Market analysis (company, competitors, conditions,

consumers) – market segmentation (identify product-related

It is more than just buying:
Acquisition: Buying, leasing, trading, borrowing, gift-giving...
Usage: Functional & Symbolic and Disposition: Throw away, recycle, resell...
need sets, group customers with similar need sets, describe
each group, select attractive segment(s) to target) –
marketing strategy (product, price, distribution, promotion,
service) – consumer decision process – outcomes (individual,
firm, society).

Self-concept and lifestyle: experiences and acquisitions: needs and desires:

External influences: culture, subculture, demographics, social status, reference groups, family, marketing activities
Internal influences : perception, learning, memory, motives, personality, emotions, attitudes
Decision process: problem recognition-information, search-alternative evaluation and selection-outlet selection and purchase-
postpurchase processes.

Consumer behavior: study of individuals, groups, organizations and processes, they use to select, secure, use products, services,
experiences, ideas to satisfy needs and impacts that these processes have on the consumer and society. It is a dynamic process:
The sequence of acquisition, consumption, and disposition can occur over time in a dynamic sequence.
 Many decisions involved (for whom, what, when, why, where)

The spectrum of consumption: benefit/cost: laptop, smartphone & perceived value: luxury, fashion, cosmetics, baby, alcohol

Marketing strategy – consumer behavior: language, demographics, values, nonverbal com. (time, etiquette, space, things, symbols,
agreements, relationships).

Cultural values: norms (appropriate behavior) & sanctions (penalties) – consumption patterns
Cultural awareness: ability to recognize the differences btw your own and others’ cultural behaviors n values.

Variations in culture: The numerous values that differ across cultures and affect consumption include :
Self-Oriented Values: the objectives and approaches to life the individual members of society find desirable.
Other-Oriented Values: society’s view of the appropriate relationships btw individuals and groups within that society.
Environment-Oriented Values: Prescribe a society’s relationship to its economic, technical, physical environment.

Growing consumer diversity due to: age, gender/sexual orientations, geography, ethnicity, religion, household, s. class.

Age – more likely to have things in common w people of same age, been through similar things
Households: smaller families (childless couples, income spent on vacation, toys, nice restaurants)
Social class: income, family background, occupation, education etc. (How much money will be spent and how)

Family decision making:

Initiator: Recognizes needs/Starts process (parents, children)
Information Gatherer: Expert/Interest in purchase (parents)
Influencer: Evaluation Assistant (children)
Decision Maker: Makes the final decision (parents, children)
Purchaser: Actually purchases the product (parents)
User: Persons who use/consume the product (children)
Conspicuous Consumption: Acquisition and display of goods to
show off one’s status.
Compensatory Consumption: Buying products to offset
frustrations or difficulties in life (purchasing a desired status’
brand/product).

Reference groups: group whose presumed perspectives or values are being used by an individual as the basis for his/her current behavior
(ingroups & outgroups).
Four criteria that are particularly useful in classifying groups: membership, strength of social tie, type of contact, attraction.
Types :
Aspirational – want to be like them, Associative – my folks, Dissociative – don’t want to be linked to them

Types of reference group influence:

Informational Influence: individual uses the behaviors and opinions of r.g. members as potentially useful bits of information
Normative Influence: when an individual fulfils group expectations to gain a direct reward or to avoid sanction
Identification Influence: when individuals have internalized the group’s values and norms. These then guide the individuals’ behaviors
w/o any thought of reference group rewards or sanctions.

Social norms: Rules and standards that are understood by members of a group, and that guide and/or constrain social behavior without
the force of laws (informal, socially shared, based on + or – soc. reinforments)
Encourage socially approved behaviors : conserving energy, tax payments, healthy food choices, sustainable products.
Discourage socially disapproved behaviors: polluting the environment, smoking, alcohol and drug use, gambling.

Compliance techniques:
Foot-in-the-Door Technique: persuasion technique, first gets people to agree to a small request, then a larger request.
Low-Balling Technique : presents an attractive offer at first, before finalizing the agreement, person will change the offer.
Reciprocity: People feel social obligations to repay: gifts, favors, invitations.
Door-in-the-Face Technique : First ask a large request that will most likely be turned down.
Stages in adoption process: awareness, interest, evaluation, trial and adoption.
Stages of information processing: exposure, attention, interpretation.

Types of exposure:
Selective Exposure: highly selective nature of consumer exposure is a major concern for marketers since failure to gain exposure results
in lost communication and sales opportunities.
Voluntary Exposure: consumers often avoid commercials and other marketing stimuli (vision, sound…), sometimes they actively seek
them out for various reasons including purchase goals, entertainment, and information.

Attention: The extent to which processing activity is devoted to a particular stimulus. You notice the information.
Limited: Attend to multiple things only if processing them is relatively automatic (Turn off the radio when looking for sth)
Selective: Decide which stimuli are worthy of processing (At a party, but can still hear your name said across the room)
Can be divided: Allowing us to do more than one thing at a time (Talk on phone and clean house)

Factors influencing attention:

Stimulus Factors: Physical characteristics of the stimulus itself (size, intensity, color, position, format, etc.)
Individual Factor: Characteristics which distinguish one individual from another (motivation, ability, etc.)
Situational Factors: stimuli in the envir. other than temporary charac. of individual induced by the envir. (program involvement).

The more intense the stimulus, the more change is needed to notice the difference. – Weber’s law.
The Just Noticeable Difference (JND): the magnitude of change in a stimulus required to result in detection of a change.
Change Blindness: Psychological phenomenon when a change in a visual stimulus goes unnoticed by the observer.
Processing Fluency: Repeated exposure to stimulus results in a representation of the stimulus in memory, and individuals then tend to
process it more fluently in the future (tend to form favorable attitudes and positive evaluations about the target)

Interpretation: a relative process rather than absolute, referred to as perceptual relativity. Consumers often evaluate the performance of a
well-known brand as higher than that of an identical product with an unknown brand name.

Learning: Any change in the content or organization of long-term memory and/or behavior
Memory: persistence of learning over time, via the storage and retrieval of information, can occur consciously or unconsciously

Memory consists of two interrelated components:

1) Short-term Memory (STM): working memory: is that portion of total memory that is currently activated or in use
Miller’s Law is the recognition that people can handle 7 (+/- 2) bits of information at a time
2) Long-term Memory (LTM): that portion of total memory devoted to permanent information storage, schemas, scripts
Semantic memory basic knowledge individual has about a concept, regardless of own experiences (rich drink champagne)
Episodic memory is the memory of a sequence of events in which a person participated

Learning associations: high and low involvement.

Classical conditioning: Producing a response to a stimulus by repeatedly pairing it with another stimulus that automatically produces this
response (dog – meat).
Operant Conditioning: Acquiring a desired reaction by reinforcing desired reaction and punishing undesired reaction (sit – treat).
Cognitive learning: all the mental activities of humans as they work to solve problems or cope with situations.
- Iconic Rote Learning : Simple information acquisition (learning sth bc it’s catchy)
- Vicarious Learning: Consumers can use imagery to anticipate the outcome of various courses of action (observation)

- Analytic Reasoning: Individuals engage in thinking to combine existing and new information to form new associations

Categorization (Taxonomic) : Occurs when consumers use their prior knowledge to label, identify, and classify something new (by
importance). Superordinate (food), basic (fast food), subordinate (hamburger).

Brand Image: schematic memory brand: target market’s interpret. of the product’s attributes, benefits, manufacturer charact.
Product Positioning: decision by a marketer to try to achieve a defined b.i. relative to competition within a market segment Perceptual
map: technique for measuring&developing prod. pos. (expensive, fun, economical and common, serious)

Retrieval: process of remembering or accessing what was stored in memory (recognition (seen already or not - QCM) and recall –
retrieve information – essay test, fill in the blanks)
Interference: mixing up two different things when they are aligned closely, Misinformation: errors in mem. w. new inf. w. existing