Consumer Markets and Consumer Buyer Behavior - Characteristics Affecting Consumer Behavior

23 important questions on Consumer Markets and Consumer Buyer Behavior - Characteristics Affecting Consumer Behavior

What are the four major factors influencing buyer's behaviour?

1. Cultural influence
2. Social influence
3. Personal influence
4. Psychological influence

One of the characteristic factors that influence behavior is culture. We distinguish culture, subculture and social class. Marketers try to notice cultural shifts and - if applicable - make market segments based up on subcultures. In the latter they sometimes apply total market strategy?

Total market strategy is a marketing strategy in which you focus on the consumer similarities across subculture segments, rather than differences.

What does the cultural factor consist of?

It consists of a person's culture or subculture. Companies tend to focus on a specific subculture like Hispanic Americans, African Americans, or Asian Americans. Using marketing programs specifically designed to fulfill these subculture's needs and preferences.
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What does the social influence consist of?

1. Group and Social networks
2. Family
3. Roles and social status

One of the characteristic factors that influence behavior are social factors. We distinguish groups and social networks, family and roles and status. Which one most strongly influences buying behavior?

Family.

What does the personal influence consist of?

1. Age and life cycle
2. Economic situation
3. Occupation
4. Personality and self-concept
5. Lifestyle

What is the difference between a reference group and membership group?

A reference groups are direct and indirect points of comparison or reference, which form the person's attitude or behavior.

A membership group is one of the reference groups. This is the group you also belong to.

What do the psychological influences consist of?

1. Motivation
2. Perception
3. Learning
4. Beliefs and attitudes

Describe the steps of the model of buyer behaviour.

1. You have the environment phase.
   - This consists of the marketing stimuli (The four P's: price, product, place, and promotion) and factors (Economic, culture, social, and technological factors.)
2. The black box (A consumer's mind, and also the WHY of buying behavior)
   - Consists of buyer's characteristics
   - Consists of a buyer's decision progress
3. The Buyer responses
   - Buying attitude and preference
   - What they buy, when they buy it, and how much of it they buy
   - Brand engagements and relationships.

What do groups and cultures consist of?

1. Reference groups
2. Opinion leaders (influencers)
3. Mouth-of-word
4. Influencer marketing
5. Social networks

One of the characteristic factors that influence behavior are personal factors. We distinguish age and lifecycle stage, occupation, economic situation, personality and self-concept. Which of these can help to understand customer values and how they affect buying behavior?

Customer lifestyle, because this is more than person's social class or personality. It's about a person's whole pattern of acting and interacting in the world.

Online social networks

Online social communities - blogs, social networking Web sites, and other online communities - where people socialize or exchange information and opinions.

What is important about a lifestyle for a marketer?

They measure their AIO: Activities, interests, and opinions. They do this to capture information about a person's pattern of acting and interacting.

Personality can be used in analyzing consumer behavior for certain product or brand choices. Brands also have personalities and the idea is that consumers buy the brands that matches with their own personality. We can distinguish five brand personalities.
1. Sincerity
2. Excitement
3. Competence
4. Sophistication
5. Ruggedness

What's the difference between those five?


1. Sincerity; down-to-earth, honest, wholesome and cheerful.
2. Excitement; daring, spirited, imaginative, up-to-date.
3. Competence; reliable, intelligent, successful
4. Sophistication; glamorous, upper class, charming.
5. Ruggedness; outdoor, tough. 

One of the characteristic factors that influence behavior are psychological factors. We distinguish motivation, perception, learning, beliefs and attitude.

A motive is a need that is sufficiently pressing to direct the person to seek satisfaction. Sigmund Freud and Maslow both have developed a theory about this. What are those theories?

Sigmund Freud argues that most person's buyers decisions are based up on subconscious motives that even the buyer may not fully understand.

Maslow argues that human needs are arranged in hierarchy; the most pressing at the bottom and the less pressing at the top. From low to high: psychological needs, safety needs, social needs, esteem needs, seulf-actualization needs.

What is a group?

Set of individuals who interact to accomplish individual/mutual goals.

People can form different perceptions of the same stimulus because of three perceptual processes: selective attention, selective distortion and selective retention. Explain these different phases.

1. Selective attention; the tendency of people to scree out most important information to which they are exposed. As a marketer you need to attract attention.

2. Selective distortion; the tendency of people to interpret information in a way that supports what they already believe.

3. Selective retention; the tendency of people to remember good points about the brand they most favor and forget about competitors.

What is word of mouth influence?

Consists of words/recommendations of trusted groups which are more credible than advertisement.

What is an opinion leader?

Person within a reference category who because of social skills, knowledge, personlity or other characteristics exerts an influence on others.

What is buzz marketing?

Uses/creates opinion leaders as brand ambassadors who can spread the word about a company's products through brand ambassador programs.

What is a role?

Expectations from people around buyers on the activities to be performed.

What is a lifestyle?

Lifestyle describes the pattern of living: activities (work, hobbies), interests (fashion, family, recreation), and opinions (social, products, themselves).

What is a motive?

Need which is sufficiently pressing to direct the person to seek satisfaction of the need.

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