NEUROSCIENCE &

CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR
Sessions 1, 2 & 3

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CONSUMER DECISION PROCESS –
2 MODELS
2
Schiffman & Kanuk

3
The Consumer Decision Process
•Need Recognition
•Information Search
•Evaluation Engel Blackwell Miniard model
•Purchase
•Consumption
•Post-Purchase Evaluation
•Divestment

4
Discuss with examples on how this
model works.

What are the attitudes that consumers

bring to bear in purchase decisions?

What are the beliefs that consumers

bring to bear in purchase decisions?

What are the perceptions that

consumers bring to bear in purchase
decisions?

How do these attitudes, beliefs and

perceptions get formed? How does the
customer learn?
5
 Attitude

Motivation
Beliefs

Lifestyle
Culture
Personality

Learning –
Social
Knowledge &
Class
Perception Experience

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Motivation
• Maslow’s hierarchy
• Herzberg’s two factor theory

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Attitudes
Global evaluative judgments

Intentions
Subjective judgments by people about how they will behave in the future

Beliefs
Subjective judgments about the relationship between two or more things

Feelings
An affective state (e.g., current mood state) or reaction (e.g., emotions experienced during
product consumption)

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 Analyzing Consumer Behavior
• Personality
• an individual’s unique psychological makeup, which consistently influences how
the person responds to his or her environment.
• Personal Values
• Represent consumer beliefs about life and acceptable behavior. Values transcend
situations or events and are more enduring because they are more central in the
personality structure.
• Represent three universal requirements: biological needs, requisites of
coordinated social interaction, and demands for group survival and functioning
• Values express the goals that motivate people and the appropriate ways to attain
those goals
• Lifestyles
• patterns in which people live and spend time and money
• Reflects a person’s activities, interests, and opinions (AIO) as well as
demographic variables
• Since lifestyles change readily, marketers must keep research methods and
marketing strategies current 9
Relationships between
Consumer Beliefs, Feelings,
Attitudes, and Intentions

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 Consumer Beliefs – a sample

• If a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is.

• You can’t believe what most advertising says these days.
• Auto repair shops take advantage of women.
• People need less money to live on once they retire.
• It’s not safe to use credit cards on the Internet.
• Appliances today are not as durable as they were 20
years ago.
• Extended warranties are worth the money.
• You get what you pay for: lower price means lower
quality.
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Advertising that Evokes
Positive Feelings

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Communicating the Presence
of Desirable Attributes

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Communicating the Absence
of Undesirable Attributes

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What is learning?
How do people learn?

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 LEARNING IS:

1. “a persisting change in human performance or

performance potential . . . (brought) about as a
result of the learner’s interaction with the
environment”
2. “the relatively permanent change in a person’s
knowledge or behavior due to experience”
3. “an enduring change in behavior, or in the
capacity to behave in a given fashion, which
results from practice or other forms of experience”
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BEHAVIORISM

Confined to observable and measurable

behavior
▪ Classical Conditioning
▪ Brushing teeth is good for you, so brush every day
▪ Operant Conditioning – behaviour is modified
by its antecedents & consequences
▪ If you do well in school, I’ll buy you a bicycle
A stimulus is presented
in order to get a response: S R 17
SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY (SLT)

 Learning takes place through observation and

sensorial experiences

 SLTis the basis of the movement against violence

in media & video games
 “Demonstration Effect” – helps in product
adoption
 Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery
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19
 PERCEPTION
 The process by which an individual selects, organizes, and interprets stimuli into a
meaningful and coherent picture of the world.

 Sensation – immediate and direct response of the sensory organs to stimuli.

 Stimulus – any input to any of the senses.
 THE ABSOLUTE THRESHOLD: The lowest level at which an individual can experience a
sensation. [Detecting difference between “something and nothing”]
 The Differential Threshold: Minimal difference detected between two similar stimuli
 Marketing Applications:-
 Small negative changes are not readily seen (marginal price rise, slight reduction in
quantity)
 Positive changes are clearly seen.
 Single exposure to an ad rarely works; hence the need for multiple exposures.
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WHETHER THE CENTRE CIRCLES ARE ARE THE LINES PARALLEL?
SAME IN SIZE?

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What changed?

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SUBLIMINAL PERCEPTION

 Message below the threshold level – below the conscious level.

 Product placement in films

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On the other hand…

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PERCEPTUAL ORGANIZATION - GESTALT THEORY
 People see everything as a whole.
 Gestalt - "essence or shape of an entity's complete
form"
 "The whole is greater than the sum of the parts" is
often used when explaining Gestalt theory.
 People see objects as perceived within an
environment according to all of their elements taken
together as a total construct.
 Hence: Figure and Ground, Grouping, Closure

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FIGURE & GROUND

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FIGURE & GROUND

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GROUPING

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CLOSURE

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PERCEPTUAL INTERPRETATION

 Stereotypes
 Physical Appearances
 Descriptive terms
 First Impression
 Halo Effect

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STEREOTYPES

 People carrying biased pictures in their minds

of the meanings of various stimuli.
 People hold meaning related to stimuli
 Stereotypes influence how stimuli are
perceived

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 PHYSICAL APPEARANCES

 People associate quality with people in the

ads.
 Attractive models have positive influence
 Colors of juices.
 Shape of the package

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DESCRIPTIVE TERMS

 Stereotypes are reflected in Verbal messages.

 Accenture – High Performance, Delivered.

 KFC – Spicy Chicken
 McDonald – Happy price (targeting Indians who are
price/value conscious)

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 FIRST IMPRESSIONS

 First impressions are lasting

 The perceiver is trying to determine which stimuli are relevant,
important, or predictive
 Think of how you choose which retail stores to visit in a mall

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 HALO EFFECT

 Consumers perceive and evaluate product

or service or even product line based on
just one dimension.
 A welldressed good-looking person is
successful
 Important
with spokesperson choice & line
and brand extensions

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Importance of Consumer Knowledge
What we know or don’t know strongly influences our decision-
making processes
•It affects how decisions are made
•It may determine the final decision itself

Knowledge about a brand’s associations (linkages in

memory between the brand and other concepts) can affect
consumer behavior – associations of Brand Bong?

Knowledge shapes inferences about unknown product

attributes using known product attributes

Knowledge from experience & received knowledge

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 Culture & Social Class

What Is Culture?
A set of values, ideas, artifacts, and other
meaningful symbols that help individuals
Consumer Age Cohorts
communicate, interpret, and evaluate as
members of society. The pre-Independence The post-
Blueprint of human activity, determining cohort Independence cohort
coordinates of social action and productive
activity.
A set of socially acquired behaviour patterns
transmitted symbolically through language and The Post 1975 cohort The New Millennial
other means to the members of a particular cohort
society.
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 Social Class Microcultures

Status groups: reflect Variables which

determine social class
community’s expectations for • Occupation
style of life among each class • Personal
as well as the positive or performance
negative social estimation of • Interactions
honor given to each class – • Possessions

stratified based on lifestyles • Value orientations

and principles of • Class consciousness

consumption of goods
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 Social Class Microcultures
• Social mobility: process of passing from one
social class to another
• Parody display: the mockery of status symbols
and behaviour (gossip column)
• Mirroring: adopt behaviours and purchases of
the social strata above the consumer

“Keeping up with the Joneses:” to show that one is as good as other people
by getting what they have and doing what they do people trying to keep up with the
Joneses by buying expensive cars and clothes that they can't afford.

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 Social Class and Consumer
Behaviour

Products can be positioned as brands

appealing to upper social classes (Titan) or
have “aam janata” appeal (Sonata)

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