Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Stimulus-response model of buyer behavior: Marketing & other stimuli enter the
consumer’s ‘black box’ and produce certain responses
Marketers must figure out what is in the buyer’s black box
Cultural Factors
The Marketer needs to understand the role played by the buyer’s:
Culture :
o It is the most basic cause of a person’s wants and behavior
o Every group or society has a culture. And cultural influences on buying behavior
may vary greatly from country to country
o Hofstede’s 5 Dimensions to analyze & compare cultures across the world:
Power Distance Index:
levels of inequality of power & wealth
If the PDI is high, people except and accept that leaders will
separate themselves from the majority
Uncertainty Avoidance Index:
If the people are uncomfortable with uncertainty
In cultures with the high UAI, rules and policies are put in place to
minimize or reduce the level of uncertainty
Also their ultimate goal will be to control everything, thus the
people do not readily accept change and are risk averse
Individualism:
Either an individualistic or a collectivist society
Collectivist: close long-term commitment to the member “group”
such as family and the extended family…
Individualistic: People look after themselves and their beloved
only
Masculinity:
Women will either have limited rights or not
Long-term Orientation vs. Short-term Orientation
o Marketers are always trying to spot Cultural Shifts in order to discover new
products that might be wanted
Subculture
o Each culture contains smaller subcultures or groups of people with shared value
systems based on common life experiences and situation
o Subcultures include
Nationalities
Religions
Racial Groups
Geographic Regions
o Many subcultures make up important market segments
Social Class
o Almost every society has some form of social class structure
o Social Classes are society’s relatively permanent and ordered division whose
members share similar values, interests, and behaviors
o Social class is not determined by a single factor such as income, but measured
as a combination of occupation, income, education, wealth and other variables
o Marketers are interested in social class because people within a given social
class tend to exhibit similar buying behavior
Social Factors
Groups & Social Networks
o Groups that have a direct influence & to which a person belongs are called
membership groups
o Reference Groups serve as direct & indirect points of comparison or reference
in forming a person’s attitudes or behavior
o Aspirational Groups are groups that an individual wishes to belong to
o Word-of-Mouth influence & Buzz Marketing:
Marketers of brands subjected to strong group influence must figure out
how to reach opinion leaders
Opinion leaders: are people within a reference group who exert social
influence on others
Opinion leaders also called influentials may influence others towards a
product
Marketers use buzz marketing by enlisting or even creating opinion
leaders to serve as ‘brand ambassadors’ who spread the word about
their product
Personal Factors
Age & Life Cycle
o People change the goods and services they buy over their lifetimes
o Tastes in food, clothes, furniture, and recreation are often age related
o Buying is also shaped by the stage of the family life-cycle—the stages through
which families pass as they mature over time
Occupation
o Occupation affect the good & service bought
o Workers tend to buy more rugged work clothes, executives buy business suits
Economic Situation
o A person’s economic situation will affect product choice
o Marketers of income-sensitive goods watch trends in personal income, savings
and interest rates
o If economic indicators points to a recession, marketers can take steps to
redesign, reposition and reprice their products
o Some marketers target consumers who have lots of money and resources,
charging prices to match
Lifestyle
o It is a person’s pattern of living expresses in his or her psychographics
o It involve measuring consumer’s major AIO dimensions
Activities (work, hobbies, shopping, sport)
Interests (food, fashion, family, recreation)
Opinions (about themselves, social issues, business, products)
o Lifestyle profiles a person’s whole pattern of acting and interacting in the world
Personality & self-concept
o Each person’s distinct personality influences his or her buying behavior
o Personality refers to the unique psychological characteristics that lead to
relatively consistent and lasting responses to one’s own environment
o Personality is usually described in terms of traits (self-confidence, sociability…)
o The brand also have personalities, and the consumers are likely to choose
brands with personalities that match their own
o A brand personality is the specific mix of human traits that may attribute to a
particular brand
o There are 5 brand personality traits:
Sincerity (down-to-earth, honest)
Excitement (daring, spirited and imaginative)
Competence (reliable, intelligent & successful)
Sophistication (upper class and charming)
Ruggedness (outdoorsy)
o Self-concept: people’s possession contribute to and reflect their identities (we
are what we have)
Psychological Factors
Motivation
o It is a need that is sufficiently pressing to direct the person to seek satisfaction
o Motivation research: qualitative research designed to probe consumer’s hidden,
subconscious motivations
o Interpretive consumer research: motivation research that probes to uncover
underlying emotions & attitudes towards brands & buying situations
o Abraham Maslow sought to explain why people are driven by particular needs
at particular times
o A person tries to satisfy the most important need first. When that need is
satisfied, it will stop being a motivator and the person will then try to satisfy the
next most important need
Perception
o A motivated person is ready to act, but how he acts is influenced by his own
perception of the situation
o Perception is the process by which people select, organize, and interpret
information to form a meaningful picture of the world
o People can form different perception of the same stimulus because of 3
perceptual processes:
Selective attention: the tendency for people to screen out most of the
information to which they are exposed
Selective distortion: the tendency of people to interpret information in a
way that will support what they already believe
Selective retention: the tendency to retain information that support
their attitudes & beliefs
Learning
o It is the change in an individual’s behavior arising from experience and occurs
through interplay of:
Drives: it is a strong internal stimulus that calls for action
Stimuli: The particular object
Cues: minor stimuli that determine when, where, and how the person
responds
Responses: the action or the decision of buying that the customer takes
Reinforcement: when the customer is satisfied with the object, and tend
to use it more than once it then becomes reinforced
Beliefs & attitudes
o Belief: it is a descriptive thought that a person has about something
o Attitude: Describes a person’s relatively consistent evaluation, feelings, and
tendencies toward an object or idea
Need Recognition
Occurs when the buyer recognizes a problem or need triggered by:
Internal stimuli: one of the person’s normal needs (hunger, thirst)
External stimuli: such as ads or discussion with a friend
Information Search
Sources of Information
o Personal sources—family and friends
o Commercial sources—advertising, Internet
o Public sources—mass media, consumer organizations
o Experiential sources—handling, examining, using the product
The most effective sources are personal sources
Evaluation of Alternatives
How the consumer processes information to arrive at brand choices.
Depends on the individual consumer and the specific buying situation.
Purchase Decision
The act by the consumer to buy the most preferred brand
Two factors come between the purchase attention and the purchase decision:
o Attitudes of others
o Unexpected situational factors (economy turning for worse, competitor
dropping price, friend dissatisfied with product)
Postpurchase Behavior
The satisfaction or dissatisfaction that the consumer feels about the purchase.
Relationship between:
o Consumer’s expectations
o Product’s perceived performance
The larger the gap between expectation and performance, the greater the consumer’s
dissatisfaction.
Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort caused by a post-purchase conflict.
Customer satisfaction is a key to building profitable relationships with consumers—to
keeping and growing consumers and reaping their customer lifetime value.