5
Consumer and Business Buyer
Behavior
ROAD MAP: Previewing the Concepts
• Understand the consumer market and the major
factors that influence consumer buyer behavior.
• Identify and discuss the stages in the buyer decision
•
•
•
process.
Describe the adoption and diffusion process for new
products.
Define the business market and identify the major
factors that influence business buyer behavior.
List and define the steps in the business buying
decision process.
5-2
Consumer Buying Behavior
• Refers to the buying behavior of people
who buy goods and services for personal
use.
• These people make up the consumer
market.
• The central question for marketers is:
– “How do consumers respond to various
marketing efforts the company might use?”
5-3
Model of Buyer Behavior
5-4
Factors Influencing Consumer Behavior
Cultural
Social
Personal
Psychological
Culture
Reference
Groups
Age & LifeCycle Stage
Motivation
Family
Occupation
Roles &
Status
Economic
Situation
Subculture
Social Class
Perception
Learning
Beliefs &
Attitudes
Lifestyle
Personality &
Self-Concept
5-5
Culture
Culture is the Most Basic Cause of a
Person's Wants and Behavior.
Culture is learned from family, church,
school, peers, colleagues.
Culture includes basic values, perceptions,
wants, and behaviors.
5-6
Culture
Subculture
• Groups of people with shared
value systems based on
common life experiences.
Major Groups
• Hispanic Consumers
• African-American Consumers
• Asian-American Consumers
• Mature Consumers
5-7
Marketing to a Subculture
Sears is widely considered one of the most successful marketers to
the U.S. Hispanic population. Its Spanish-language Web site features
content and events carefully tailored to Hispanic consumers.
5-8
Culture
Social Class
• Society’s relatively
permanent and ordered
divisions whose members
share similar values,
interests, and behaviors.
• Measured by a
combination of:
occupation, income,
education, wealth, and
other variables.
5-9
Major
American
Social
Classes
5-10
Social Factors
Groups
Membership
Reference (opinion leaders)
Aspirational
Family
Most important consumer
buying organization
Roles &
Status
Role =Expected activities
Status =
Esteem given to role by society
5-11
Opinion Leaders
Marketers use buzz marketing by enlisting or even creating
opinion leaders to spread the word about their brands.
5-12
Personal Factors
Age and Life-Cycle Stage
Occupation
Economic Situation
5-13
Personal Factors
Lifestyle
Pattern of Living as Expressed
in Psychographics
Activities
Interests
Opinions
5-14
Jeep
• Shows how a person’s
•
•
lifestyle can help
marketers understand
consumer values and
their impact on buying
behavior.
Ad targets people who
want to “leave the
civilized world behind.”
Click Here to Visit
Jeep's Website
5-15
Personality & Self-Concept
5-16
Personality & Self-Concept
• Personality refers to the unique
psychological characteristics that lead to
relatively consistent and lasting responses
to one’s own environment.
• Generally defined in terms of traits.
• Self-concept suggests that people’s
possessions contribute to and reflect their
identities.
5-17
Maslow’s
Hierarchy
of Needs
5-18
Perception
• Perception
– Information Inputs
– Interpretation
– Selective Exposure
– Selective Distortion
– Selective Retention
5-19
Perception
• Information inputs are the
sensations received through the
sense organs.
• Perception is the process of
selecting, organizing, and
interpreting information inputs to
produce meaning.
5-20
Perception
• Selective Attention: the process of
selecting some inputs to attend to while
ignoring others.
• An input is more likely to reach a
person’s awareness if it relates to an
anticipated event.
5-21
Perception
• Selective distortion is an individual’s
changing or twisting of information
when it is inconsistent with personal
feelings or beliefs.
• Selective retention is remembering
information that supports personal
feelings and beliefs and forgetting
inputs that do not.
5-22
Learning
• Learning: a relatively permanent change
in behavior due to experience.
• Interplay of drives, stimuli, cues,
responses, and reinforcement.
• Strongly influenced by the consequences
of an individual’s behavior
– Behaviors with satisfying results tend to be
repeated.
– Behaviors with unsatisfying results tend not
to be repeated.
5-23
Beliefs & Attitudes
• A belief is a descriptive thought that a
person holds about something.
• Attitude describes a person’s consistently
favorable or unfavorable evaluations,
feelings, and tendencies toward an object
or idea.
5-24
Interactive Student
Assignment
• Choose a partner and talk about some
product for which each of you has strong
attitudes. These attitudes can be either
positive or negative. What led you to
have these attitudes toward these
products?
5-25
Buying Decision Process
5-26
Buying Decision Process
Step #1 = Need Recognition
• Buyer becomes aware of a difference
between a desired state and an actual
condition.
• Individual may be unaware of the
problem or need.
• Marketers may use sales personnel,
advertising, and packaging to trigger
recognition of needs or problems.
• Recognition speed can be slow or fast.
5-27
Need Recognition
Need recognition can
be triggered by
advertising. This ad
from America’s Dairy
Farmers alerts
consumers of their
need for more dairy
products to build
strong bones.
5-28
Buying Decision Process
Step #2 = Information Search
• This stage begins after the consumer
becomes aware of the problem or need.
• The search for information about
products will help resolve the problem
or satisfy the need.
• There are various sources of
information.
5-29
Sources of Information
Personal
Commercial
Public
Experiential
- Most effective source
- Family, friends, neighbors
- Advertising, salespeople
- Receives the most information
from these sources
- Mass Media
- Consumer-rating groups
- Handling the product
- Examining the product
- Using the product
5-30
Buying Decision Process
Consumers May Use Careful Calculations & Logical Thinking
Consumers May Buy on Impulse and Rely on Intuition
Consumers May Make Buying Decisions on Their Own
Consumer May Make Decisions After Talking With Others
5-31
Buying Decision Process
Factors That Influence Purchase Decision
Attitudes
Of
Others
Unexpected
Situational
Factors
5-32
Buying Decision Process
Consumer satisfaction is a function of consumer
expectations and perceived product performance.
Performance < Expectations
Performance = Expectations
Performance > Expectations
Disappointment
Satisfaction
Delight
5-33
Buying Decision Process
• Cognitive dissonance: a buyer’s doubts
shortly after a purchase about whether it
was the right decision.
5-34
Stages in the Adoption Process
1. Awareness: Consumer becomes aware of the new
product, but lacks information about it.
2. Interest: Consumer seeks information about new
product.
3. Evaluation: Consumer considers whether trying
the new product makes sense.
4. Trial: Consumer tries new product on a small scale
to improve his or her estimate of its value.
5. Adoption: Consumer decides to make full and
regular use of the new product.
5-35
The Adoption Process
This ad encourages
trial by offering a
coupon.
5-36
Product Adopter Categories
• When an organization introduces a new
product, people do not begin the adoption
process at the same time, nor do they
move through it at the same speed.
• Adopters are divided into five categories.
5-37
Product Adopter Categories
• Product Adopter Categories
2.5% Innovators
16% Laggards
34% Late Majority
13.5% Early Adopters
34% Early Majority
5-38
Product Adopter Categories
Group #1 - Innovators
• Innovators are the first adopters of new
products.
• They are venturesome – they try new
ideas at some risk.
5-39
Product Adopter Categories
Group #2 – Early Adopters
• Early adopters are guided by respect.
• They are opinion leaders in their
communities and adopt new ideas early
but carefully.
5-40
Product Adopter Categories
Group #3 – Early Majority
• Early majority are deliberate.
• Although they rarely are leaders, they
adopt new ideas before the average
person.
5-41
Product Adopter Categories
Group #4 – Late Majority
• Late majority are skeptical.
• They adopt an innovation only after a
majority of people have tried it.
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Product Adopter Categories
Group #5 - Laggards
• Laggards are tradition bound.
• They are suspicious of changes and adopt
the innovation only when it has become
something of a tradition itself.
5-43
Interactive Student
Assignment
• Choose a partner and come up with a list
of items for which you fit into each of the
product adopter categories. What is it
about you that puts you into a different
category for each of those products?
5-44
Influence of Product Characteristics
on Rate of Adoption
• Relative Advantage: Is the innovation superior to
•
•
•
•
existing products?
Compatibility: Does the innovation fit the values
and experience of the target market?
Complexity: Is the innovation difficult to
understand or use?
Divisibility: Can the innovation be used on a
limited basis?
Communicability: Can results be easily observed
or described to others?
5-45
New Product Adoption Rate
Some products
catch on almost
overnight. Others,
such as HDTV,
take a long time to
gain acceptance.
5-46
Business Markets &
Business Buyer Behavior
• The business market is vast and involves far
•
more dollars and items than do consumer
markets.
Business buyer behavior refers to the buying
behavior of the organizations that buy goods
and services for use in the production of other
products and services that are sold, rented, or
supplied to others.
5-47
Business Markets
• Market Structure and
Demand:
– Contains far fewer but
larger buyers.
– Customers are more
geographically
concentrated.
– Business demand is
derived from
consumer demand.
• Nature of the Buying
Unit:
– Business purchases
involve more decision
participants.
– Business buying
involves a more
professional
purchasing effort.
5-48
Types of Decisions and the
Decision Process
Business buyers usually face
more complex buying decisions.
Business buying process
tends to be more formalized.
Buyers and sellers are much
more dependent on each other.
5-49
Business Markets
B2B marketers often roll up their sleeves and partner with customers
to jointly create solutions. Here, Fujitsu promises, “Our technology
will keep you moving upward, and our people won’t let you down.”
5-50
Model of Business Buyer
Behavior
5-51
Major Types of Buying Situations
Straight Rebuy
The buyer routinely reorders
something without any
modifications.
Modified Rebuy
The buyer wants to modify
product specifications,
prices, terms, or suppliers.
New Task
The buyer purchases a
product or service for the
first time.
5-52
Participants in the Business
Buying Process
• Decision-making unit of
•
•
a buying organization is
called its buying center.
Not a fixed and
formally identified unit.
Membership will vary
for different products
and buying situations.
• Buying Center
Members:
–
–
–
–
–
Users
Deciders
Influencers
Buyers
Gatekeepers
5-53
Buying Center
Allegiance Healthcare Corporation deals with a wide range of
buying influences, from purchasing executives and hospital
administrators to the surgeons who actually use its products.
5-54
Major Influences on Business
Buyer Behavior
5-55
The Business Buying Process
5-56
e-Procurement
• Advantages for buyers:
– Access to new suppliers
– Lowers purchasing costs
– Hastens order processing and delivery
• Advantages for vendors:
– Share information with customers
– Sell products and services
– Provide customer support services
– Maintain ongoing customer relationships
5-57
e-Procurement
Public trading exchanges
like the auto industry’s
Covisint exchange offer a
“faster, more efficient way
to communicate,
collaborate, buy, sell,
trade, and exchange
information—business to
business.” The exchange
handled more than $50
billion in auto-parts
orders last year.
Click Here to Visit Covisint's Website
5-58
Rest Stop: Reviewing the Concepts
1. Describe the consumer market and the major
2.
3.
4.
5.
factors that influence consumer buyer behavior.
Identify and discuss the stages in the buyer
decision process.
Describe the adoption and diffusion process for
new products.
Define the business market and identify the major
factors that influence business buyer behavior.
List and define the steps in the business buying
decision process.
5-59