefs about the product, then product, chooses a brand with little
develops attitudes about it, and evaluation, and evaluates the product
finally makes a thoughtful choice. during consumption.

Dissonance-reducing behavior— Habitual buying behavior—

applies when the product is applies when the product is low-cost and
expensive, bought infrequently, and frequently purchased; buyers do not pass
b/n Brands
Few d/ces

risky; buyer shops around and buys through normal sequence of belief,
fairly quickly, then later experiences attitude, and behavior but instead make
dissonance but stays alert to decisions based on brand familiarity.
information supporting the purchase
decision.
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 Organizational Buying
• Organizational buying is the decision-making
process by which formal organizations
establish the need for purchased products and
services and identify, evaluate, and choose
among alternative brands and suppliers.
• The business market consists of all the
organizations that acquire goods and services
used in the production of other products or
services that are sold, rented, or supplied to
others.
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 Business Market Vs
Consumer Market
• Fewer, larger buyers.
 The business marketer normally deals
with far fewer, much larger buyers
than the consumer marketer does,
particularly in such industries as
aircraft engines and defense weapons.

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 Business Market Vs
Consumer Market
• Close supplier-customer
relationship.
 Because of the smaller customer base
and the importance and power of the
larger customers, suppliers are
frequently expected to customize their
offerings to individual business
customer needs.
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 Business Market Vs
Consumer Market
• Professional purchasing.
 Business goods are often purchased by
trained purchasing agents, who must
follow their organizations purchasing
policies, constraints, and
requirements.
This means business marketers must
provide greater technical data about their
product and its advantages over
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competitors products. 13 - 58
 Business Market Vs
Consumer Market
• Multiple buying influences.
 Buying committees consisting of
technical experts and even senior
management are common in the
purchase of major goods.
Business marketers need to send well-
trained sales representatives and sales
teams to deal with the well-trained
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 Business Market Vs
Consumer Market
• Multiple sales calls.
 A study found that it took four and a
half calls to close an average industrial
sale.
In the case of capital equipment sales for
large projects, it may take many attempts
to fund a project, and the sales cycle
between quoting a job and delivering the
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product’s often measured in years.
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 Business Market Vs
Consumer Market
• Derived demand.
 The demand for business goods is
ultimately derived from the demand
for consumer goods.
 For this reason, the business marketer
must closely monitor the buying
patterns of ultimate consumers.
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 Business Market Vs
Consumer Market
• Inelastic demand
 The total demand for many business
goods and services is inelastic that is,
not much affected by price changes.

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 Business Market Vs
Consumer Market
• Fluctuating demand.
 The demand for business goods and
services tends to be more volatile than
the demand for consumer goods and
services.
 A given percentage increase in consumer
demand can lead to a much larger percentage
increase in the demand for plant and equipment
necessary to produce the additional output.
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effect. 13 - 63
 Business Market Vs
Consumer Market
• Geographically concentrated
buyers.
 The geographical concentration of
producers helps to reduce selling
costs.

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 Business Market Vs
Consumer Market
• Direct purchasing.
 Business buyers often buy directly
from manufacturers rather than
through intermediaries, especially
items that are technically complex or
expensive such as mainframes or
aircraft.

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