Lesson 1 – FOUNDATIONS OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
Unit 1 – An Introduction to Consumer Behavior
Overview
The field of consumer behavior covers a lot of ground: It is the study of the processes involved when individuals or groups select, purchase, use, or dispose of products, services, ideas, or experiences to satisfy needs and desires. Consumers take many forms, ranging from an 8-year-old child to an executive in a large corporation who helps to decide on a multimillion-dollar computer system.
Learning Objectives
• Consumer behavior is a process.
• Marketers have to understand the wants and needs of different consumer segments.
• Our choices as consumers relate in powerful ways to the rest of our lives.
• Our motivations to consume are complex and varied.
• Technology and culture create a new “always-on” consumer.
• Many different types of specialists study consumer behavior.
• There are differing perspectives regarding how and what we should understand about consumer behavior.
Course materials
Consumer behavior is a process.
Consumer behavior is the study of the processes involved when individuals or groups select, purchase, use, or dispose of products, services, ideas, or experiences to satisfy needs and desires. A consumer may purchase, use, and dispose of a product, but different people may perform these functions. In addition, we can think of consumers as role players who need different products to help them play their various parts.
Marketers have to understand the wants and needs of different consumer segments.
Market segmentation is an important aspect of consumer behavior. Consumers can be segmented according to many dimensions, including product usage, demographics (the objective aspects of a population, such as age and sex), and psychographics (psychological and lifestyle characteristics). Emerging developments, such as the new emphasis on relationship marketing and the practice of database marketing, mean that marketers are much more attuned to the wants and needs of different consumer groups.
Our choices as consumers relate in powerful ways to the rest of our lives.
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Marketing activities exert an enormous impact on individuals. Consumer behavior is relevant to our understanding of both public policy issues (e.g., ethical marketing practices) and the dynamics of popular culture.
Our motivations to consume are complex and varied.
Marketers try to satisfy consumer needs, but the reasons people purchase any product can vary widely. The identification of consumer motives is an important step to ensure that a product will satisfy appropriate needs. Traditional approaches to consumer behavior focus on the abilities of products to satisfy rational needs (utilitarian motives), but hedonic motives (e.g., the need for exploration or for fun) also play a key role in many purchase decisions.
Technology and culture create a new “always-on” consumer.
The Web and social media transform the way consumers interact with companies and with each other. Online commerce allows us to locate obscure products from around the world, and consumption communities provide forums for people to share opinions and product recommendations.
Many different types of specialists study consumer behavior.
The field of consumer behavior is interdisciplinary; it is composed of researchers from many different fields who share an interest in how people interact with the marketplace. We can categorize these disciplines by the degree to which their focus is micro (the individual consumer) or macro (the consumer as a member of groups or of the larger society).
There are differing perspectives regarding how and what we should understand about consumer behavior.
Researchers who study consumer behavior do so both for academic purposes and to inform marketing organizations about practical decisions. We can roughly divide research orientations into two approaches: The positivist perspective emphasizes the objectivity of science and the consumer as a rational decision maker. The interpretivist (or CCT) perspective, in contrast, stresses the subjective meaning of the consumer’s individual experience and the idea that any behavior is subject to multiple interpretations rather than to one single explanation.
Read:
Chapter 1 – Buying, Having, and Being: An Introduction to Consumer Behavior
Consumer Behavior 12e
by: Michael R. Solomon
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Activities/assessment:
Answer the following Review Questions:
1. Provide a definition of consumer behavior.
2. What are demographics? Give three examples of demographic characteristics.
3. What are consumption communities? Give three examples of consumption communities.
4. What is role theory, and how does it help us to understand consumer behavior?
5. How would you define a consumer?
6. Why do some marketers believe in the concept of relationship marketing?
7. How practical and useful is database marketing for most businesses?
8. Identify the three stages of the consumption process.
9. What are the major differences between the positivist and interpretivist paradigms in consumer research?