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Consumer Behaviour
The behaviour that consumers undertake in seeking, purchasing, using, evaluating, and disposing of products and services that they expect will satisfy their personal needs
- • How consumers think, their mental decisions.
- • How consumers feel.
- • The physical actions that result from the consumer’s
- decisions.
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Two Broad Types of Consumers
PERSONAL CONSUMERS and ORGANISATIONAL CONSUMERS
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The three functions of the marketplace activities of individuals:
The consumer who consumes or uses the product.
- The purchaser (buyer) who undertakes activities to procure or
- obtain the product or service.
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- The payer who provides the money (or other object of value)
- to obtain the product or service.
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Consumer Research: Two Perspectives
POSITIVIST APPROACH
Tends to be objective and empirical
Seeks causes for behaviour
Conduct studies that can be generalised to larger populations
INTERPRETIVIST METHODOLOGY
More qualitative
Based on smaller samples
View each consumption situation as unique and nonpredictive
Look for common patterns across consumption situations
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The Interdisciplinary Nature of Consumer Behaviour Research
- Psychology: The study of the individual (e.g. motivation, perception, leaning,
- attitudes, personality).
Social Psychology (combination of sociology and psychology): How individuals operate in groups
Sociology: The study of groups (e.g. family, social class)
- Economics: The allocation of scarce resources, spending, evaluation of
- alternatives, maximise satisfaction and value.
Cultural Anthropology: The study of humans in society (e.g. customs, values, subculture, roles, core beliefs of a culture).
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Simplified model of
consumer decision making
- IPO
- Input = Various firms’ marketing activities + EXTERNAL
- social/culture influences.
- Process = Decision steps + INTERNAL psychological factors
- (modified with experience).
- Output = Trial and repeat purchases and post-purchase
- evaluation.
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Reasons why it is important for marketers to better understand consumers
- Shorter product life cycles
- Environmental concerns
- Need for consumer protection bodies
- Growth of services marketing
- Global marketing
- Evolving consumer preferences
- Faster technological development
- Changing lifestyles
- Not-for-profit marketing
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Overview of Philosophical Approaches
- Production concept
- Marketing objective: cheap, efficient production and intensive
- distribution.
- Product concept
- Assumption: Consumers purchase the product that offers
- them the highest quality, the best performance, and the
- most features.
- Selling concept
- Objective: Aggressive promotion and selling designed to
- persuade consumers to buy products.
- The Marketing Concept
- Determine specific target markets-Understand their needs and wants-Meet the identified needs of the target markets, better than competition
- The Societal Marketing Concept
- The traditional marketing concept has changed with time. There is growing emphasis on adhering to principles of social responsibility in the marketing of goods and services.
Needs of the target market + Improvement of society overall + The goals of the firm
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Customer value?
‘what they get (benefits)’ versus ‘what they give (money, time, effort)’
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Customer Satisfaction
- The consumer’s perception of
- performance of the product/service - As compared to the consumers expectations
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