Culture and Consumer Behavior
• How people behave and what motivates
them is largely a matter of culture.
Differences in how people process
information, how they make decisions,
whether they are innovative, all aspects
are related to culture.
For effective global marketing,
branding, and advertising,
these differences must be
known and understood.
Consumer Behavior
• This is the study of the processes involved
when people select, purchase, use, or
dispose of products, services, ideas, or
experiences to satisfy needs and desires.
• It is viewed as a process that includes the
issues that influence the consumer before,
during, and after a purchase.
Attributes
“WHO”
Personality
Self-Concept
Identity
Image
Attitude
Lifestyle
Processes
“HOW”
Income
Consumer
The Person
Values
Culture
Consumer Behavior
Domains
Product ownership and usage
Adoption/diffusion of innovations
Complaining behavior
Brand loyalty
Responses to advertising
Media usage
•
•
Social
Processes:
motivation,
emotion, group
processes
Mental
Processes:
cognition,
learning,
language,
perception,
information
processing,
communication,
decision-making
• The model above structures the cultural
components of the person in term so of
consumer attributes and processes, and the
cultural components of behavior in terms of
consumer behavior domains. Income
interferes. If there is no income, there is
little or no consumption, so income is
placed in a separate box.
Consumer Attributes
• One aspect of Western marketing is its
focus on product attributes, benefits, or
values that are to distinguish the user’s self
from others.
• Another aspect is the distinction between
the actual self and the ideal self.
Consumer Attributes
• One aspect of Western marketing is its
focus on product attributes, benefits, or
values that are to distinguish the user’s self
from others.
• Another aspect is the distinction between
the actual self and the ideal self.
The Concept of Self
• The concept of self, as used in consumer
psychology, is rooted in individualism. It
includes the following ideas about a person:
– A person is an autonomous entity with a distinctive set
of attributes, qualities, or processes
– People’s individual behavior varies, and this
distinctiveness is good
– People’s attributes and processes should be expressed
consistently in behavior across situations, and this is
consistency is good.
• In cultures of the configuration
individualism/masculinity, selfenhancement, or ego-boosting, is most
pronounced.
Personality
• This is the sum of the qualities and characteristics of being
a person in individualistic cultures where the person is
defined as an “independent self-contained, autonomous
entity who comprises a unique configuration of internal
attributes and who behaves primarily as consequence of
these internal attributes.”
Identity and Image
• Identity is defined as the idea one has about oneself, one’s
characteristic properties, one’s own body, and the values
one considers important.
• Image is how others see and judge a person
Brand Personality Traits
Attributed to Strong Global
Brands
UA+
F – Friendly
T – Trustworthy
P – Prestigious
I – Innovative
D – Different
F
T
P
UA-
I&D
PD-
PD+
UA – Uncertainty Avoidance
PD – Power Distance
Attitude
• Attitudes have affective and cognitive components. The
affective component includes feelings and emotions one
experiences in response to an attitude object. The
cognitive component includes attributes and functions of
the object.
Lifestyle
• Lifestyle is described in terms of shared values or tastes as
reflected in consumption patterns. Personal characteristics
are viewed as the raw ingredients to develop a unique
lifestyle. In an economic sense, one’s lifestyle represents
the way one allocates income, but lifestyle is viewed more
as mental construct that explains, but is not identical with,
actual behavior.
Social Processes
• Social processes deal with the hows of
consumer behavior and include motivation,
needs, drives, emotion, and group
processes. All are processes that steer
behavior. Although some emotions are
internal, many result from interaction with
the social environment.
Needs
• Consumption can be driven by functional or social needs.
Clothes satisfy a functional need; fashion satisfies a social
need.
• A car may satisfy a functional need, but the type of car can
satisfy a social need.
• The bicycle is a functional need to many Chinese, who
need it for transportation, whereas it is a social need to
most Americans who use it for socializing or fitness.
Motivation
• Motivation can be defined as the internal state of an
organism that drives it to behave in a certain way. Drives
are the motivational forces that cause individuals to be
active and to strive for certain goals.
• Motivation influences our purchase decisions. Motives
underlie brand loyalty, brand preference, brand image, and
the importance of luxury brands.
Emotion
• Emotion tends to be described as a process that involves an
interaction between cognition and physiology. Emotions
consist of various components like experience, facial
expression, and physiological response that are closely
linked together.
• The concept of global advertising as first introduced by the
advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi in the early 1980s
was based on the assumed universality of basic emotions
such as happiness or love. This has led to parity
advertising showing happy people connected to the brand.
• The use of emotions in global advertising is NOT
advisable.
Group Processes
• In consumer decision-making, the degree to which group
members depend on others, in particular family members,
varies with collectivism and power distance.
• Reference group generally is defined as an actual or
imaginary individual or group that is relevant for an
individual’s evaluations, aspirations, or behavior.
Opinion Leaders
• Opinion leaders are strong, informal sources of product
information. They achieve their status through technical
competence and social accessibility.
• The roles of opinion leaders vary across cultures. People
with technical competence, or competent people in general,
are likely to be favored in strong uncertainty avoidance
cultures. Masculine cultures have high regard for the
successful. In large power distance cultures, the power
holders may have an important role as opinion leaders.
Mental Processes
• The term cognition covers the main internal
psychological processes that are involved in
making sense of the environment and
deciding what action might be appropriate.
Language, Perception, and Memory
• The structure of a language has consequences for basic
consumer processes such as perception and memory.
Structural differences seem to affect mental representation
which in turn influence memory.
Categorization
• How people categorize other people and objects varies
with individualism-collectivism.
• The European brand Nivea has been careful to limit line
extensions to related personal care products and linked
them all consistently core brand values: purity and value
for money.
• The Spanish Brand Chupa Chups includes many different
products: from lollipops to sunglasses, clothes, shoes, and
stationery.