Consumer Behaviour

Different consumer roles:

- The initiator: identifies the need
- The gatekeeper: the person who will act as a deterrent
- The influencer: influence buying decision => expert or social status (e.g: doctors)
- The decider: makes the decision to buy
- The buyer: the customer
- The end user

3 Analysis Models for Consumer Decision Process

Economic models: large quantitative and are based on the assumptions of rationality and near
perfect knowledge. The consumer is seen to maximise their utility.

Psychological models: psychological and cognitive processes such as motivation and need cognition.
They are qualitative rather than quantitative and build on sociological factors like cultural influences
and family influences.

Consumer behaviour models: practical models used by marketers. They typically blend both
economic and psychological models.

Buyer’s Decision- Making Process

1) Need recognition =>2) Information research => 3) Evaluation of alternatives => 4) Post
purchase decision => 5) Post purchase behaviour

1) The consumer recognises the existence of an unfulfilled need => Discrepancy between
current state ≠ desired state (e.g. seeing someone drinking, seeing hearing an ad)
2) Information research: How to fix a problem, Internal search, access the memory
Consideration set (included) Evoked Set (included) Awareness Set

3) Evaluation of Alternatives: The consumer evaluates different alternatives

- according to the product attributes.
- Which ones are the most important/discriminating.

4) Purchase Decision / Buying:

- Choosing which product to purchase and acting on that a choice
- Intent on buying ≠ from actually buying the product
5) Post purchase behaviour:
- Consumers evaluate how good a choice was made by comparing the expectations they
formed regarding the product with its actual performance (will the consumer purchase the
product again; will he recommend the product => WOM)
- Possible emotional reaction: Disappointment (unlikely to purchase again + negative WOM) ;
Satisfaction ; Delight (likely to repurchase + positive WOM)
 - Post Purchase cognitive dissonance= when a consumer is psychologically uncomfortable
about their purchase

Factors influencing Consumer behaviour:

CULTURE
Culture and Subculture:
Culture
 Shared by all, ongoing (evolves) and learnt (not innate)
The 6 Hofstede Dimensions of Culture: Individualism vs Collectivism; Short-termism vs long-termism;
Masculinity vs femininity; Indulgence vs restraint; Uncertainty avoidance; Power distance
Glocalisation: International strategies => Adaptation to the country’s culture; Standardization of the
product globally; Glocalisation: global instruction but freedom for the local team
Social Groups
Belonging Groups
Primary => frequent relationship, strong influential power (family, friends)
Secondary: less direct, less personal (colleagues, trade union)

Reference groups
 Influence the self-concept: What should I do to fit in?
The aspirational reference group: those others against whom one would like to compare oneself
The associative reference group: people who more realistically represent the individuals current
equals or near-equals
The dissociative reference group: people that the individual would not like to be

Opinion leaders

Opinion leaders frequently influence the attitudes behaviors of others. Such individuals share
different characteristics: high interest in a given product category, update product category
knowledge by reading, talking with salespeople etc, impart both positive and negative information ,
are among the first to buy goods
PERSONAL
Socio-demographics

Real age is different from the subjective age:

5-19 => older by 2 years
20-34: no difference between real and subjective age
35-49 => younger by 8 years
50-64=> younger by 15 years
Over 65=> younger by 19 years

Personality
Personality
e.g: self-confidence, risk aversion, curiosity
Very important to explain behaviour
=> lead the consumer to respond/act in a certain way
=> consumer will look for same personality in brands they choose

Lifestyle
Lifestyle reflects a pattern of living:
- PYSCHOLOGICAL
 Attitude and beliefs

Attitude= a person’s consistently favourable or unfavourable evaluation feelings and

tendencies towards a brand or a product
Belief= A thought that a person holds about something usually based on knowledge, opinion
or faith

3 Components of attitudes and beliefs:

- Cognitive: Beliefs about a product
- Affective: Positive or negative feelings associated with the product
- Conative: Behavioural intention or transforming the attitude into actual behaviour

Attitudes are based on the evaluation and the importance of product/brand attributes:
- Non-compensatory models: A focus on the grades of the most important attributes
- Compensatory model: A very good grade on one attribute can compensate a very bad one
- Lexicographic model: select the brand that is the best on the most important attribute. If two
brands equally good, he compares on the second most important attribute etc
- Conjuctive method: establishes cutoffs for each attributes, he chooses a brand that meets all
the cutoffs but reject if fails to meet any one cutoff.
- Disjunctive: decides a separate minimally acceptable performance level of each attribute

Perception = The process by which people select, organize and interpret sensory stimulation (sounds,
vision, smell, touch) into meaningful picture of the world
Expose => Attention => Understanding

Motivation and needs

Motive= an internal state that is sufficiently pressing to drive the person to seek satisfaction of that
need (=drive)

2 Theories of Human motivation:

- Freud assumed that people are largely unconscious about the real psychological forces
shaping their behaviour => A person’s buying decisions are affected by subconscious motives
that even the buyer may not fully understand (e.g.: BMW convertible bought by an ageing
boomer)
- Maslow sought to explain why people are driven by needs at particular times

Cognition and Brains

2 ways in which we make our decisions:
- System 1: Fast, intuitive, metaphoric, unconscious (e.g: buying ice cream)
 - System 2: Slow, analytical, Propositional, Conscious (e.g: buying a house)

Change people behaviour with a Nudge= a gentle ‘push’ to influence behaviour in predictable ways
through heuristics, goals, and basis