Contents
Lecture 1: Intro & Organization .................................................................................................................... 3
Chapter 1 Consumer Behavior and Consumer Research .......................................................................... 4
Chapter 2 Creating Marketing Strategies for Customer-Centric Organizations ....................................... 5
Lecture 2: Consumer Decision Making and Motivation................................................................................ 7
Chapter 3 The Consumer Decision Process ............................................................................................ 10
Chapter 4 Pre-Purchase Processes: Need Recognition, Search, and Evaluation .................................... 11
Chapter 7 Demographics, psychographics, and personality ................................................................... 12
Chapter 8 Consumer Motivation ............................................................................................................ 14
Lecture 3: Consumer Perception & Information processing ...................................................................... 15
Chapter 14 Making Contact .................................................................................................................... 15
Chapter 15 Shaping Consumers’ Opinions.............................................................................................. 16
Chapter 16 Helping Consumers to Remember ....................................................................................... 17
The interaction of retail density and music tempo: Effects on shopper responses ............................... 18
Lecture 4: Consumer Research & Attitudes ................................................................................................ 18
Chapter 5 Purchase ................................................................................................................................. 19
Chapter 6 Post-Purchase Processes: Consumption and Post-Consumption Evaluations ....................... 20
Chapter 9 Consumer Knowledge ............................................................................................................ 21
Chapter 10 Consumer Beliefs, Feelings, Attitudes, and Intentions ........................................................ 22
Implicit consumer preferences and their influence on product choice ................................................. 23
Adapting to a retail environment: Modeling consumer-environment interactions ............................... 23
Lecture 7: Social Influences......................................................................................................................... 24
Chapter 11 Culture, Ethnicity, and Social Class ...................................................................................... 24
Chapter 12 Family and Household Influences ........................................................................................ 26
Chapter 13 Group and Personal Influence.............................................................................................. 27
Market mavens: Psychological influences .............................................................................................. 29
Lecture 8: Dissatisfaction ............................................................................................................................ 30
Service validity and service reliability of search, experience and credence services: A scenario study 31
Lecture 9: New products ............................................................................................................................. 31
Diffusion of preventive innovations........................................................................................................ 32
Lecture 1: Intro & Organization
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Macro-level: economics/econometrics, sociology, business administration. Analyses: trends
(over time), competition analyses, SWOT, sales figures, Nielsen data, market share.
Micro-level: consumer psychology, communication studies, social psychology, environmental
psychology, decision making research, methodology. Individual consumer behavior. Consumer
decision making toward obtaining, consuming and divesting products and services.
Consumer behavior: activities people undertake when obtaining, consuming, and disposing of products
and services. Also, a field of study that focuses on consumer activities.
Integrated marketing communications, IMC: a new way of looking at the whole, where once we saw
only parts such as advertising, public relations, sales promotion, purchasing, employee communications,
and so forth, to look at it the way the consumers sees it – as a flow of information from indistinguishable
sources.
4 P’s (product, price, place, promotion): advertising, sales promotion, sponsorship, pr, point-ofpurchase communication, exhibitions, trade fairs, direct marketing, personal selling, viral marketing (WO-M), 360° marketing, product design, interior design, relationship marketing.
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Rational perspective: maximize profit, optimal decision making; all alternatives & each piece of
information are weighted and integrated into decision making (formal decision making model).
Non-rational (psychological) perspective: how it actually goes (is non-rational!).
Consumer Decision Making Model (Blackwell et al., 2006)
Chapter 1 Consumer Behavior and Consumer Research
What is Consumer Behavior?
Consumer behavior is defined as activities people undertake when obtaining, consuming, and disposing
of products and services.
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Obtaining refers to the activities leading up to and including the purchase or receipt of a
product.
Consuming means how, where, when and under what circumstances consumers use products.
Disposing refers to how consumers get rid of products and packaging.
Consumer behavior also can be defined as a field of study that focuses on consumer activities.
Consumption analysis refers to why and how people use products in addition to why and how they buy.
Marketing concept – the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and
distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational
objectives.
Why Study Consumer Behavior?
Marketing is the process of transforming or changing an organization to have what people will buy.
Evolution of Consumer Behavior
Supply chain, defined as all the organizations involved in taking a product from inception to final
consumption.
Marketing era: a time when productive capacity exceeded demand, causing firms to change their
orientation away from manufacturing capabilities and toward the needs of consumers, thus adopting a
marketing orientation.
Behavioral sciences took center stage and provided a toolbox of theories and methodologies borrowed
by innovative marketing organizations, including:
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Motivation research: the act of uncovering hidden or unrecognized motivation through guided
interviewing.
Positivism: the process of using rigorous empirical techniques to discover generalizable
explanations and laws.
Postmodernism: an approach to understanding consumer behavior that uses qualitative and
other forms of nonexperimental research methods.
Marketing orientation: a focus on how an organization adapts to consumers.
Consumer orientation: the process of bringing product design, logistics, manufacturing, and retailing
together as a customer-centric demand chain.
How Do You Study Consumers?
Methods can be classified into three major methodological approaches: (1) observation, (2) interviews
and surveys, and (3) experimentation.
An observational approach to consumer research consists primarily of observing consumer behaviors in
different situations. In-home observation places marketers inside people’s homes to examine exactly
how products are consumed. Shadowing is a method in which a researcher accompanies or “shadows”
consumers through the shopping and consumption processes, asking questions about each step of the
process. Surveys are an efficient way of gathering information from a large sample of consumers by
asking questions and recording responses. Interviewer bias: the potential for an interviewer to affect
the responses of the interviewee, perhaps because of a desire to please the interviewer. Focus groups
usually consist of eight to twelve people involved in a discussion led by a moderator skilled in persuading
consumers to discuss thoroughly a topic of interest to the researcher. Longitudinal studies involve
repeated measures of consumer activities over time to determine changes in their opinions, buying and
consumption behaviors. Experimentation attempt to understand cause-and-effect relationships by
carefully manipulating independent variables to determine how these changes affect dependent
variables. A laboratory experiment is conducted in a physical environment that permits maximum
control of variables being studied. A field experiment takes place in a natural setting such as a home or
a store.
The Underlying Principles of Consumer Behavior
Market segments: a group of consumers with similar needs, behavior, or other characteristics, which
are identified through the market segmentation process.
Intermarket segmentation: the identification of a group of customers that are similar in a variety of
characteristics that transcend geographic boundaries.
Chapter 2 Creating Marketing Strategies for Customer-Centric Organizations
The Century of the Consumer
Consumer analysis: the process of understanding consumer trends, global consumer markets, models to
predict purchase and consumption patterns, and communication methods to reach target markets most
effectively. Strategy is a decisive allocation of resources (capital, technology, and people) in a particular
direction. Customer-centricity is a strategic commitment to focus every resource of the firm on serving
and delighting profitable customers.
From Market Analysis to Market Strategy: Where Does Consumer Behavior Fit?
Value is the difference between what consumers give up for a product and the benefits they receive.
Marketing strategy involves the allocation of resources to develop and sell products or services that
consumers will perceive to provide more value than competitive products or services. The process
includes market analysis, market segmentation, brand strategy and implementation, with the study of
consumers at the core. Market analysis is the process of analyzing changing consumer trends, current
and potential competitors, company strengths and resources, and the technological, legal and economic
environments. Consumer insight can be defined as an understanding of consumers’ expressed and
unspoken needs and realities that affect how they make life, brand, and product choices. Market
segmentation is the process of identifying groups of people who behave in similar ways to each other,
but somewhat differently than other groups.
A market segment is a group of consumers with similar behavior and needs that differs from those of
the entire or mass market. The opposite of market segmentation is market aggregation or mass
marketing, which occurs when organizations choose to market and sell the same product or service to
all consumers. Mass customization is customizing goods or services for individual customers in high
volumes and at relatively low costs. Determining the attractiveness of a market segment involves
analyzing segments based on the following four criteria.
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Measurability refers to the ability to obtain information about the size, nature, and behavior of
a market segment.
Accessibility is the degree to which segments can be reached.
Substantiality refers to the size of the market.
Congruity refers to how similar members within the segment exhibit behaviors or characteristics
that correlate with consumption behavior.
The first element of the marketing mix is product, which includes the total bundle of utilities (or benefits)
obtained by consumers in the exchange process. The second element of the marketing mix is place. In
this phase, firms decide the most effective outlets through which to sell their products and how best to
get them there. The third element of the marketing mix is price, or the total bundle of disutility’s (costs)
given up by consumers in exchange for a product. The final element of the marketing mix is promotion,
including advertising, public relations, sales promotion, and personal sales. A brand is a product or
product line, sore or service with an identifiable set of benefits, wrapped in a recognizable personality.
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Functional elements: characteristics of a brand (including performance, quality, price, reliability,
and logistics) that solve a problem for the consumer.
Emotional elements: characteristics of a brand (including image, personality, style, and evoked
feelings) that create an emotional connection between customers and the brand.
A brand promise describes what consumers can expect in exchange for their money. Brand equity is the
difference in value created by a brand less the cost of creating the brand. Brand personality is the
reflection consumers see of themselves or think they will develop by using a brand. Brand protection, by
promising a certain outcome, brands reduce the risk to consumers that a product or service may not
deliver as expected.
Customer Loyalty and Retention Strategies
Customer lifetime value (CLV): the value to the company of a customer over the whole time the
customer relates to the company.
Global Marketing Strategy
Cross-cultural analysis is the comparison of similarities and differences in behavioral and physical
aspects of cultures. Cultural empathy refers to the ability to understand inner logic and coherence of
other ways of life and refrain from judging other value systems.
Ethnography, describing and understanding consumer behavior by interviewing and observing
consumers in real-world situations, can help analyze subtle ways buyers and sellers interact in the
marketplace and can be useful in business negotiation processes. Intermarket segmentation is the
identification of groups of consumers who transcend traditional market or geographic boundaries. A
useful technique for overcoming language problems in back-translation. In this procedure, a message is
translated from its original language to the translated language and then back to the original by several
translators.
Lecture 2: Consumer Decision Making and Motivation
Evolution of Consumer Behaviour
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1850-1950 demand > supply
manufacturing orientation
50’s demand = supply
product orientation
Product attributes: quality, performance
1955 demand < supply
selling orientation
Growing market, technological explosion. Consumers: decision making strategies, criteria.
Producers; push-strategy in selling/advertising, (aggressive) persuasion.
70’s >
marketing orientation
Ad hoc survey’s: large scale, large sample, pre-post advertising campaign survey’s (measuring
brand awareness, ad awareness, market share).
80’s > Customer needs
consumer orientation
Habitual decision making: a decision to buy based on a past purchase; the least complex of all decision
processes.
Limited problem solving (LPS): problem solving of a low degree of complexity that influences
consumers’ actions.
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Lexicographic strategy (noncompensatory evaluation strategy): brands are compared initially on
the most important attribute. If one of the brands is perceived as superior based on that
attribute, it is selected. If two or more brands are perceived as equally good, they are then
compared on the second most important attribute. This continues until the tie is broken.
Elimination by aspects strategy (noncompensatory evaluation strategy): resembles the
lexicographic approach. As before, brands are first evaluated on the most important attribute.
Now, however, the consumer imposes cutoffs (must be under 2 dollars e.g.).
Conjunctive strategy (noncompensatory evaluation strategy): Cutoffs are established for each
salient attribute. Each brand is compared, one at a time, against this set of cutoffs. If the brand
meets the cutoffs for all the attributes it is chosen.
Extended problem solving (EPS): problem solving of a higher degree of complexity that influences
consumers’ actions.
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Simple additive (compensatory evaluation strategy): an evaluation strategy by which the
consumer counts or adds the number of times each alternative is judged favorably in terms of
the set of salient evaluative criteria.
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Weighted additive (compensatory evaluation strategy): unfamiliar, expensive products, high risk,
strong cognitive or emotional involvement.
Motivational conflict: what consumers experience when they must make tradeoffs in satisfying their
needs. Motivational conflict can take one of three basic forms.
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Approach-approach conflict occurs when the person must decide between two or more
desirable alternatives.
Avoidance-avoidance conflict involves deciding between two or more undesirable alternatives.
Approach-avoidance exists when a chosen course of action has both positive and negative
consequences.
Freud (TENTAMEN!!!)
 Orally passive fixation: mouth, suck, and swallow (smoking, eating, candy)
 Orally aggressive fixation: teeth, chew (chewing, gnawing, candy, chips)
 Anal retentive fixation: bowel, bladder, elimination (organizing, neatness)
 Anal expulsive fixation (creativity, spending, gambling)
 Phallic fixation: genitals, oepidus & electra complex (competition, status oriented products,
sports)
 Latency “fixation”: dormant sexuality (sex industry?)
 Genital fixation: mature sexual interests (Viagra)
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (1970) (TENTAMEN!!!)
1. Self-actualization needs: self-fulfillment, enriching experiences
2. Esteem needs: accomplishment, self-respect, prestige
3. Social needs: companionship, friendship, love
4. Safety needs: protection, security
5. Psychological needs: food, water, sleep
Customer needs pyramid (Van Hagen, 2003)
The VALS 2 Technique
Values and Lifestyle System; consumers buy products and services and seek experiences that fulfill their
characteristic preferences and give shape, substance, and satisfaction to their lives. An individuals’
primary motivation determines what in particular about the self or the world is the meaningful core that
governs his or her activities. Consumers are inspired by one of three primary motivations: ideals
(knowledge and principles), achievement (look for products that demonstrate success to their peers),
and self-expression (desire social or physical activity, variety and risk).
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Innovator: these consumers are on the leading edge of change, have the highest incomes, and
such high self-esteem and abundant resources that they can indulge in any or all selforientations.
Thinkers: these consumers are the high-resource group of those who are motivated by ideals.
They are mature, responsible, well-educated professionals.
Believers: these consumers are the low-resource group of those who are motivated by ideals.
Achievers: these consumers are the high-resource group of those who are motivated by
achievement.
Strivers: these consumers are the low-resource group of those who are motivated by
achievements.
Experiencers: these consumers are the high-resource group of those who are motivated by selfexpression.
Makers: these consumers are the low-resource group of those who are motivated by selfexpression.
Survivors: these consumers have the lowest incomes.
Chapter 3 The Consumer Decision Process
The Consumer Decision Process Model
The consumer decision process (CDP) model represents a road map of consumers’ minds that
marketers and managers can use to help guide product mix, communication, and sales strategies. Need
recognition occurs when an individual senses a difference between what he or she perceives to be ideal
versus the actual state of affairs.
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Internal search: the scanning and retrieval of decision-relevant knowledge from memory.
External search: the act of collecting information from one’s environment.
Different consumers employ different evaluative criteria – the standards and specifications used to
compare different products and brands. Consumers think of salient attributes such as price, reliability,
and factors that probably vary little between similar types of products, as potentially the most important.
Determinant attributes usually determine which brand or store consumers choose. Satisfaction occurs
when consumers’ expectations are matched by perceived performance. When experiences and
performance fall short of expectations, dissatisfaction occurs.
Variables That Shape the Decision Process
Information processing: the process by which information is received, processed, and stored in memory.
Learning: the process by which experience leads to changes in knowledge and behavior.
Types of Decision Process
When the decision process is especially detailed and rigorous, extended problem solving (EPS) or
problem solving of a higher degree of complexity that influences consumers’ actions, often occurs. The
other extreme of the decision-making continuum is limited problem solving (LPS), or problem solving of
a lower degree of complexity that influences customers’ actions.
With limited problem solving, there is little information search or evaluation before purchase; in other
words, need recognition leads to buying action; extensive search and evaluation are avoided because
the purchase does not assume great importance. EPS and LPS are extremes on a decision process
continuum, but many decisions occur along the middle of the continuum and require midrange problem
solving. Impulse purchase is an unplanned, spur-of-the-moment action triggered by product display or
point-of-sale promotion.
Factors Influencing the Extent of Problem Solving
Involvement is the level of perceived personal importance and interest evoked by a stimulus within a
specific situation.
Chapter 4 Pre-Purchase Processes: Need Recognition, Search, and Evaluation
Need Recognition
Spyware is software that’s downloaded onto a computer without the permission of the owner and that
collects personal information such as the user’s online activities, financial records, and passwords.
Generic need recognition occurs when the need for an entire product category is stimulated. Selective
need recognition occurs when the need for a specific brand within a product category (selective
demand) is stimulated.
Search
Search, the second stage of the decision-making process, represents the motivated activation of
knowledge stored in memory or acquisition of information from the environment about potential need
satisfiers. Internal search involves scanning and retrieving decision-relevant knowledge stored in
memory. External search consists of collecting information from the marketplace. External search
motivated by an upcoming purchase decision is known as pre-purchase search. This type of external
search differs from ongoing search, in which information acquisition takes place on a relatively regular
basis regardless of sporadic purchase needs. External search set: those choice alternatives that
consumers gather information about during pre-purchase search. Haptic information represents
information acquired by touch. Opinion leaders or influential’s are other consumers who are respected
for their expertise in a particular product category. “Funnel” search strategy: when people begin their
internet search with generic terms but eventually refine their search with terms focusing on specific
products. According to a cost versus benefit perspective, people search for decision-relevant
information when the perceived benefits of the new information are greater than the perceive costs of
acquiring this information. Perceived risk represents consumers’ uncertainty about the potential
positive and negative consequences of the purchase decision.
Pre-Purchase Evaluation
The manner in which choice alternatives are evaluated is the focus of our third stage of the consumer
decision-making process, pre-purchase evaluation. Those alternatives considered during decision
making compose what is known as the consideration set (also known as the evoked set).
Retrieval set: the recall of choice alternatives from memory. According to a categorization process,
evaluation of a choice alternative depends on the particular category to which it is assigned. In contrast,
under a piecemeal process, an evaluation is derived from consideration of the alternative’s advantages
and disadvantages along important product dimensions. Brand extensions, in which a well-known and
respected brand name from one product category is extended into other product categories, is one way
companies employ categorization to their advantage. A cutoff is simply a restriction or requirement for
acceptable performance. Signals are stimuli used to make inferences about the product.
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Lexicographic strategy (noncompensatory evaluation strategy): an evaluation strategy in which
brands are compared initially on their most important attribute.
Elimination by aspects strategy (noncompensatory evaluation strategy): an evaluation strategy
resembling the lexicographic strategy but in which the consumer imposes cutoffs.
Conjunctive strategy (noncompensatory evaluation strategy): an evaluation strategy employing
a comparison of each brand to cutoffs that are established for each salient attribute of the
brand.
Simple additive (compensatory evaluation strategy): an evaluation strategy by which the
consumer counts or adds the number of times each alternative is judged favorably in terms of
the set of salient evaluative criteria.
Chapter 7 Demographics, psychographics, and personality
Analyzing and Predicting Consumer Behavior
Demographics: the size, structure, and distribution of a population. Macro-marketing: the aggregate
performance of marketing in society.
Changing Structure of Consumer Markets
Economic demographics: the study of the economic characteristics of a nation’s population. Birthrate is
the number of live births per 1,000 population in a given year.
Birthrates should not be confused with natural increase, which is the surplus of births over deaths in a
given period. The fertility rate is the number of live births per 1,000 women of childbearing age (defined
as 15 to 44 years). Total fertility rate (TFR) is the average number of children that would be born alive to
a woman during her lifetime if she were to pass through all of her childbearing years conforming to the
age-specific fertility rates of a given year. Population momentum, which recognizes that the future
growth of any population will be influenced by its present age distribution.
Changing Age Distribution in the United States
A cohort is any group of individuals linked as a group in some way. Cognitive age is the age one
perceives one’s self to be.
Changing Geography of Demand
Where people live, how they earn and spend their money and other socioeconomic factors – referred to
as geodemography – are critical to understand consumer demand. Suburbs have grown rapidly, but
today exurbs – areas beyond the suburbs – are experiencing the fastest growth. The metropolitan
statistical area (MSA) is defined as a free-standing metropolitan area, surrounded by nonmetropolitan
counties and not closely related with other metropolitan areas. A primary metropolitan statistical area
(PMSA) is a metropolitan area that is closely related to another city. A grouping of closely related PMSAs
is a consolidated metropolitan statistical area (CMSA).
Economic Resources
Income is defined as money from wages and salaries as well as interest and welfare payments.
Consumption is heavily influenced by what consumers think will happen in the future referred to as
consumer confidence.
Wealth is a measure of a family’s net worth or assets in such things as bank accounts, stocks, and a
home, minus its liabilities such as home mortgage and credit card balances. Contra cyclical advertising is
the practice of increasing or at least maintaining advertising during economic slowdowns to gain market
share when competitors cut promotional activity.
Global Market Demographics and Attractiveness
A trait is any distinguishable, relatively enduring way in which one individual differs from another. Trait
theory is perhaps most useful to marketing strategies in developing brand personality - the personality
consumers interpret from a specific brand.
Personal Values
Social values define “normal” behavior for a society or group. Personal values define “normal” behavior
for an individual. Laddering refers to in-depth probing directed toward uncovering higher-level
meanings at both the benefit (attribute) level and the value level.
Lifestyle Concepts and Measurement
Lifestyle is a summary construct defined as patterns in which people live and spend time and money.
Psychographics is an operational technique to measure lifestyles; it provides quantitative measures and
can be used with the large samples needed for definition of market segments. The term psychographics
is often used interchangeably with AIO measures – statements that describe the activities, interests and
opinions of consumers. (TENTAMENVRAAG!!!) AIO Components are defined by the following categories.
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Activity: an action such as bowling, shopping in a store, or talking on the telephone.
Interest: the degree of excitement that accompanies both special and continuing attention to an
object, event, or topic.
Opinion: a spoken or written “answer” that a person gives in response to a “question”.
Chapter 8 Consumer Motivation
Types of Consumer Needs
Phising: online scams in which crooks pose as representatives of banks or companies sending e-mails
soliciting credit card and other personal information from consumers. The term conspicuous
consumption is often used to describe purchases motivated to some extent by the desire to show other
people just how successful we are. Self concept: the mental images or impressions one has of oneself.
Impulse buying occurs when consumers unexpectedly experience a sudden and powerful urge to buy
something immediately. Self-gifts are things that we buy or do as a way of rewarding, consoling, or
motivating ourselves.
Motivational Conflict and Need Priorities
Motivational conflict: what consumers experience when they must make tradeoffs in satisfying their
needs. Motivational conflict can take one of three basic forms.
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Approach-approach conflict occurs when the person must decide between two or more
desirable alternatives.
Avoidance-avoidance conflict involves deciding between two or more undesirable alternatives.
Approach-avoidance exists when a chosen course of action has both positive and negative
consequences.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (tentamen!!!):
6. Self-actualization needs: self-fulfillment, enriching experiences
7. Esteem needs: accomplishment, self-respect, prestige
8. Social needs: companionship, friendship, love
9. Safety needs: protection, security
10. Psychological needs: food, water, sleep
(Need for cognition hoort hier NIET in thuis!!!)
Benefit segmentation involves dividing consumers into different market segments based on the benefits
they seek (i.e., the needs they want fulfilled) from product purchase and consumption.
Motivational Intensity
Motivational intensity represents how strongly consumers are motivated to satisfy a particular need.
The Challenge of Understanding Consumer Motivation
Unconscious motivation: being unaware of what really motivates one’s behavior.
Motivating Consumers
Premiums: products that are offered as an incentive for the purchase of another product. Valuediscounting hypothesis predicts that products offered as a free premium will be valued less.
Loyalty programs try to motivate repeat buying by providing rewards to customers based on how much
business they do with a company.
Lecture 3: Consumer Perception & Information processing
Priming: when an earlier stimulus temporarily activates a ‘construct’ (scheme, attitude, stereo-type) in
memory that influences response to a later stimuli.
Chapter 14 Making Contact
Exposure
Exposure occurs when there is physical proximity to a stimulus that allows one or more of a person’s
five senses the opportunity to be activated. This activation happens when a stimulus meets or exceeds
the lower threshold: the minimum amount of stimulus intensity necessary for sensation to occur.
Product placement: a technique in which companies pay to have their products embedded within an
entertainment vehicle. A permission-based e-mail is one which recipients have previously granted
permission to a commercial sender to contact them in this fashion. In contrast, spam is unsolicited
commercial e-mail. Viral marketing occurs when a company creates something (linked sometimes only
tangentially to the company’s product) that is so compelling than consumers spontaneously pass the
“something” along to others they know. Buzz refers to how much attention has been generated by a
marketing activity. Another new advertising medium is advergaming, which are games containing
product associations. Zapping: the act of switching channels via remote control during a television
program’s commercial breaks. The cousin of zapping is zipping, in which a person fast-forwards through
commercials when watching recorded programming. Habituation occurs when a stimulus becomes so
familiar and ordinary that it loses its attention-getting ability. Advertising wearout is the term used to
describe ads that lose their effectiveness because of overexposure.
Attention
Attention: the second stage of information processing representing the amount of thinking focused in a
particular direction.
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Sensory memory refers to that part of mental capacity used when initially analyzing a stimulus
detected by one of our five senses.
Short-term memory is where thinking occurs.
Long-term memory is the mental warehouse containing all of our knowledge.
The length of time short-time memory can be focused on a single stimulus or thought (i.e., the span of
attention) is not very long. The term permission marketing refers to asking consumers for their
permission to send them product-related materials.
Isolation involves placing only a few stimuli in an otherwise barren perceptual field. The notion that
people are influenced by stimuli below their conscious level of awareness is often referred to as
subliminal persuasion.
Chapter 15 Shaping Consumers’ Opinions
Opinion Formation
The first time we develop a belief, feeling, or attitude about something is called opinion formation.
Comprehension involves the interpretation of a stimulus. Stimulus categorization: when a stimulus is
classified using the mental concepts and categories stored in memory.
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Cognitive responses: the thoughts that occur during processing.
Affective responses: feelings that are experienced during processing.
According to classical conditioning, simply pairing one stimulus that spontaneously evokes certain
meanings and feelings with another stimulus can cause a transfer of these meanings and feelings from
one to the other (TENTAMEN!!!).
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Unconditioned stimulus: In Pavlov’s theory of classical conditioning, the stimulus that
automatically evokes a particular response (e.g., food).
Unconditioned response: In Pavlov’s theory of classical conditioning, the response evoked by
the unconditioned stimulus.
Conditioned stimulus: In Pavlov’s theory of classical conditioning, the new stimulus to which the
unconditioned response can be transferred (e.g., ringing a bell).
Conditioned response: In Pavlov’s theory of classical conditioning, the response arising from
conditioning that occurs to the unconditioned stimulus and response.
Central process: a process of opinion which opinions are formed from a thoughtful consideration of
relevant information. Opinions that arise without thinking about relevant information follow a
peripheral process. Peripheral cues are stimuli devoid of product-relevant information.
Opinion Change
Once an initial opinion has been formed, any subsequent modification in an existing opinion represents
opinion change. The differential threshold represents the smallest change in stimulus intensity that will
be noticed. According to Weber’s law, perceptions of change depend on more than simply the absolute
amount of change.
How Businesses Shape Consumers’ Opinions
Composite branding refers to the use of two well-known brand names on a product. Stimulus
generalization occurs when, for an existing stimulus-response relationship, the more similar a new
stimulus is to the existing one, the more likely it will evoke the same response. Nine-ending prices:
prices in which the last digit of a product’s price is the number 9. Reference pricing: the act of providing
information about a price other than that actually charged for the product as a way of influencing
consumers’ perceptions of the product’s expensiveness.
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Informational advertising appeals attempt to influence consumers’ beliefs about the advertised
product.
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Emotional advertising appeals try to influence consumers’ feelings about the advertised
product.
Utilitarian advertising appeals aim to influence consumers’ opinions about the advertised
product’s ability to perform its intended function.
Value-expressive advertising appeals attempt to influence consumers’ opinions about the
advertised product’s ability to communicate something about those who use the product.
Search claims are those that can be validated before purchase by examining information readily
available in the marketplace. Experience claims can also be verified but require product consumption in
order to do so. Sometimes advertising claims are such that verification of their accuracy is either
impossible or unlikely because they require more effort than consumers are willing to invest. These
claims are called credence claims. Objective claims are claims that focus on factual information that is
not subject to individual interpretations. Subjective claims, however, are claims that may evoke
different interpretations across individuals (TENTAMEN!!!). Match-up hypothesis: in product
endorsement, the use of endorsers is most effective when the endorsers are perceived as being the
appropriate spokespeople for the product to be endorsed. Gain-framed messages emphasize what is
attained by following the messages’ recommendations. In contrast, loss-framed messages emphasize
what cost may be incurred if the messages’ recommendations are not followed (Tentamen!!!). Loss
aversion: principle that says that losses loom larger than gains. “Pennies-a-day” strategy: a persuasion
strategy that decomposes a product’s price into its cost on a daily basis in order to make the price
appear less expensive. Scarcity effect: when an object is viewed as more desirable as its perceived
scarcity increases.
Chapter 16 Helping Consumers to Remember
Cognitive learning
Cognitive learning occurs when information processed in short-term memory is stored in long-term
memory. Rehearsal involves the mental repetition of information or, more formally, the recycling of
information through short-term memory. The amount of elaboration (the degree of integration
between the stimulus and existing knowledge) that occurs during processing influences the amount of
learning that takes place.
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Intentional learning: deliberate learning with the intent of later remembering what is learned.
Incidental learning: learning that occurs despite the absence of the intention to do so.
Mental representations refer to the particular manner in which information is stored in long-term
memory. The concept of dual coding proposes that information can be stored in both semantic and
visual forms. Associative network: a theory of memory organization that proposes that memory nodes
containing bits of information are linked to other memory nodes in a series of hierarchical networks.
Retrieval
Retrieval involves the activation of information stored in long-term memory that’s then transferred into
short-term memory.
A retrieval cue is a stimulus that activates information in memory relevant to the to-be-remembered
information. According to the concept of spreading activation, activating one memory node causes a
ripple effect that spreads throughout its linkages to other nodes. The failure to retrieve something from
memory is commonly known as forgetting. According to decay theory, memories grow weaker with the
passage of time. Interference theory proposes that the chances of retrieving a particular piece of
information become smaller as interference from other information becomes larger.
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Free recall: a type of recall measure that does not use any retrieval cues.
Cued recall: a type of recall measure in which certain types of retrieval cues are provided.
Day-after recall (DAR) measure: a measure that assesses consumers’ ability to recall the advertised
brand twenty-four hours after being exposed to an advertisement.
How Companies Can Help Consumers to Remember
Self-referencing involves relating a stimulus to one’s own self and experiences. Concrete words (such as
tree or dog) are those that can be visualized rather easily. In contrast, abstract words (such as
democracy or equality) are less amenable to visual representation. Brand name suggestiveness is the
extent to which a brand name conveys or reinforces a particular attribute or benefit offered by the
brand. Closure refers to the tendency to develop a complete picture or perception when elements in the
perceptual field are missing.
The interaction of retail density and music tempo: Effects on shopper
responses
Based on the schema incongruity model, it is found that shopper hedonic and utilitarian evaluations of
the shopping experience are highest under conditions of slow music/high density and fast music/low
density. The basic argument of the schema incongruity theory is that when faced with stimuli that are
mildly incongruent with prior expectations, individuals will engage in more elaborative information
processing.
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Hedonic value: reflects the entertainment and emotional worth of the shopping trip
Utilitarian value: reflects whether the shopping tasks were accomplished
Too much density can be compensated by ‘low arousal’ music (slow music). Up-tempo music may
distract from a boring environment. Density induces tension and confusion because of limited space.
Hedonic and utilitarian evaluations of the shopping experience are the highest under conditions of slow
music/high density and fast music/low density.
Lecture 4: Consumer Research & Attitudes
Attitude: a global evaluation of an object. Three dimensions:
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Direction (pleasant, unpleasant)
Intensity (very exciting, little exciting)
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Impact
Belief based attitude measure (Ajzen, 2002)
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Belief strength (belief that action will lead to consequence)
Evaluation: importance (evaluation of consequence)
(5*1) + (3*4) + (4*2) + (4*1) = 29
(5*4) + (3*3) + (4*4) + (4*3) = 57
SubWay get’s a higher score, even if you only look at the most important belief (healthy food)
(lexicographic strategy).
Chapter 5 Purchase
To Buy or Not to Buy
The decision to buy can lead to a fully planned purchase (both the product and brand are chosen in
advance), a partially planned purchase (intent to buy the product exists but brand choice is deferred
until shopping), or an unplanned purchase (both the product and brand are chosen at point of sale).
Data mining: the creation of a database of names for developing continuous communications and
relationships with the consumer.
Retailing and the Purchase Process
Store image: consumers’ overall perception of a store, which they rely on when choosing a store.
Determinants of Retailer Success or Failure
Image advertising uses visual components and words that help consumers form an expectation about
their experience in the store and about what kinds of consumers will be satisfied with the store’s
experience. Information advertising, on the other hand, provides details about products, prices, and
hours of store operation, locations, and other attributes that might influence purchase decisions.
The physical properties of the retail environment designed to create an effect on consumer purchases
are often referred to as store atmospherics. Colors within the store can also influence consumers’
perceptions and behavior. Consumers have rated retail interiors using cool colors as more positive,
attractive, and relaxing than those using warmer colors, which are sometimes most suitable for a store’s
exterior or display window to draw customers into the store (TENTAMEN!!!). Consumer logistics is the
speed and ease with which consumers move through the retail and shopping process.
The Changing Retail Landscape
Multichannel retailing: the act of reaching diverse consumer segments through a variety of formats
based on consumers’ lifestyles and shopping preferences. Hypermarket: a market that incorporates
breakthrough technology in handling materials from a warehouse-operating profile, providing both a
warehouse feel for consumers and a strong price appeal. Direct marketing refers to the strategies used
to reach consumers somewhere other than a store.
Direct selling is defined as any form of face-to-face contact between a salesperson and a customer away
from a fixed retail location. Inbound telemarketing refers to the use of a toll-free number to place
orders directly.
Consumer Resources: What People Spend When They Purchase
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Discretionary time: time during which consumers are not constrained by economic, legal, moral,
or physical compulsion or obligation.
Nondiscretionary time: time that is constrained by physical, social, and moral obligations.
Polychronic time use involves combining activities simultaneously. This concept has also been called
dual time usage and contrasts with performing only one activity at a time (monochronic time use).
Cognitive resources represent the mental capacity available for undertaking various informationprocessing activities. Capacity refers to the cognitive resources that an individual has available at any
given time for processing information. The allocation of cognitive capacity is known as attention.
Communicating with Consumers: Integrated Marketing Communications
Integrated marketing communications (IMC) is a systematic, cross-organizational marketing
communication process that is customer-centric, data-driven, technically anchored, and branding
effective.
Chapter 6 Post-Purchase Processes: Consumption and Post-Consumption
Evaluations
Consumption
Consumption represents consumers’ usage of the acquired product. User and nonuser are terms often
used to distinguish between those who consume the product and those who do not. Usage expansion
advertising: advertising that attempts to persuade consumers to use a familiar product in new or
different ways.
Usage volume segmentation: a form of segmentation that divides users into heavy, moderate, and light
users. A consumption experience provides positive reinforcement when the consumer receives some
positive outcome from product usage. Negative reinforcement occurs when consumption enables
consumers to avoid some negative outcome. Punishment occurs when consumption leads to negative
outcomes. Consumption norms represent informal rules that govern our consumption behavior.
Consumption rituals are defined as “a type of expressive, symbolic activity constructed of multiple
behaviors that occur in a fixed, episodic sequence, and that tend to be repeated over time. The term
compulsive consumption is defined as a response to an uncontrollable drive or desire to obtain, use, or
experience a feeling, substance, or activity that leads an individual to repetitively engage in a behavior
that will ultimately cause harm to the individual and possibly others. Ethnography involves describing
and understanding consumer behavior by interviewing and observing consumers in real-world situations.
Shop-a-longs, in which shoppers are accompanied by one or more observers, can help retailers better
understand which things seem to attract shoppers’ attention and interest as well as which areas have
room for improvement.
Post-Consumption Evaluations
Discussing one’s consumption experiences with other people is a common activity, known as word-ofmouth communication. To better represent the uniqueness of consumers communicating with each
other over the Internet, a new term has entered our vernacular: word-of-mouse communication. Blogs,
short for Web logs are websites that contain an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and
often hyperlinks provided by the writer. Expectancy disconfirmation model: a model that proposes that
satisfaction depends on the comparison of pre-purchase expectations with consumption outcomes. If
the product delivers less than expected, negative disconfirmation occurs. Positive disconfirmation, on
the other hand, exists when the product provides more than expected. Finally, confirmation takes place
when the product’s performance matches expectations. Regret occurs when consumers believe that an
alternative course of action than the one chosen would have produced a better outcome. A more
extreme reaction to negative disconfirmation is rage, which occurs when consumers are extremely
upset.
Chapter 9 Consumer Knowledge
The Importance of Consumer Knowledge
Brand associations are the linkages in memory between the brand and other concepts.
Types of Consumer Knowledge
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Product knowledge represents the information stored in consumers’ memory about products.
Product novices possess very simple levels of product category knowledge. Product experts possess
vast amounts of product category knowledge. Top-of-the-mind awareness refers to the particular
brand that is remembered or thought of first. The concept of brand image refers to the entire array of
associations that are activated from memory when consumers think about the brand.
Image analysis involves examining the current set of brand associations that exist in the marketplace.
Perceptual mapping is a form of image analysis that derives brand images from consumers’ similarity
judgments.
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Purchase knowledge encompasses the various pieces of information consumers possess about
buying products.
Relative price knowledge is what consumers know about one price relative to another.
Consumption and usage knowledge encompasses the information in memory about how a
product can be consumed and what is required to actually use the product.
Persuasion knowledge represents what consumers know about the goals and tactics of those
trying to persuade them.
Self knowledge represents the person’s understanding of her or his own mental processes.
The Benefits of Understanding Consumer Knowledge
Desired image refers to the image that a company seeks to create in the marketplace for its product.
Knowledge gaps refer to an absence of information in memory. Misperception is simply inaccurate
knowledge.
Chapter 10 Consumer Beliefs, Feelings, Attitudes, and Intentions
Consumer Beliefs
Expectations are beliefs about the future. Another type of consumer belief is the inferential belief, in
which consumers use information about one thing to form beliefs about another thing.
Some of the most common inferential beliefs are price-quality inferential beliefs, in which consumers
use price information to form beliefs about a product’s quality. Partially comparative pricing is when a
retailer features price comparisons for some but not all products it carries.
Consumer Feelings
Mood state refers to how people feel at a particular moment in time. Pleasure represents positive
feelings, arousal reflects feelings of excitement and stimulation, and dominance indicates feelings of
being in control.
Consumer Attitudes
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Attitude valance refers to whether the attitude is positive, negative or neutral.
Attitude extremity reflects the intensity of the liking or disliking.
Attitude resistance is the degree to which an attitude is immune to change. Attitude confidence
represents a person’s belief that her or his attitude is correct. Attitude accessibility refers to how easily
the attitude can be retrieved from memory.
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Attitude toward the object (Ao) represents an evaluation of the attitude object.
Attitude toward the ad (Aad): the global evaluation of an advertisement.
Preferences represent attitudes toward one object in relation to another.
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Attitude toward behavior (Ab) represents an evaluation of performing a particular behavior
involving the attitude object.
Consumer Intentions
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Spending intentions reflect how much money consumers think they’ll spend.
Purchase intentions represent what consumers think they’ll buy.
Repurchase intentions: whether consumers anticipate buying the same product or brand again.
Shopping intentions capture where consumers plan on making their product purchases.
Search intentions indicate consumers’ intentions to engage in external search.
Consumption intentions represent consumers’ intentions to engage in a particular consumption
activity.
Behavioral expectations represent the perceived likelihood of performing a behavior. Volitional control
represents the degree to which a behavior can be performed at will. Perceived behavioral control:
consumers’ beliefs about how easy it is to perform a behavior.
Implicit consumer preferences and their influence on product choice
Implicit attitudes: evaluative responses regarding an attitude object which are not necessarily subject to
introspection. Individuals may not be aware of their implicit attitudes or they may be unable to verbalize
them. Implicit attitudes have an unknown origin, are activated automatically and influence
uncontrollable consumer responses.
Explicit attitudes: A person’s conscious views toward people, objects, or concepts. That is, the person is
aware of the feelings he or she holds in a certain context.
IAT: The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is an experimental measure within social psychology designed to
detect the strength of a person's automatic association between mental representations of objects
(concepts) in memory.
Adapting to a retail environment: Modeling consumer-environment
interactions
The PAD emotional state model is a psychological model developed by Albert Mehrabian and James A.
Russell to describe and measure emotional states.
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Pleasure: positive affective state
Arousal: a feeling state of sleep – frantic excitement (energy, tiredness, negative arousal,
relaxation, boredom)
Dominance: extent to which one feels unrestricted or free to act in a variety of ways (perceived
control & freedom of choice)
Cognitive appraisals: personal interpretation of a situation (how an individual views a situation).
Lecture 7: Social Influences
Short-term memory: where thinking occurs; the stimulus is interpreted and contemplated using
concepts stored in long-term memory.
Long-term memory: the mental warehouse containing all of our knowledge.
Normalization: the convergence of individual judgments to a single judgment.
Conformity: existing norms are consolidated.
Informational social influence: when persons are in a situation where they are unsure of the correct
way to behave, they will often look to others for cues/information concerning the correct behavior.
Normative influence: a person conforms to be liked or accepted by others.
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Descriptive norms: what is commonly done in a given situation
Injunctive norms: norms specifying what ought to be done – what is approved or disapproved
behavior in a given situation.
Normative Focus Theory (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004)
Norms will influence behavior only to the extent that they are focal (salient) for the person involved at
the time of behavior. People obey injunctive norms only when they are relevant and significant. Practical
implications:
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Focus the target audience on the type of norm that is aligned with the end objective
Norm-based persuasion most effective when the descriptive and injunctive norms are presented
in concert and aligned to another
Norm-based persuasion most effective when the norms are associated with meaningful
reference groups
Opinion leader: in W-O-M marketing, an agent who is the sender of information and opinions, and who
influences the decisions of others.
Market maven: individuals who have information about many kinds of products, places to shop, and
other facets of markets, and initiate discussions with consumers and respond to requests from
consumers for market information.
Chapter 11 Culture, Ethnicity, and Social Class
What is Culture?
Culture refers to a set of values, ideas, artifacts, and other meaningful symbols that help individuals
communicate, interpret, and evaluate as members of society. Abstract elements include values,
attitudes, ideas, personality types, and summary constructs, such as religion or politics. Cultural artifacts
include the material component of a culture. Norms are rules of behavior held by a majority or at least a
consensus of a group about how individuals should behave.
Macro-culture refers to values and symbols that apply to an entire society or to most of its citizens.
Microculture refers to values and symbols of a restrictive group or segment of consumers, defined
according to variables such as age, religion, ethnicity, or social class. The processes by which people
develop their values, motivations, and habitual activity are referred to as socialization. Consumer
socialization: the acquisition of consumption-related cognitions, attitudes, and behavior.
How Core Values Affect Marketing
Core merchandise: a basic group of products that is essential to a store’s traffic, consumer loyalty, and
profits. Core values: the very basic values of people that, among other things, define how products are
used in society, provide positive and negative valences for brands and communications programs, define
acceptable market relationships, and define ethical behavior.
Changing Values
Changes in a society’s values can be forecast on the basis of a life-cycle explanation, meaning that as
individuals grow older, their values change. Generational change suggests that there will be gradual
replacement of existing values by those of young people who form the leading generation in value terms.
Cohort analysis: a process that investigates the changes in patterns of behavior or attitudes in a cohort.
Ethnic Microcultures and Their Influences on Consumer Behavior
Acculturation measures the degree to which a consumer has learned the ways of a different culture
compared to how they were raised. Transcultural marketing research is used to gather data from
specific ethnic groups and compare these data to those collected from other markets, usually the mass
market.
Social-Class Microcultures
Social class is defined as relatively permanent and homogeneous divisions in a society into which
individuals or families sharing similar values, lifestyles, interests, wealth, status, education, economic
position, and behavior can be categorized. Status groups reflect a community’s expectations for style of
life among each class as well as the positive or negative social estimation of honor given to each class.
People have high prestige when other people have an attitude or respect or deference to them.
Association is a variable concerned with everyday relationships, which people who like to do the same
things they do, in the same ways, and with whom they feel comfortable. Social stratification refers to
the perceived hierarchies in which consumer’s rate other as higher or lower in social status. Those who
earn a higher status due to work or study have achieved status, whereas those who are lucky to be born
wealthy or beautiful have ascribed status. Social mobility refers to the process of passing from one
social class to another. Parody display describes the mockery of status symbols and behavior.
Chapter 12 Family and Household Influences
The Importance of Families and Households on Consumer Behavior
Family: a group of two or more persons related by blood, marriage, or adoption who reside together.
The nuclear family is the immediate group of father, mother, and child(ren) living together. The
extended family is the nuclear family, plus other relatives, such as grandparents, uncles and aunts,
cousins, and parents-in-law. The family into which one is born is called the family of orientation,
whereas the one established by marriage is the family of procreation. The term household is used to
describe all persons, both related and unrelated, who occupy a housing unit. Structural variables
include the age of the head of the household or family, marital status, presence of children, and
employment status. Three sociological variables that help to explain how families function include
cohesion, adaptability, and communication.
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Cohesion is the emotional bonding between family members.
Adaptability measures the ability of a family to change its power structure, role relationships,
and relationship rules in response to situational and developmental stress.
Communication is a facilitating dimension, critical to movement on the other two dimensions.
Who Determines What the Family Buys?
Instrumental roles, also known as functional or economic roles, involve financial, performance, and
other functions performed by group members. Expressive roles involve supporting other family
members in the decision-making process and expressing the family’s aesthetic or emotional needs,
including upholding family norms. Family marketing: marketing based on the relationships between
family members based on the roles they assume.
Family Life Cycles
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Family life cycle (FLC): the series of stages that a family passes through and that change them
over time.
Household life cycle (HLC): the series of stages that a household passes through and that change
in over time.
Consumer life cycle (CLC): the series of stages that a consumer passes through during life and
that change an individual’s behavior over time.
Changing Roles of Women
A role specifies what the typical occupant of a given position is expected to do in that position in a
particular social context.
Changing Masculine Roles
Androgynous consumer: a consumer who has the characteristics of both male and female consumers
(or no distinguishing masculine or feminine characteristics at all).
Chapter 13 Group and Personal Influence
Group and Personal Influences on Individuals
A reference group is any person or group of people who significantly influences an individual’s behavior.
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Primary groups: groups that are sufficiently intimate to permit and facilitate unrestricted faceto-face interaction.
Secondary groups: groups that have face-to-face interaction, but are more sporadic, less
comprehensive, and less influential in shaping thought and behavior than are primary groups.
Formal groups: social aggregations characterized by a defined structure and a known list of
members and requirements for membership.
Informal groups: groups that have far less structure than formal groups and are likely to be
based on friendship or common interests.
Membership: the act of achieving formal acceptance status within a group.
Aspirational groups: groups that the individual seeks to associate with by adopting the group’s
norms, values and behavior.
Dissociative groups: groups with which an individual tries to avoid association.
Virtual membership groups: groups based on virtual communities in which individuals from
different geographic areas share information without face-to-face contact.
Normative influence occurs when individuals alter their behaviors or beliefs to meet the expectations of
a particular group. Value-expressive influence occurs when a need for psychological association with a
group causes acceptance of its norms, values, attitudes, or behaviors. Informational influence occurs
when people have difficulty assessing product or brand characteristics by their own observation or
contact.
How Reference Groups Influence Individuals
The desire of an individual to fit in whit a reference group often leads to conformity – a change in beliefs
or actions based on real or perceived group pressures. Two types of conformity exist: compliance and
acceptance.
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Compliance occurs when an individual conforms to the wishes of the group without accepting
all its beliefs or behaviors.
Acceptance occurs when an individual actually changes his or her beliefs and values to those of
the group.
Another consideration leading to diminished normative compliance is a weakened respect for social
norms, referred to by sociologists as anomie. An expert is any person who possesses unique information
or skills that can help consumers make better purchase decision than other types of spokespersons.
In contrast, the common-person appeal features testimonials from “regular” consumers with whom
most individuals can relate.
Transmission of Influence through Dyadic Exchanges
Similar to opinion leaders are product innovators – individuals who are the first to try a new product.
Market mavens gather much of their information from shopping experiences, openness to information
(including direct mail and the Internet), and general market awareness, making them more aware of
new product than other people. Another source of personal influence in the marketplace is the
surrogate consumer (or surrogate shopper) – an individual who acts as an agent to guide, direct, and
conduct activities in the marketplace. Whenever there is personal communication between a consumer
and a marketer, a service encounter occurs, often a key to successful marketing. Customer intimacy
refers to the detailed understanding and focus on customers’ needs lifestyles and behaviors in an effort
to create a deep cultural connection with the customers, but reverse customer intimacy – how well
marketers facilitate customers knowing the marketer – may also be a key to customer loyalty. Trickledown theory, the oldest theory, theorizes that lower classes often emulate the behavior of their higherclass counterparts. The two-step flow of communication model indicates that opinion leaders are the
direct receivers of information from advertisements and that they interpret and transmit the
information to others through word-of-mouth. Recognizing that mass media can reach anyone in a
population and influence them directly, the multistep flow of communication model was developed.
This model indicates that information can flow directly to different types of consumers, including
opinion leaders, gatekeepers, and opinion seekers or receivers.
Diffusion of Innovations
An innovation can be defined in a variety of ways, but the most commonly accepted definition is any
idea or product perceived by the potential adopter to be new. It follows then that a product innovation
(or new product) is any product recently introduced to the market or perceived to be new when
compared to existing products.
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Continuous innovation: the modification of the taste, appearance, performance, or reliability of
an existing product rather than the establishment of a totally new one.
Dynamically continuous innovation: the act of creating either a new product or a significant
alteration of an existing one, but does not generally alter established purchase or usage patterns.
Discontinuous innovation: the act of introducing an entirely new product that significantly
alters consumers’ behavior patterns and lifestyles.
The Diffusion Process
According to Rogers, diffusion is defined as the process by which an innovation (new idea) is
communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system. Vertical
coordination, a high degree of dependence and interlocking relationships among channel members, also
increases the rate of diffusion. Some members of the social system are adopters – people who have
made a decision to use a new product – whereas others are nonadopters.
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Innovators are the first consumer group to adopt products. Consumers who are innovators for
many products are said to be polymorphic, whereas those who are innovators for only one
product are monomorphic.
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Early adopters tend to be opinion leaders and role models for others, with good social skills and
respect within larger social systems.
The early majority consists of consumers who deliberate extensively before buying new
products, yet adopt them just before the average time it takes the target population as a whole.
The late majority tends to be cautious when evaluating innovations, taking more time than
average to adopt them, and often at the pressure of peers.
Laggards, the last group to adopt innovations, tend to be anchored in the past, are suspicious of
the new, and exhibit the lowest level of innovativeness among adopters.
Innovativeness is the degree to which an individual adopts an innovation earlier than other members of
a social system. Cognitive innovators have a strong preference for new mental experiences, whereas
sensory innovators have a strong preference for new sensory experiences.
Market mavens: Psychological influences
The marketing literature has identified three distinct types of influential consumers: the innovators, the
opinion leaders, and the market maven. Innovators are defined as consumers who tend to adopt
products comparatively early within a given social system. Opinion leaders are defined as individuals
who influence the purchasing behavior of other consumers in a specific product domain. Market mavens
are defined as “individuals who have information about many kinds of products, places to shop, and
other facets of markets, and initiate discussions with consumers and respond to requests from
consumers for market information”. Market mavens are consumers who highly involved in the
marketplace and represent an important source of marketplace information to other consumers.
Global self-esteem: an overall estimate of general self-worth; a level of self-acceptance or respect for
oneself; a trait or tendency relatively stable and enduring, composed of all subordinate traits and
characteristics within the self.
Tendency to conform: a global, enduring personality trait in which the individual is predisposed to
acquiesce to social norms prescribed by reference groups that are relevant and important to the
individual.
Consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence: the need to identify or enhance one’s image with
significant others through the acquisition and use of products and brands, the willingness to conform to
the expectations of others regarding purchase decisions and/or the tendency to learn about products
and services by observing others and/or seeking information from others.
Consumer need for uniqueness: an enduring personality trait by which consumers pursue dissimilarity
through products and brands in an effort to develop a distinctive self and social image.
Domain-specific opinion leadership: consumer influence on individuals in specific product areas.
Lecture 8: Dissatisfaction
Satisfaction:
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A positive post-consumption evaluation that occurs when the consumption experience either
meets or exceed expectations.
The customer’s fulfillment response. It is a judgment that a product/service feature, or the
product/service itself, provides a pleasurable level of consumption-related fulfillment.
Expectancy disconfirmation model
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Negative disconfirmation: the result that occurs when, after purchase, the product delivers less
than what was originally expected.
Positive confirmation: the result that occurs when, after consumption, the product delivers
more than what was originally expected.
Confirmation: when a product’s performance meets certain expectations.
Attribution: how individuals assign causes of events, other’s behavior, and their own behavior to the
product/service, to the situation or to themselves.
Covariation model of attribution (Kelley, 1967)
Can product performance be attributed to the product, person or situation? Three main types of
information:
1. Distinctiveness: different from other products/brands?
2. Consistency: Does it always perform?
3. Consensus: How do other consumers feel about the product?
Reporting-bias: advertiser under-reports undesirable performances, while being much more open on
desirable attributes (advertiser acts out of self-interest).
Knowledge-bias: advertiser is largely unaware of the alternatives.
Dissatisfaction: if a product falls short of expectations (negative disconfirmation) the consumer is likely
to be dissatisfied.
Social Justice Theory (Tax et al. (1998), Tax & Brown (1998); Smith et al. (1999), Smith & Bolton (2002))
Customer (dis)satisfaction:
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Distributive fairness → compensation
Procedural fairness → responsibility & responsiveness
Interactional fairness → empathy
The service recovery paradox states that with a highly effective service recovery, a service or product
failure offers a chance to achieve higher satisfaction ratings from customers than if the failure had never
happened.
Service validity and service reliability of search, experience and credence
services: A scenario study
Customer satisfaction: the number of customers or percentage of total customers, whose reported
experience with a firm, its products, or its services (ratings) exceeds specified satisfaction goals. The
better the match between service specifications and consumers’ needs, the more satisfied customers
are.
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Service reliability: Is the service correctly produced? The extent to which the service delivery
matches the service specifications.
Service validity: is the correct service produced? The extent to which the service specifications
match the customer’s needs and demands.
SEC-Classification
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Search service: dominant product/service attributes can be validated before purchase and
consumption.
Experience service: dominant product/service attributes can be verified but require
consumption.
Credence service: dominant cannot be verified because consumers lack information/expertise.
Lecture 9: New products
Diffusion: the social process of diffusion of the new product, service, concept, brand…, after
introduction, among consumers (throughout society)
Adoption (acceptance): the individual decision making process to adopt (accept and buy) a new product,
service, concept, brand.
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Continuous innovation: the modification of the taste, appearance, performance, or reliability of
an existing product rather than the establishment of a totally new one.
Dynamically continuous innovation: the act of creating either a new product or a significant
alteration of an existing one, but does not generally alter established purchase or usage patterns.
Discontinuous innovation: the act of introducing an entirely new product that significantly
alters consumers’ behavior patterns and lifestyles.
Innovativeness is the degree to which an individual adopts an innovation earlier than other members of
a social system. Three underlying dimensions:
1. Socio-economic variables
2. Personal & attitude variables
3. Communication-variables
Diffusion of preventive innovations
Diffusion is the process through which (1) an innovation (2) is communicated through certain channels
(3) over time (4) among the members of a social system.
The four main elements in the diffusion of new ideas are (1) innovation, (2) communication channels, (3)
time, and (4) the social system. An innovation is an idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new by
an individual or other unit of adoption. The characters that determine an innovation’s rate of adoption
are:
1. Relative advantage: the degree to which an innovation is perceived as better than the idea it
supersedes. What does matter is whether an individual perceives the innovation as
advantageous.
2. Compatibility: the degree to which an innovation is perceived as being consistent with the
existing values, past experiences, and needs of potential adopters.
3. Complexity: the degree to which an innovation is perceived as difficult to understand and use.
4. Triability: the degree to which an innovation may be experimented with on a limited basis.
5. Observability: the degree to which the results of an innovation are visible to others.
Innovations that are perceived by individuals as having greater relative, advantage, compatibility,
triability, observability, and less complexity will be adopted more rapidly than other innovations. The
innovation – decision process is the mental process through which an individual (or other decision
making unit) passes (1) from first knowledge of an innovation, (2) to forming an attitude toward the
innovation, (3) to a decision to adopt or reject, (4) to implementation of the new idea, and to (5)
confirmation of this decision. Innovativeness is the degree to which an individual or other unit of
adoption is relatively earlier in adopting new ideas than other members of a social system. Five adopter
categories, or classifications of the members of a social system on the basis on their innovativeness, are:
(1) innovators, (2) early adopters, (3) early majority, (4) late majority, and (5) laggards.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Innovators are the first 2.5% of the individuals in a system to adopt an innovation.
Early adopters are the next 13.5% of the individuals in a system to adopt an innovation.
Early majority are the next 34% of the individuals in a system to adopt an innovation.
Late majority are the next 34% of the individuals in a system to adopt an innovation.
Laggards are the last 16% of the individuals in a system to adopt an innovation.
Preventive innovations are new ideas that require action at one point in time in order to avoid
unwanted consequences at some future time. Preventive innovations are relatively low in relative
advantage, compared to nonpreventive innovations. What strategies could be used to speed up the
diffusion and use of preventive innovations?
1. Change the perceived attributes of preventive innovations.
2. Utilize champions to promote preventive innovations. A champion is an individual who
devotes his/her personal influence to encourage adoption of an innovation.
3. Change the norms of the system regarding preventive innovations through peer support.
4. Use entertainment-education to promote preventive innovations. Entertainment-education is
the process of placing educational ideas (such as on prevention) in entertainment messages.
5. Active peer networks to diffuse preventive innovations.