Marketing Psychology and Consumer

Buyer Behaviour

Suresh A.S

Source Baines, Fill and Page 2013

 Learning Outcomes
Understand how consumers respond to the diffusion
of innovations.
Explain the consumer product acquisition process.
Explain the processes involved in human perception,
learning and memory in relation to consumer choice.
Understand the importance of personality and
motivation in consumer behaviour.
Describe opinions, attitudes and values and how they
relate to consumer behaviour.
Explain how reference groups influence consumer
behaviour.
 Five Categories of
Adopters
Innovators: Like new ideas, well educated, young,
confident, and financially strong.
Early Adopters: High percentage of opinion leaders. At the
leading edge of innovation, tend to be younger than any
other group, and above average in education.
Early Majority: Risk averse and require reassurance that the
product works and is proven in the market. Above average
in terms of age, education, social status, and income.
Late Majority: Sceptical of new ideas and only adopt new
products because of social or economic factors. Below
average in education, social status, and income.
Laggards: Suspicious of all new ideas and their opinions are
very hard to change. Lowest income, social status, and
education.
Rogers S-Curve Theory of
Diffusion
The Consumer Product
Acquisition Process
 Use of Classical Conditioning in
Marketing
Jingles in advertising, e.g. Levi-Strauss, the jeans brand, advertised Levis 501 in the mid-

1990s using Marvin Gayes Heard it Through the Grapevine. Young teenage consumers

associated wanting to buy the 501 brand of jeans (the unconditioned stimulus) with hearing

the song (the conditioned stimulus).

Supermarket layout designers know that the smells associated with their bakery sections

cause consumers to buy more products as they associate the smell (the conditioned

stimulus) with the arrival of bread (unconditioned stimulus) and therefore want to buy some

themselves!

Perfume and aftershave manufacturers (e.g. LOreal) place free samples of their products in

sachets in magazines so that whenever a reader sees an advert for perfume/aftershave they

associate the image (the unconditioned stimulus) with the smell (the conditioned stimulus).
 Perceptions and Selective
Exposure
Definition of Perception: based on prior attitudes, beliefs, needs, stimulus factors, and

situational determinants [i.e. factors specific to the situation], individuals perceive

objects, events, or people in the world about them. Perception is the cognitive

impression that is formed of reality which in turn influences the individual's actions

and behaviour toward that object.

The process of screening meaningful information from the non-meaningful is known as

selective exposure (Dubois, 2000). Our minds would become overloaded with

information otherwise, e.g. , young people are not usually interested in advertising

messages for financial service products such as pensions.

We avoid exposure to certain messages and actively seek out others, e.g. particular

newspapers, magazines, internet websites, or terrestrial, cable, satellite or internet TV.

How Memory Affects Consumer
Choice
Factors affecting recognition and
recall
Effects of context
Form of coding and storage in
memory
Effects of processing load
Effects of input mode
Effects of repetition.
 Theories of Personality
1. The psychoanalytic approach which
stresses self-reported unconscious
desires,
2. Trait theory which stresses the
classification of personality types,
and
3. The self-concept approach, which is
concerned with how we perceive
ourselves as consumers.
 The Psychoanalytic
Approach
First outlined by Sigmund Freud, we are motivated by our unconscious
desires and the relationship of three mental systems as follows:

Id: This part of our psyche harbours our instinctual drives and urges,
a kind of seething mass of needs, which require instant gratification.

Ego: This part of the psyche attempts to find outlets for the urges in
our id and acts as a planning centre to determine the opportunities
for gratification of our urges. According to Freud, the ego is
moderated by the superego.

Superego: This part of our psyche controls how we motivate

ourselves to behave to respond to our instincts and urges, so that we
do so in a socially acceptable manner and avoid any feelings of guilt
or shame. It acts as a social conscience.
 The Trait Approach I (Henry Murrays 20
Personality-Based Needs)
1. Abasement: the need to surrender
and submit to others 10.
Exhibition: the need to impress
2. Achievement: the need to others
succeed 11.
Harm avoidance: the need to avoid
3. Affiliation: the need to win friends pain and injury
and enjoy others attention 12.
Infavoidance: the need to avoid
humiliation and embarrassment
4. Aggression: the need to overcome
opponents 13.
Nurturance: the need to aid the
helpless
5. Autonomy: the need to operate 14.
Order: the need to organise and tidy
independently of others
15.
Play: the need to relax and have fun
6. Counteraction: the need to
overcome failure through 16.
Rejection: the need to abandon and
persistence separate from negative situations
and people
7. Defendance: the need to hide 17.
Sentience: the need to feel and
failure from oneself and from enjoy sensual experiences
others
18.
Sex: the need to copulate
8. Deference: the need to admire
our superiors 19.
Succourance: the need to be loved
20.
Understanding: the need to ask
9. Dominance: the need to control questions and find the answers
others and our environment
The Trait Approach II (Abraham
Maslows need hierarchy)
 The Self-Concept
Approach
There is an increasing belief amongst marketing
researchers that people buy goods and services for the
brand that they represent and its relation to the buyers
perception of their own self-concept or personality. In other
words, we buy brands which we feel resemble the same or
similar characteristics to how we perceive ourselves.
In a study of the luxury goods market, Dubois and
Duquesne (1993) demonstrated how buyers of luxury
goods typically divided into one of two categories, as
follows:
1.Those that made their purchases principally on product
quality, aesthetic design, and excellence of service,
motivated by the desire to impress others, ability to pay
high prices, and the ostentatious display of their wealth.
2. Those that bought luxury goods for what they symbolize,
purchasing luxury goods because they represent an
extreme form of the expression of their own values.
 Opinions, Attitudes and
Values
Opinions tend to be cognitive (i.e. based on thoughts) and can be
described as the quick responses we might give to opinion poll
questions about current issues or instant responses to questions
from friends. They are typically held with limited conviction partly
because we have often not yet formed or fully developed an
underlying attitude on this issue or item.
Attitudes are affective (i.e. linked to our emotion states) held with
a greater degree of conviction, held over a longer duration and
are much more likely to influence behaviour.
Values are conative (i.e. linked to our motivations and behaviour)
are held even more strongly than attitudes and underpin our
attitudinal and behavioural systems. They tend to be linked to our
conscience, developed through the familial socialisation process,
through cultures and sub-cultures, our religious influences, and
are frequently formed in early childhood.
Group Influence: Social
Grading
Group Influence:
Lifecycle
 Summary
Explained the consumer product acquisition process.
Understood how consumers respond to the diffusion
of innovations.
Explained the processes involved in human
perception, learning and memory in relation to
consumer choice.
Understood the importance of personality and
motivation in consumer behaviour.
Described opinions, attitudes and values and how
they relate to consumer behaviour.
Explained how reference groups influence consumer
behaviour.