Facultad de Comercio, Turismo y Ciencias
Sociales “Jovellanos”
STRATEGIC MARKETING
U3
T3 Consumer markets
TOC
3.1 Characteristics affecting consumer behavior
3.2 The buyer decision process
3.3 Types of buying decision behavior
3.0
Two Preliminary questions
The black box
3.1 Characteristics affecting consumer behavior
• Two preliminary questions:
– What is a consumer market?
• All of the personal consumption of final consumers
• Difference with an industrial / institutional / organizational market?
– What is consumer purchase behavior?
• The buying behavior of final consumers, individuals and households, who
buy goods and services for personal consumption
3.1
Characteristics affecting consumer
behavior
The black box
3.1 Characteristics affecting consumer behavior
• A model of consumer behavior:
Cultural Factors
Culture, Subculture and Social Class
3.1 Characteristics affecting consumer behavior
3.1 Characteristics affecting consumer behavior
• Culture:
– the learned values, perceptions, wants, and behavior from family and
other important institutions
• Subcultures:
– groups of people within a culture with
• shared value systems based on
• common life experiences and situations
3.1 Characteristics affecting consumer behavior
• Social Class:
– Society’s relatively permanent and ordered divisions whose members
share similar values, interests, and behaviors
– Question for discussion:
• Which are the antecedents of (how can we determine) social class?
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Social Classes in U.K. and the U.S.A.
Higher Managerial and professional
occupations
Upper class (3%)
• Employers and managers in large organisations
• Higher professionals
• Upper Uppers 1% (inherited wealth)
• Lower Uppers 2% (high income through exceptional ability)
Lower managerial and professional
occupations
Intermediate occupations
Small employers and sole traders
Lower supervisory, craft and related
occupations
Semi-routine occupations
Routine occupations
Middle class (44%)
• Upper middles 12% (professionals, independent business
persons, corporate managers)
• Middle class 32% (average workers that live in the better side of
the town
Working class (38%)
Lower class 16%
• Upper lowers 9% lack education and are poorly paid for
unskilled work
• Lower lowers 7% are visibly poor, often out of work and depend
on public assistance
Social Factors
Reference Groups, Family, Roles and Status
3.1 Characteristics affecting consumer behavior
• Reference Groups:
– They influence our behavior
– Primary or Secondary
– New kid on the block?: social networks.
Membership
Groups
• Groups with direct
influence and to
which a person
belongs
Aspirational
Groups
• Groups an
individual wishes
to belong to
Reference
Groups
• Groups that form a
comparison or
reference in forming
attitudes or behavior
3.1 Characteristics affecting consumer behavior
• Family is the most important consumer-buying
organization in society
– Family of orientation
– Family of procreation
• Consumer buying roles within the family:
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Initiator
Influencer
Decider
Buyer
User
Personal Factors
Age and life cycle stage, Occupation, Economic Situation, Lifestyle, Personality and Self Concept
3.1 Characteristics affecting consumer behavior
• Single
• Married without
children
• Married with
children
• Married without
dependent children
• Divorced without
children
• Divorced with
children
• Divorced without
dependent children
Elder
• Single
• Married without
children
• Married with
children
• Divorced with
children
Middle aged
Young
• Personal: Age and life cycle stage
• Older married
• Older unmarried
3.1 Characteristics affecting consumer behavior
• Occupation:
– Blue collar – White collar
• Economic Situation:
3.1 Characteristics affecting consumer behavior
• Lifestyle:
– A person’s pattern of living as expressed in his/her
activities, interests and opinions.
• Lifestyle classifications:
– SRI VALS (nine categories)
– SINUS GmbH:
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Traditional values
• Hard work, thrift, religion,
honesty, good manners and
obedience
Material values
Basic Orientation: traditional (to preserve)
• Possesion and need for
security
Basic Orientation: materialist (to have)
Changing Values: hedonism (to indulge)
Changing Values: postmaterialism (to be)
Changing Values: postmodernism (to have, to be and to indulge)
3.1 Characteristics affecting consumer behavior
Upper Conservatives
• Traditional upper-middle class conservatives
Traditional Mainstream
• Petit bourgeois group mainly oriented to preserving the status quo
Traditional Working Class
• Traditional blue collar workers
Modern Mainstream
• Social climber and acheivement-oriented white and blue collar workers
Trendsetter
• Technocratic liberals with a postmaterial orientation
Avantgarde
• Mainly yound pleasure seekers
Sociocritical
• Pursuing an alternative lifestyle
Under-privileged
• Uprooted blue-collar workers and destitute
3.1 Characteristics affecting consumer behavior
• Personality:
– Unique psychological characteristics that lead to relatively consistent
and lasting responses to one’s own environment:
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Self-confidence
Dominance
Sociability
Autonomy
Defensiveness
Adaptability
Aggressiveness
• Self-Concept:
– How do we see ourselves (actual self-concept)
– How would we like to be seen by others (ideal self-concept)
Psychological Factors
Motivation
3.1 Characteristics affecting consumer behavior
• Motivation:
– A need becomes a motive when it is aroused to a sufficient level of
intensity
– The battle between Freud and Maslow
Psychological Factors
Motivation
3.1 Characteristics affecting consumer behavior
• Perception:
– Process by which people select, organize, and interpret information to
form a meaningful picture of the world from three perceptual
processes.
– Key concepts:
• Selective attention
• Selective distortion
• Selective retention
• Learning:
– Change in an individual’s behavior arising from experience and occurs
through interplay of:
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Drives
Stimuli
Cues
Responses
Reinforcement
The process of learning
• 1) A friend invited us for dinner at his/her place
– Damn! I should provide something for the dinner. (That’s a DRIVE)
• 2) While reading the newspaper:
– Look!, there’s an article about a wine called Luis Cañas Crianza 2009 that
has been named “Wine with the best QPR in the world” by The Wine
Advocate. (That’s an STIMULI)
• 3) In the shop:
– You do not find the aforementioned wine, but you start looking at other
bottles of wine, and pay attention to words as “Rioja”, “Ribera del Duero”
“Crianza”, “Reserva” or “Tempranillo”. (Those are CUES).
• 4) You purchase:
– One bottle of Herencia Remondo La Montesa 2009. (That’s your
RESPONSE)
• 5) You provide:
– The wine for the dinner and everybody loves it. (Your behaviour has been
REINFORCED)
3.1 Characteristics affecting consumer behavior
• Beliefs:
– a descriptive thought that a person has about something based on:
• Knowledge
• Opinion
• Faith
• Attitudes:
– describe a person’s relatively consistent evaluations, feelings, and
tendencies toward an object or idea
3.2
The buyer decision process
If we have a buyer, we have a process
3.2 The buyer decision process
• A process with five stages:
3.2 The buyer decision process
• Need recognition:
– Buyer senses a difference between an actual state and some desired
state, triggered by:
• Internal stimuli
• External stimuli
Marketers want to understand the factors and situations that
usually trigger consumer need recognition.
3.2 The buyer decision process
• Information Search:
– So, consumer has a need. Three outcomes:
• 1) strong drive, satisfying product at hand… just purchase it.
• 2) just store the need in memory (heightened attention)
• 3) let’s search for information on how to solve my need (active search)
– Sources for information:
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Personal sources: family, friends, neighbors…
Commercial: advertising, salespeople, Internet, packaging, displays
Public sources: mass media, consumer-rating organizations
Experiential sources: handling, examining and using the product
Marketers want to understand where do customers get their
information, and how they trust it depending on the source.
3.2 The buyer decision process
• Evaluation of alternatives:
– How do consumer process information to arrive at brand choices.
– Certain needs take consumers to value certain product benefits.
– Consumers attach different degrees of importance to each attribute.
• The difference between “importance” and “saliency”
– Consumers develop brand beliefs
– Consumers have a utility function for each attribute
– Models:
• Expectancy value model of consumer choice (composite index of attributes x
importance)
• Conjunctive models: my choice must have this attribute
• Disjunctive model: my choice should rank high in this attribute
Marketers want to understand how consumers evaluate
alternatives
3.2 The buyer decision process
• Purchase Decision:
– After evaluation, the preferred brand is most likely to be purchased.
– But:
• It can also be postponed
• Decision can be influenced by:
– Other people
– Situational determinants
– Perceived risk poses several threats in this stage
Marketers want to understand why consumers engage in
exchange, and how those exchanges are created, resolved or
avoided.
Déjà-vu?
3.2 The buyer decision process
• Post-Purchase Behavior:
– Comparison between expectations and perceived performance.
– Size of the gap determines levels of:
• Satisfaction
• Dissatisfaction
– Cognitive dissonance: discomfort caused by post-purchase conflict.
– The double speed magnitude: WOM
3.2 The buyer decision process
If consumers are not buying a product because they do not
perceive a need for it, Marketing might launch advertising
messages that trigger the need and show how the product
solves customer’s problems.
If customers know about the product but are not buying because
they hold unfavourable attitudes towards it, the marketer must
find ways either to change the product or to change consumer
perceptions.
3.3
Types of buying decision behavior
If we have a buyer, we have a process
3.3 Types of buying decision behavior
• A toothpaste is not a tennis racket, an expensive camera or a
new car.
• Complex decisions involve:
– More buying participants
– More buyer deliberation
• Classification:
3.3 Types of buying decision behavior
• Complex Buying Behavior
– High involvement in a purchase
– Significant differences among brands
– Product is:
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Expensive
Risky,
Purchased infrequently
Highly self-expressive
3.3 Types of buying decision behavior
• Dissonance-reducing buying behavior:
– High involvement
– Product is:
• Expensive
• Infrequent to purchase
• Not big difference among brands
– Important drives:
• Good price
• Convenience
• Brand recognition -> reduces dissonance
3.3 Types of buying decision behavior
• Habitual buying behavior
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Low involvement
Little brand difference
Brand choice can be habit more than preference
It is more about brand familiarity than brand conviction
Price and sale promotions are very strong drives
3.3 Types of buying decision behavior
• Variety-seeking behavior:
– Low involvement
– Significant perceived differences between brands.
– Consumers do a lot of brand switching:
• Boredom
• For the fun of trying something different
Typical strategies
– Brand leaders try to promote habitual behavior
by dominating shelf-space, advertising and
avoiding out-of-stock conditions.
– Brand challengers will encourage variety seeking
by offering lower prices, deals, coupons, free
samples and advertising centering on the fun of
trying something new.
3.3
Types of buying decision behavior
If we have a buyer, we have a process