Buyer Behavior

Maryland International College

Chapter 3
 Discussion Questions
• How do consumer characteristics influence
buying behavior?
• How do consumers make purchasing
decisions?
• How do marketers analyze consumer decision
making?

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 Consumer Markets and Consumer Buying Behavior

• It refers to the buying behavior of final

consumers- individuals and households that
buy goods and services for personal
consumption.
• The term consumer behavior is defined as the
behavior that consumers display in searching for,
purchasing, using, evaluating, and disposing of
products and services that they expect will satisfy
their needs.
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 Consumer Markets and Consumer Buying Behavior

• Marketers spend more money than ever to study

consumers, trying to learn more about consumer
behavior. Who buys? How do they buy? When
do they buy? Where do they buy? Why do
they buy?
• Marketers must fully understand both
the theory and reality of consumer
behavior.
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 Consumer Markets and Consumer Buying Behavior

• The central question for marketers is; how do

consumers respond to various marketing
stimuli that the company might use?

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 Model of Consumer
Behavior

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Characteristics Affecting Consumer Behavior

7
 Factors Influencing Buyer
Behavior
• A consumer’s buying behavior is
influenced by cultural, social, personal,
and psychological factors.
• Marketers cannot control such factors,
but they must take them into account.

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I. Cultural Factors
• Cultural factors exert the broadest and deepest
influence on consumer behavior.
 The marketer needs to understand the role
played by the buyer's culture, subculture and
social class
• Culture, subculture, and social class are
particularly important influences on
consumer buying behavior.
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 A. Culture
 Culture is the most fundamental determinant of a person’s
wants and behavior.
 The set of basic values, perceptions, wants and behaviors
learned by a member of society from family and other
important institutions
• Values such achievement and success, activity, efficiency and
practicality, progress, material comfort, individualism,
freedom, external comfort, humanitarianism, and youthfulness.

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 A. Culture
• A child growing up in another country might have a
different view of self, relationship to others, and
rituals.
• Marketers must closely attend to cultural values in
every country to understand how to best market
their existing products and find opportunities for
new products.

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 B. Subculture
 Each culture consists of smaller subcultures
that provide more specific identification and
socialization for their members.
 Groups of people with shared value systems
based on common life experiences and situations
 Subcultures include nationalities, religions,
groups, and geographic regions.

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 B. Subculture
• When subcultures grow large and affluent
enough, companies often design specialized
marketing programs to serve them
 Many subcultures make up important
market segments, leading marketers to tailor
products and marketing programs to their
needs.

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 C. Social Class
 Social classes are relatively homogeneous and
enduring divisions in a society.
 They are hierarchically ordered and their members
share similar values, interests, and behavior
 Social class is not determined by a single
factor, such as income, but is measured as
a combination of occupation, income,
education, wealth and other variables.
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 II. Social Factors
 A consumer’s behavior is influenced by such
social factors as reference groups, family, and
social roles and status.
A. Reference Groups
 Reference groups consist of all of the groups that have
a direct (face-to-face) or indirect influence on a
person’s attitudes or behavior.
 Groups that have a direct influence on a person are
called membership groups.

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 II.Social Factor
• Membership Group: Groups that have a direct
influence and to which a person belongs.
 Some are Primary groups - with whom there is
regular but informal interaction (like family,
friends, coworkers, neighbors).
 Some are Secondary groups, which are more
formal and have less regular interaction (like
religious, professional and trade union groups).

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 II.Social Factor
Reference groups influence a person at least in
three ways:
 They expose the person to new behaviors and
lifestyles.
 They influence the person's attitudes and self-concept
because he or she wants to 'fit in'.
 They also create pressures to conform that may affect
the person's product and brand choices

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 II.Social Factor
• People are also influenced by groups to
which they do not belong.
 Aspirational groups: are those a person
hopes to join;
 Example; as when a teenage football player
hopes to play some day for Arsenal
 Dissociative groups: are those whose
values or behavior an individual rejects.
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 II.Social Factor
• Where reference group influence is strong,
marketers must determine how to reach and
influence the groups opinion leaders.
• An opinion leader is the person who offers
informal advice or information about a specific
product or product category, such as which of
several brands is best or how a particular product
may be used.

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 II.Social Factor
• Opinion leaders are often highly
confident, socially active, and frequent
users of the category.
• Marketers try to reach them by
identifying their demographic and
psychographic characteristics,
identifying the media they read, and
directing messages to them.
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 II.Social Factor
• The family is the most important
consumer buying organization in
society, and family members constitute
the most influential primary reference
group.
• There are two families in the buyers
life.
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 II.Social Factor
• The family of orientation consists of
parents and siblings.
 From parents a person acquires an
orientation toward religion, politics, and
economics and a sense of personal
ambition, self-worth, and love.

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 II.Social Factor
• A more direct influence on everyday
buying behavior is the family of
procreation namely, the persons spouse
and children.
 Now traditional purchasing roles are
changing, and marketers would be wise to
see both men and women as possible targets.

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 II.Social Factor
• For expensive products and services such as cars,
vacations, or housing, the vast majority of husbands
and wives engage in joint decision making.
 Men and women may respond differently to marketing
messages.
 Research has shown that women value connections and
relationships with family and friends and place a higher
priority on people than on companies. Men, on the other
hand, relate more to competition and place a high
priority on action.

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 II.Social Factor
• Another shift in buying patterns is an increase in
the amount of birr spent and the direct and indirect
influence wielded by children and teens.
 Research has shown that more than two-thirds of 13- to
21-year-olds make or influence family purchase
decisions on audio/video equipment, software, and
vacation destinations
 Television can be especially powerful in reaching
children, and marketers are using it to target them at
younger ages
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 II.Social Factor
• Role and Status
 Groups often are an important source of
information and help to define norms for
behavior.
 We can define a persons position in each
group in terms of role and status.

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 II.Social Factor
• A role consists of the activities a person is
expected to perform.
• Each role in turn connotes a status (general esteem
given to role by society).
 People choose products that reflect and
communicate their role and their actual or
desired status in society.
 Marketers must be aware of the status-symbol
potential of products and brands.
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 III. Personal Factors
 The third factor is personal characteristics,
including the buyer’s age, stage in the life
cycle, occupation, economic circumstances,
lifestyle, personality, and self-concept.
 Because many of these have a direct impact
on consumer behavior, it is important for
marketers to follow them closely

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 III. Personal Factors
A) Age and Stage in the Life Cycle
 Tastes in food, clothes, furniture and
recreation are often age related.
 Family life cycle - the stages through
which families might pass as they mature
over time.
 People change the goods and services they
buy over their lifetimes.
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 III. Personal Factors
A) Age and Stage in the Life Cycle
 Consumption is also shaped by the family life cycle and
the number, age, and gender of people in the household
at any point in time.
 In addition, psychological life-cycle stages may matter.
 Marketers should also consider critical life events or
transitions marriage, childbirth, illness, relocation,
divorce, first job, career change, retirement, death of
a spouses giving rise to new needs.

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 III. Personal Factors
B) Occupation and Economic Circumstances
• Occupation also influences consumption patterns.
 A blue-collar worker will buy work clothes and
lunchboxes, while a company president will buy
expensive suits and a country club membership.
• Marketers try to identify the occupational groups that
have above-average interest in their products and services
and even tailor products for certain occupational groups:
 Computer software companies, for example, design different
products for brand managers, engineers, lawyers, and physicians.

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 III. Personal Factors
B) Economic Circumstances
A person's economic situation will
affect product choice.
The income that he/she earns, the
attitude towards spending and saving,
and the borrowing power affect his/her
buying decision.

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 III. Personal Factors
B) Economic Circumstances
• If economic indicators point to a recession,
marketers can take steps to redesign,
reposition, and reprice their products or
introduce or increase the emphasis on
discount brands so they can continue to
offer value to target customers

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 III. Personal Factors
C)Lifestyle and Value
 Lifestyle is a person's pattern of living as
expressed in his/her activities, interests and
opinions.
 Activities (work, hobbies, shopping, sports, social
events)
 Interests (food, fashion, family recreation)
 Opinions (about themselves, social issues, business,
Product)
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 III. Personal Factors
C)Lifestyle and Value
 Marketers search for relationships
between their products and lifestyle
groups.
 Lifestyles are shaped partly by whether
consumers are money constrained or
time constrained.

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 III. Personal Factors
D)Personality and Self Concept
• Personality: the unique psychological characteristics that
lead to relatively consistent and lasting responses to one's
own environment including buying behavor.
• Personality is usually described in terms of traits such as
self-confidence, dominance, sociability, autonomy,
defensiveness, adaptability and aggressiveness.
• The attitude of people or mental picture towards themselves
is also called self-concept or self-image. Thus, people buy
products which fit their assumed self -image.
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 III. Personal Factors
D)Personality and Self Concept
• Personality can be a useful variable in
analyzing consumer brand choices.
• Brands also have personalities, and
consumers are likely to choose brands
whose personalities match their own.

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 IV. Psychological Factors
• A person's buying choices are further
influenced by four important
psychological factors: motivation,
perception, learning, and beliefs and
attitudes.

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 IV. Psychological Factors
A) Motivation: We all have many needs at
any given time.
 Some needs are:
 biogenic; they arise from physiological states
of tension such as hunger, thirst, or
discomfort.
 Other needs are psychogenic; they arise from
psychological states of tension such as the
need for recognition, esteem, or belonging.

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 IV. Psychological Factors
A) Motivation:
 A need becomes a motive when it is
aroused to a sufficient level of intensity
to drive us to act.

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 IV. Psychological Factors
B) Perception
 A motivated person is ready to act-how is
influenced by his or her perception of the
situation.
 In marketing, perceptions are more
important than reality, because perceptions
affect consumers actual behavior.

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 IV. Psychological Factors
B) Perception
 Perception is the process by which we select,
organize, and interpret information inputs to
create a meaningful picture of the world.
 One person might perceive a fast-talking
salesperson as aggressive and insincere;
another, as intelligent and helpful.
 Each will respond to the salesperson
differently.
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 IV. Psychological Factors
B) Perception
 People emerge with different
perceptions of the same object because
of three perceptual processes: selective
attention, selective distortion, and
selective retention.

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 IV. Psychological Factors
B) Perception: Selective Attention
 Because we cannot possibly attend to all, we
screen most stimuli out process called
selective attention.
 Selective attention means that marketers must
work hard to attract consumers notice.
 The real challenge is to explain which stimuli
people will notice.
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 IV. Psychological Factors
B) Perception
A. Selective attention: The tendency of people to
screen out most of the information to which they are
exposed (focus on eye catching objects or exciting
message).
. Marketing implication: the ads must be provided
by a bold message and related with: current need,
anticipated need and large deviation.

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 IV. Psychological Factors
B) Perception: Selective Attention: Findings
 People are more likely to notice stimuli that relate
to a current need.
 A person who is motivated to buy a computer will notice
computer ads and be less likely to notice DVD ads.
 People are more likely to notice stimuli they
anticipate.
 You are more likely to notice computers than radios in a
computer store because you don’t expect the store to
carry radios.

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 IV. Psychological Factors
B) Perception: Selective Attention: Findings
 People are more likely to notice stimuli whose
deviations are large in relationship to the
normal size of the stimuli.
 You are more likely to notice an ad offering $100 off
the list price of a computer than one offering $5 off.
•Though we screen out much, we are influenced by
unexpected stimuli, such as sudden offers in the mail,
over the phone, or from a salesperson.

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 IV. Psychological Factors
B) Perception: Selective Retention
 Most of us don’t remember much of the information to
which we’re exposed, but we do retain information that
supports our attitudes and beliefs.
 Because of selective retention, we’re likely to
remember good points about a product we like
and forget good points about competing
products.
 It also explains why marketers need to use repetition
to make sure their message is not overlooked.

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 IV. Psychological Factors
B) Perception
C. selective retention: The tendency of people to
retain only part of the information to which they are
exposed, usually information that supports their
attitudes or beliefs (due to the attitudes and belief
they have towards the object).
. Marketing implication: must understand the
customers belief and attitudes.
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 IV. Psychological Factors
C) Learning
•It is the process of changes in an individual’s behavior that arise
from (the result of) experience.
•learning is produced through the interplay of drives, stimuli,
cues, responses, and reinforcement.
 A drive is a strong internal stimulus that calls for action.
 Cues are minor stimuli that determine when, where and how the person
responds.
. The practical significance of learning theory for marketers is that
they can build up demand for a product by associating it with strong
drives, using motivating cues and providing positive reinforcement.

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 IV. Psychological Factors
D) Beliefs and Attitudes
A belief is a descriptive thought that a person holds
about something. These beliefs may be based on real
knowledge, opinion or faith, and may or may not
carry an emotional charge.
. Marketers are interested in the beliefs that people
formulate about specific products and services,
because these beliefs make up product and brand
images that affect buying behavior.
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 IV. Psychological Factors
D) Beliefs and Attitudes
Attitude: describes a person's relatively consistent evaluations, feelings
and tendencies towards an object or idea. It is a learned predisposition.
. Attitudes put people into a frame of mind of liking or disliking
things, of moving towards or away from them.
 Attitudes are difficult to change. A person's attitudes fit into a pattern
and to change one attitude may require difficult adjustments in many
other attitudes.
 Thus, a company would be well advised to fit its product into
existing attitudes rather than to try to change people’s attitudes. Of
course, trying to change attitudes can pay off occasionally.

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 The Buying Decision
Process

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 The Buying Decision
Process
• Smart companies try to fully understand customers
buying decision process-the experiences in learning,
choosing, using, and even disposing of a product
• Consumers don’t always pass through all five
stages, they may skip or reverse some.
 When you buy your regular brand of toothpaste,
you go directly from the need to the purchase
decision, skipping information search and
evaluation.
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 The Buying Decision
Process
• Problem Recognition
 The buying process starts when the buyer
recognizes a problem or need triggered by
internal or external stimuli.
 Marketers need to identify the circumstances that
trigger a particular need by gathering
information from a number of consumers.
 They can then develop marketing strategies that
spark consumer interest.
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 The Buying Decision
Process
• Information Search
 Major information sources to which consumers will
turn fall into four groups:
 Personal: Family, friends, neighbors, acquaintances
 Commercial: Advertising, Web sites, salespersons,
dealers, packaging, displays
 Public: Mass media, consumer-rating organizations
 Experiential: Handling, examining, using the product

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 The Buying Decision
Process
• Information Search

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 The Buying Decision
Process
• Evaluation of Alternatives
 Some basic concepts will help us understand
consumer evaluation processes:
 First, the consumer is trying to satisfy a need.
 Second, the consumer is looking for certain
benefits from the product solution.
 Third, the consumer sees each product as a bundle
of attributes with varying abilities to deliver the
benefits.
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 The Buying Decision
Process
• Purchase Decision
 In the evaluation stage, the consumer forms
preferences among the brands in the choice set and
may also form an intention to buy the most
preferred brand.
 In executing a purchase intention, the consumer
may make up to five sub decisions: brand (brand
A), dealer (dealer 2), quantity (one computer),
timing (weekend), and payment method (credit
card)
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 The Buying Decision Process

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 The Buying Decision
Process
• Post purchase Behavior
 After the purchase, the consumer might
experience dissonance from noticing certain
disquieting features or hearing favorable things
about other brands and will be alert to
information that supports his or her decision.
 Marketingcommunications should supply beliefs
and evaluations that reinforce the consumer’s
choice and help him or her feel good about the
brand.
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 The Buying Decision
Process
• Post purchase Behavior
 Marketers must monitor post purchase
satisfaction, post purchase actions, and
post purchase product uses and disposal.

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 The Buying Decision
Process
• Post purchase Behavior: Post
Purchase Satisfaction
 Satisfaction is a function of the
closeness between expectations and the
products perceived performance

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 The Buying Decision
Process
• Post purchase Behavior: Post Purchase Actions
 satisfied consumer is more likely to purchase the product
gain and will also tend to say good things about the brand
to others.
 Dissatisfied consumers may abandon or return the product.
They may seek information that confirms its high value.
They may take public action by complaining to the
company, going to a lawyer, or complaining to other groups
(such as business, private, or government agencies).
 Private actions include deciding to stop buying the product (exit
option) or warning friends (voice option).

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 The Buying Decision
Process
• Post purchase Behavior: Post Purchase Uses and
Disposal

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 Types of Buying Decision
Behavior
 Assael distinguished four types of consumer
buying behavior, based on the degree of buyer
involvement and the degree of differences among
brands:
1. Complex buying behavior
2. Dissonance reducing buying behavior
3. Habitual buying behavior
4. Variety seeking buying behavior
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 Four types of Buying
Behavior
High involvement
Complex buying behavior—
applies when product is expensive,
bought infrequently, risky, and self
expressive; buyer first develops beliefs
about the product, then develops
attitudes about it, and finally makes a
thoughtful choice.
Dissonance-reducing behavior—
applies when the product is expensive,
bought infrequently, and risky; buyer
shops around and buys fairly quickly,
then later experiences dissonance but
stays alert to information supporting the
purchase decision.
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Low involvement
Variety-seeking buying behavior—applies
when buyer switches brands for the sake of
variety rather than dissatisfaction; buyer
has some beliefs about the product, chooses
a brand with little evaluation, and evaluates
the product during consumption.
Habitual buying behavior—
applies when the product is low-cost and
frequently purchased; buyers do not pass
through normal sequence of belief, attitude,
and behavior but instead make decisions
based on brand familiarity.
67
Types of Decision Process
• There are three ways in which the decision process
may be used.
A.Extensive decision-making: Occurs when a
consumer makes full use of the process.
 It is used for expensive, complex items with
which the consumer has little or no experience.
 Perceived risk is high and time pressure is low.

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Types of Decision Process
B. Limited decision making: takes place when
each step of the process is used, but the
consumer does not need to spend a great deal of
time on any of them.
 The consumer has some experience.
 The thoroughness with which the process is used
depends on the amount of experience, the importance
of the purchase, and time pressure.

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Types of Decision Process
C. Routine decision-making: involves habitual
behavior and skips steps in the process.
 Regularly purchased items are bought in this manner.
 Information search, evaluation, and post purchase
behavior are normally omitted

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 Organizational Buying
• Organizational buying is the decision-making
process by which formal organizations establish
the need for purchased products and services and
identify, evaluate, and choose among alternative
brands and suppliers.
• The business market consists of all the
organizations that acquire goods and services used
in the production of other products or services that
are sold, rented, or supplied to others.
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 Business Market Vs
Consumer Market
• Fewer, larger buyers.
 The business marketer normally deals
with far fewer, much larger buyers than
the consumer marketer does, particularly
in such industries as aircraft engines and
defense weapons.

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 Business Market Vs
Consumer Market
• Close supplier-customer relationship.
 Because of the smaller customer base
and the importance and power of the
larger customers, suppliers are
frequently expected to customize their
offerings to individual business
customer needs.

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 Business Market Vs
Consumer Market
• Professional purchasing.
 Business goods are often purchased by
trained purchasing agents, who must
follow their organizations purchasing
policies, constraints, and requirements.
 Thismeans business marketers must provide
greater technical data about their product
and its advantages over competitors products.

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 Business Market Vs
Consumer Market
• Multiple buying influences.
 Buying committees consisting of
technical experts and even senior
management are common in the purchase
of major goods.
 Business marketers need to send well-
trained sales representatives and sales
teams to deal with the well-trained buyers.
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 Business Market Vs
Consumer Market
• Multiple sales calls.
 A study found that it took four and a half
calls to close an average industrial sale.
 In the case of capital equipment sales for
large projects, it may take many attempts to
fund a project, and the sales cycle between
quoting a job and delivering the product’s
often measured in years.
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 Business Market Vs
Consumer Market
• Derived demand.
 The demand for business goods is
ultimately derived from the demand for
consumer goods.
 For this reason, the business marketer
must closely monitor the buying patterns
of ultimate consumers.
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 Business Market Vs
Consumer Market
• Inelastic demand
 The total demand for many business
goods and services is inelastic that is,
not much affected by price changes.

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 Business Market Vs
Consumer Market
• Fluctuating demand.
 The demand for business goods and
services tends to be more volatile than the
demand for consumer goods and services.
 A given percentage increase in consumer demand
can lead to a much larger percentage increase in
the demand for plant and equipment necessary to
produce the additional output. Economists refer to
this as the acceleration effect.

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 Business Market Vs
Consumer Market
• Geographically concentrated buyers.
 The geographical concentration of
producers helps to reduce selling costs.

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 Business Market Vs
Consumer Market
• Direct purchasing.
 Business buyers often buy directly from
manufacturers rather than through
intermediaries, especially items that are
technically complex or expensive such
as mainframes or aircraft.

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