Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Consumer Behaviour W8 Lse Slides
Consumer Behaviour W8 Lse Slides
Readings
Michael R. Solomon. Consumer Behavior – Buying, Having, and Being. 12th Edition. Prentice Hall:
Chapter 11
Optional
Leon G Schiffman and Joseph Wisenblit (2019). Consumer Behavior, Twelfth edition. Pearson:
Chapter 9
Social Identity Theory
Conformity
• A change in beliefs or actions as a reaction to real or
imagined group pressure.
• For a society to function, its members develop norms or
informal rules that govern behavior.
• Without these rules, we would have chaos e.g. nobody
follow the norm “always stop for a red traffic light”
Types of Influence
Referent power
• If a person admires the qualities of a person or a group, he tries to voluntarily copy the referent’s behaviors and identify
with the referant (e.g., choice of clothing, cars, leisure activities).
Information power
• A person possesses information power simply because he or she knows something others would like to know.
Legitimate power
• Power by virtue of social agreements, such as the authority we give to police officers, soldiers, and even professors (??).
• Marketers “borrow” this form of power to influence consumers. e.g., a model wearing a doctor ad.
Expert power
• Knowledgeable experts in one field lend credibility to a product, such as a doctor endorsing a toothpaste
Reward power
• A person or group with the means to provide positive reinforcement has reward power e.g., corporate gifts or judge
feedback to contestants.
Coercive power
• Influence someone because of social or physical intimidation.
• Mostly useful for short-term e.g., fines for not wearing masks or fear appeals in ads.
Reference Groups
Serve as sources of comparison, influence, and norms for people’s opinions, values, and behaviors.
Source credibility
• Reference groups have a high degree of source credibility. Membership groups
• A group to which a person belongs to, or realistically
• Source credibility is a source’s persuasive impact, based on
• Perceived expertise, can join
• e.g., cricket group at a university.
• Trustworthiness,
• Believability.
Symbolic group (aspirational reference group)
Types of sources
• A group to which an individual is unlikely to belong,
but whose values and behaviors that person adopts
1. Formal source
• e.g., national music bands are a symbolic group
• Either a person or medium providing consumption-related
for university music brand groups.
information and paid by an organization.
2. Informal source
• Person whom the message receiver knows personally, such as a Word-of-mouth (WOM) represents communications
parent or friend who gives product information or advice. where satisfied customers tell others about a product,
service, or event (information transmitted can also be
Avoidance Groups negative).
• Don’t want to be similar to them (e.g., “nerds,” “druggies,” WOM is one of the most credible forms of buying-related
or “preppies”). information because consumers view others who don’t
• Avoid buying what they buy. How to use in marketing? stand to gain personally by promoting something as
• Important for social identity marketing. How? highly credible.
Celebrities
• A symbolic
reference group
because they are
liked, admired, and
often have a high
degree of perceived
credibility.
Reference Groups
Experiment from hotels Types of reference group influence:
1. Normative influence
• Many hotel rooms feature formal and impersonal • Learning and adopting a group’s norms, values, and behaviors.
requests that read, “Please reuse the towels in order Comes from groups to which people naturally belong (e.g. family
to help us save the environment,” which had little and peers).
impact on guests’ behavior. 2. Comparative influence
• People compare themselves to others whom they respect and
1. Incorporating a social norm into message persuaded admire, and then adopt some of those people’s values or imitate
about 25% of the guest to reuse towels. their behaviors.
• “Most of your fellow guests had reused their towels. • E.g. copying lifestyle of celebrities one aspires to be like.
Please help us save the environment and reuse
yours,”
• Consumers believe that firms want to Relationship between the effectiveness of the messages and the
generate profits and so provide less spokespersons
credible information.
1. The greater the fit between the celebrity and the product endorsed, the
• Consumers believe product information higher the persuasiveness of the message.
• e.g., cricketers to create favorable attitudes for sports drinks.
from unpaid sources more than when
compared to paid advertisements.
2. Endorsers whose demographic characteristics (e.g., age and ethnicity) are
• Companies can convey credibility similar to those of the target audiences are viewed as more credible and
through solid past performance, good persuasive.
reputation, product quality, and good
service.
Salespeople credibility
• Deemed credible when show
confidence, honesty, dresses well,
and drive expensive cars (outward
signs of success).
Opinion Leadership
• Traces person-to-person communications where most people know each other by name (e.g., a college dormitory).
• Ask respondents to identify name of individuals to whom advice for a product was provided.
• Ask respondents to identify name of individuals who provided product advice to the respondents.
• Afterwards, both the information providers and receivers are interviewed to confirm that information was received or
provided.
• Respondents get “opinion leadership points,” or “opinion receivership points.”
• Designate a person as an opinion leader or opinion receiver.
• Sociometric questioning provides the most valid results for designating opinion leaders and receivers.
2. The Self-Designating
Method
• Ask respondent to
evaluate the extent to
which they had
provided others with
information about
products and
influenced purchases.
Measuring Opinion Leadership
4. Klout Scores
• Social networks are virtual communities where • A specialized, nongeographically bound community formed on the
people share information about themselves with basis of attachment to a product or brand.
others, generally with similar interests. • Customers can have nostalgic associations with a brand.
• e.g., Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
• Because consumption and the products people
buy are integral parts of lives, online profiles and
discussions include a tremendous amount of
purchase information.
• Innovators are the earliest to buy new products. • Early adopters are consumers who buy new products
• Prepared to take risks in consuming products. within a relatively short period following introduction, but
• Willing to pay higher prices for newly introduced not as early as the innovators.
products because they enjoy being the first to own • Venturesome, likely to engage in WOM, and also likely to
gadgets and show them off. assist others who are considering adopting the new
• When targeting innovators, ads should show them products.
using new products conspicuously and being • Ads should show early adopters praising the new
noticed and even asked questions by others e.g., products.
“Where did you get that?”
• Early majority consists of consumers who buy • Risk averse and slow to adopt innovations.
innovations after the early adopters. • Wait until most other consumers have adopted the new
• Can wait for prices to decline and, for others to buy. product.
• Do not like ambiguous situations and are risk-averse. • Likely to buy older models and look for guarantees.
• Ads should assure that the product is successful and
provide with purchase incentives.
Innovations’ Adopters as Reference Groups
Self-discrepancy
• Threat to important personal identity of a person
• e.g. a person thinks he is powerful, attractive or
intelligent.