PRESENTATION

INFLUENCE OF INDIVIDUAL VARIABLES ON CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

COMPILED BY: VIKASH RANJAN B.B.A. , 6TH Sem ROLL. NO. : 094231 l.n.mishra college Of Business Mgt.
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INFLUENCE OF INDIVIDUAL VARIABLES ON CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

The term CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR is basically made up of two different words i.e CONSUMER and BEHAVIOUR. The Meaning is so much clear fom the term itself as it is the behaviour of the consumer towards the products and services he/she consumes. It is basically related to how consumers spend their BASIC AVILABLE RESOURCES i.e TIME , EFFORT $ MONEY into the best way. People buy things to satisfy two basic needs 1. PHYSICAL NEEDS 2. PSYCOLOGICAL OR MENTAL NEEDS The buying decision is influenced by these two basic factors in various combinations, of course along with certain other external factors. Persons buying the same product may have different reasons to do so, and persons having same reasons may buy different products. The study of these Physical & Psychological factors along with various other factors that influence the consumer to make a buying decision is therefore of utmost important for marketers, and these constitute the subject matter of Consumer Behaviour. The study of Consumer Behaviour is quite complex, because of many variables involved and the intendancy to interact with & influence each other and the buyer. These variables are divided into two m aj or secti on s th a t h ave b een i d en ti fi e d as th e m ost i m p ortan t g en era l i n fl u en ces on Consumer Behaviour Consumer behaviour refers to the selection, purchase and consumption of goods and services for the satisfaction of their wants. There are different processes involved in the consumer behaviour. Initially the consumer tries to find what commodities he would like to consume then he selects only those commodities that promise greater utility.

 After selecting the commodities, the consumer makes an estimate of the available money which he can spend. Finally the consumer analyzes the prevailing prices of commodities Meanwhile, there are various other factors influencing the purchases of consumer such as social, cultural, personal and psychological.

There are certain INFLUENCES OF INDIVIDUAL VARIABLES ON CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR. Such as 1. INFLUENCE OF PERSONALITY. 2. INFLUENCE OF PERCEPTION. 3. INFLUENCE OF ATTITUDE. 4. INFLUENCE OF LEARNING.

Describing the above given points..We have..

1. INFLUENCE OF PERSONALITY ON CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR Personality of a person is the result of his individual traits. Personality distinguishes one person from another. It also determines how and why a consumer behaves in a particular way. A person's attitudes, his values in life, and the influence exerted by the people around him shape his personality. As a person grows up, his personality is altered or modified by the people or events surrounding him or due to his education. However, it doesn't change radically and remains consistent. The chapter also examines the various theories of personality developed over the years. The Psychoanalytic theory proposed by Sigmund Freud is based on the unconscious motives an individual has. It is based on the hypothesis that all human behavior is driven by the unconscious 'motives that a person has and that these motives are influenced by that person's biological drives (physiological needs).Personality is defined as the unique dynamic organization of characteristics of a particular person, physical and psychological, which influence behaviour and responses to the social and physical environment. It seems that consumer purchases are always influenced by their personality as many marketers thought. Therefore, many marketers make use of personality traits into the advertisement of products. However, some experts highlighted that the influence of personality related to the heredity and the experience of early childhood.

Meanwhile, other experts stressed that personality also changed in the various environmental influences from different periods. In fact, some parts of personality are unique to certain person while some parts of it can be found from many persons. In general, there are three significant and evitable characteristics to describe the nature of personality. The first one is that personality can reflect the differences of individual. For example, the twins look alike exactly from their faces while they may be quite different in terms of their personality. Moreover,personality is consistent and enduring because that a consistent kind of behaviour would endure over time. The last point is that personality can change. In stances, one person may have various patterns of personality in the different period of life based on the gradual maturing process.

2. INFLUENCE OF PERCEPTION ON CONSUMER BEHAVIOURBy

studying consumers, businesses can gain a better understanding of the role of perception in consumer behaviour. Companies can greatly improve their marketing strategies when they have a firm grasp on the psychology of how consumers feel, think and reason their way to a buying decision. Knowing how consumers are influenced by their environment, their information-processing abilities and their perception of a product can help companies to more effectively reach consumers Our perception is an approximation of reality. Our brain attempts to make sense out of the stimuli to which we are exposed. This works well, for example, when we see a friend three hundred feet away at his or her correct height; however, our perception is sometimes off for example, certain shapes of ice cream containers look like they contain more than rectangular ones with the same volume. Factors in perception Several sequential factors influence our perception. Exposure involves the extent to which we encounter a stimulus. For example, we are exposed to numerous commercial messages while driving on the freeway: bill boards, radio advertisements, bumper-stickers on cars, and signs and banners placed at shopping malls that we pass. Most of this exposure is randomwe dont plan to seek it out. However, if we are shopping for a car, we may deliberately seek out advertisements and tune in when dealer advertisements come on the radio. Exposure is not enough to significantly impact the individualat least not based on a single trial (certain advertisements, or commercial exposures such as the Swoosh logo, are based on extensive repetition rather than much conscious attention). In order for stimuli to be consciously processed, attention is needed. Attention is actually a matter of degreeour attention may be quite high when we read directions for getting an income tax refund, but low when commercials come on during a television program. Note, however, that even when 4

attention is low, it may be instantly escalatedfor example, if an advertisement for a product in which we are interested comes on. Several factors influence the extent to which stimuli will be noticed. One obvious issue is relevance. Consumers, when they have a choice, are also more likely to attend to pleasant stimuli (but when the consumer cant escape, very unpleasant stimuli are also likely to get attentionthus, many very irritating advertisements are remarkably effective). One of the most important factors, however, is repetition. Consumers often do not give much attention to a stimuliparticularly a low priority one such as an advertisementat any one time, but if it is seen over and over again, the cumulative impact will be greater.

3. INFLUENCE OF ATTITUDE ON CONSUMER BEHAVIUR

Consumer attitudes are a composite of a consumers: (1) Beliefs (2) Feelings (3) Behavioural intentions toward some object within the context of marketing, usually a brand or retail store. These components are viewed together since they are highly interdependent and together represent forces that influence how the consumer will react to the object. The first component is beliefs. A consumer may hold both positive beliefs toward an object (e.g., coffee tastes good) as well as negative beliefs (e.g., coffee is easily spilled and stains papers). In addition, some beliefs may be neutral (coffee is black), and some may be differ in valance depending on the person or the situation (e.g., coffee is hot and stimulates--good on a cold morning, but not good on a hot summer evening when one wants to sleep). Note also that the beliefs that consumers hold need not be accurate (e.g., that pork contains little fat), and some beliefs may, upon closer examination, be contradictory (e.g., that a historical figure was a good person but also owned slaves). Attitude-Behavior Consistency. Consumers often do not behave consistently with their attitudes for several reasons:

Ability. He or she may be unable to do so. Although junior high school student likes pick-up trucks and would like to buy one, she may lack a drivers license.

Competing demands for resources. Although the above student would like to buy a pickup truck on her sixteenth birthday, she would rather have a computer, and has money for only one of the two.

Social influence. A student thinks that smoking is really cool, but since his friends think its disgusting, he does not smoke.

Measurement problems. Measuring attitudes is difficult. In many situations, consumers do not consciously set out to enumerate how positively or negatively they feel about mopeds, and when a market researcher asks them about their beliefs about mopeds, how important these beliefs are, and their evaluation of the performance of mopeds with respect to these beliefs, consumers often do not give very reliable answers. Thus, the consumers may act consistently with their trueattitudes, which were never uncovered because an erroneous measurement was made.

4. INFLUENCE OF LEARNING ON CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

Sometimes, shaping may be necessary to teach the consumer the desired behaviour. That is, it may be impossible to teach the consumer to directly perform the desired behaviour. For example, a consumer may first get a good product for free (the product itself, if good, is a reward), then buy it with a large cents off coupon, and finally buy it at full price. Thus, we reinforce approximations of the desired behaviour. Rather than introducing Coca Cola directly in Indonesia, fruit flavoured soft drinks were first introduced, since these were more similar to beverages already consumed. Learning involves "a change in the content or organization of long term memory and/or behaviour." The first part of the definition focuses on what we know (and can thus put to use) while the second focuses on concrete behaviour. For example, many people will avoid foods that they consumed shortly before becoming ill. Learning is not all knowledge based. For example, we may experience the sales people in one store being nicer to us than those in the other. We thus may develop a preference for the one store over the other; however, if pressed, we may not be able to give a conscious explanation as to the reason for our preference.