Summary: Consumer Behavior | 9780357721292 | Wayne D Hoyer, et al

Read the summary and the most important questions on Consumer Behavior | 9780357721292 | Wayne D. Hoyer; Deborah J. Macinnis; Rik Pieters

• 1 Understanding Consumer Behavior

• 1.2 What affects consumer behavior?

• The many factors that influence acquisition, usage and deposition (consumption) decisions can be classified into four broad domains. Which domains are we talking about?

  1. The psychological core;
  2. The process of making decisions;
  3. The consumers culture;
  4. Consumer behavior outcomes.

• The processes that are part of the psychological core are intimately tied to the process of making decisions. This domain involves four stages:

  1. Problem recognition;
  2. Information search;
  3. Decision-making;
  4. Postpurchase evaluation.

• External influences have a major impact on consumer decision making processes. Culture and reference groups are large contributors to a consumer decision. What is the difference between culture and reference groups?

  Culture describes the typical or expected behaviors, norms and ideas that characterize a group of people. Reference groups describe a group of people consumers compare themselves with for information regarding behavior, attitudes or values. In some cases, a single person such as an influencer, athlete or musician can also serve as a reference group. The important difference is that a reference group is chosen by the consumer themselves, they identify with this group.

• 1.4 Making Business Decisions based on the Marketing Implications of Consumer Behavior

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• Marketing is designed to provide value to customers. Thus, research is needed to understand the various groups of consumers and develop a fitting strategy to provide such value. This can also be labeled as the marketing mix. Which 6 steps are involved?

  1. Developing and implementing a customer-oriented strategy;
  2. Developing products;
  3. Positioning;
  4. Making promotion and marketing communication decisions;
  5. Making pricing decisions;
  6. Making distribution decisions.

• When developing products, consumer research also comes in useful. What kinds of marketing implications does this element of the marketingmix have?

  1. Research into ideas that consumers have for new products (e.g Starbucks with "My Starbucks Idea")
  2. Research to determine when and how to modify or tailor a product to meet the needs of new or existing groups of customers.
  3. Research that helps to decide on a certain brand image and how to differentiate from competitors.
  4. Research on packaging and logo's.

• Positioning is about how an offering is positioned in consumers' minds. There is a specific research method marketers use to gain insights into their own and competitors positioning. What method is this?

  A perceptual map. This is a graph used for visualizing consumer perceptions of different offerings.  Companies that are close to each other offer the same benefits to consumers. Marketers use these kind of graphs to determine how their offerings can be positioned as distinct and different from competing offerings, based on appeals that are sustainable over time.

• Consumer research has a lot of useful implications for promotion and marketing communication decisions. What are the most important ones?

  1. Determining advertising objectives: where should we focus on in our promotion efforts?
  2. Determining what words and visuals should be used in marketing communications;
  3. Determining the place and time of advertisement to best target the target group;
  4. Evaluating advertisement efforts after or, before: by for instance copy-testing or pretesting;
  5. Developing and evaluating sales promotions objectives and tactics: what promotion price point is most effective?
  6. Deploying sales employees.

• Not only promotion pricing decisions are important to a marketeer, also standard pricing can have a critical influence on consumers' acquisition, usage and disposition decisions. How can consumer research contribute to this field of marketing?

  1. What price should be charged? The psychology behind pricing, e.g prices that end on an ,99 (9,99) are perceived cheaper than for instance 10.00. But, too low of a price can influence a consumers perception of the quality of the offering. 
  2. Sensitivity of consumers to price + price changes: when are price tactics most effective and what groups of consumers are more or less sensitive to price?

• 2 Motivation, Ability & Opportunity

• 2.1 Consumer motivation and its effects

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• Motivation is an inner state of activation that provides energy needed to achieve a goal. What events influence motivation in consumers?

  1. Personal relevance (to self-concept, values, needs, goals and self-control)
  2. Perceived risk (higher risk generally means higher motivation)
  3. Moderate inconsistency with attitudes (this means higher motivation, too much inconsistency means lower motivation)

• Most research on consumer behavior that examines the effect of motivation on information processing has examined consumers’ motivation to process information accurately. Recent research has focused on a different type of motivation involved in information processing. What type of motivation is meant by this?

  Motivated reasoning: processing information in a way that allows consumers to reach the conclusion that they want to reach. So when consumers engage in this type of information processing, they do so in a biased way so that they can obtain the conclusion that they want to reach. An example is confirmation bias.