INTRODUCTION
TO CONSUMER
BEHAVIOUR
Consumption
 What is Consumer Behavior?
The study of the processes involved when individuals or groups select,
purchase, use, or dispose of products, services, ideas, or experiences to satisfy
needs and desires.
 Consumers are actors on the marketplace stage
Consumer behavior resembles actions in a play, where each
customer has lines, props and costumes that are necessary to a
good performance.
Some issues that arise during stages in the
consumption process.
Consumption
 Consumer behavior is a process
Consumer behavior is an ongoing process , not
merely happens at the moment customer hands
over payment and in turn receives some good or
service.
The exchange is an integral part of marketing.
While exchange remains an important part of
consumer behavior, the expanded view
emphasized the entire consumption process.
Consumption
 Consumer behavior involves many different actors
A consumer is generally thought as a person who
identifies a need or desire, makes a purchase and then
disposes of the product during the stages in the
consumption process.
The purchaser and user of a product may not be the same
person. Another person may act as an influencer .
Consumers may be organizations or groups in which one
person may make the decisions involved in purchasing
products that will be used by many. Or purchase decisions
may be made by large group of people.
Consumption
 Consumer behavior involves many different actors
A consumer is generally thought as a person who
identifies a need or desire, makes a purchase and then
disposes of the product during the stages in the
consumption process.
The purchaser and user of a product may not be the same
person. Another person may act as an influencer .
Consumers may be organizations or groups in which one
person may make the decisions involved in purchasing
products that will be used by many. Or purchase decisions
may be made by large group of people.
Consumers’ Impact on Marketing Strategy
 Understanding consumer behavior is a good
business.
 Market segmentation delineates segments
whose members are similar to one another in
one or more characteristics and different
from members of other segments.
Consumers’ Impact on Marketing Strategy
• The segmentation process is valid when these criteria
are met :
•
Consumers within the segment are similar to
one another in terms
of product needs, and
these needs are different from consumers in
other segments.
•
Important differences among segments can be
identified.
•
The segment is large enough to be profitable.
•
Consumers in the segment can be reached by
an appropriate marketing mix.
•
The consumers in the segment will respond in
the desired way to
the marketing mix
designed for them.
Consumers’ Impact on Marketing Strategy
Variables for market segmentation
Consumers’ Impact on Marketing Strategy
 Marketers have realized that the key to
success is building lifetime relationships
between brands and customers – called
relationship marketing – an effort to keep in
touch on regular basis and giving customers
reasons to maintain a bond with company
over time.
 Data base marketing, involves tracking
consumers’ buying habits and crafting
products and information tailored precisely to
people’s wants and needs.
Marketing’s Impact on Consumers
 Popular culture; any forms of entertainment
consumed by the mass market is both a
product of and an inspirations for marketers.
This cultural influence is hard to ignore , since
every thing is influenced by the marketing
system.
 One of the fundamental premises of
consumer behavior is that people buy
products not for what they do, but for what
they mean. This implies that the roles
products play and the meaning that the
products have go well beyond the tasks they
perform.
Marketing’s Impact on Consumers

Types of relationship consumer may have with a
product:
• Self-concept attachment – the product helps to establish
user’s identity.
• Nostalgic attachment – the product serves as a link with a
past self.
• Interdependence – the product is part of the user’s daily
routine.
• Love – the product elicits bonds of warmth, passion or
other strong emotion.
Marketing’s Impact on Consumers

Types of consumption activities :
• Consuming as experience – when the consumption is a
personal emotional or aesthetic goal in itself.
• Consuming as integration – using and manipulating
consumption objects to express aspects of the self.
• Consuming as classification – the activities that
consumers engage in to communicate their association
with objects, both to self and others.
• Consuming as play – consumers use objects to
participate in mutual experience and merge their
identities with that of a group.
Marketing’s Impact on Consumers
 One highly visible and controversial, by product of
sophisticated marketing strategies is the movement towards a
global consumer culture, in which people are united by their
common devotion to brand-name consumer goods, film stars
and/or rock stars.
 Prescribing ethical standards of conduct
Disclosure of all substantial risks associated with a product or
service
Identification of added features that will increase the cost
Avoidance of false or misleading advertising
Rejection of high-pressure or misleading sales tactics
Prohibition of selling or fund-raising under the guise of conducting
market research.
Marketing’s Impact on Consumers
 Marketing practices have detrimental effects
on society even though they are not explicitly
illegal. A crucial barometer of ethical
behaviour is what actions a marketer takes
once a company is made aware of a problem
with its advertising or products (socially
responsible behaviour)
Do Marketers
Manipulate
Consumers?
Do marketers create
artificial needs?
Is advertising
necessary?
Do marketers
promise miracles?