Solomon's Consumer Behavior Nancy Southerland, MBA
Lecture One/Chapter One
Welcome Students, I am Nancy Southerland.
I am eager to begin the discussion of Consumer Behavior.
Our textbook is Solomon's Consumer Behavior.
The book begins with a look at the role of consumers.
We will look at how consumers influence the field of marketing and how marketers influence
consumers in this relational exchange.
Students, we are tasked in Chapter One Consumer behavior with understanding seven objectives.
They are:
1.
Consumer behavior is a process.
2.
Marketers need to understand the wants and needs of different consumer segments.
3.
Our choices as consumers relate in powerful ways to the rest of our lives.
4.
Our motivations to consume are complex and varied.
Further we are tasked with understanding that: 5.
Technology and culture create a new 'always on' consumer.
6.
Many different types of specialists study consumer behavior.
7.
There are differing perspectives regarding how and what we should understand about consumer
behavior.
Let us now examine Learning Objective One: Consumer Behavior is a Process.
In the early stages of development, researchers referred to the field as buyer behavior.
Marketers now recognize that consumer behavior is an ongoing process, not merely what happens
at one point in the transaction cycle.
We call the transaction of value between two or more an exchange.
This exchange is definitely an integral part of marketing but consumer behavior recognizes
that the entire consumption process is relevant for marketers.
This expanded view of consumer behavior embraces much more than the study of what and why we
buy; it also focuses on how marketers influence consumers and how consumers use the services
and products marketers sell.
In this photo, a motel in Dubai promotes responsible behavior by asking the consumer to sacrifice
some consumption of alcohol so that their reality is not altered.
This is an excellent example of how consumer behavior can be affected by marketing.
Figure 1.1 illustrates these issues.
I want us to now develop a working definition of Consumer Behavior.
Thus, 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.
This slide outlines Stages in the Consumption Process.
Please note Figure 1.1 in the textbook.
We call the person who identifies a need or desire, makes a purchase, and then disposes
of the product as a consumer.
The purchaser or user might be the same person, or not.
You can see in the slide that there are three key stages: 1) prepurchase, 2) purchase, and
3) postpurchase.
Marketers need an understanding of all three stages in order to be able to satisfy needs
and wants.
Students, it is no surprise to you that all of us are CONSUMERS.
Thus, I want us to do a Reflection Exercise.
Let us ponder these questions.
Grab a piece of paper and make notes.
- How do you decide that you need a product?
- What about a purchase makes it pleasant or stressful for you?
- When using the product, what determines if the experience is pleasant?
This slide outlines Learning Objective Two: Marketers have to understand the wants and
needs of different consumer segments.
Marketers must understand the various consumer segments they are targeting in order to meet
the segments' needs.
In the ad shown, the woman is fed up with bad financial news.
Bianco adjusted its message strategy to address the concerns of its audience.
Many dimensions are relevant for understanding consumer needs and wants.
Usage (whether heavy or light) can help to focus marketers' energies.
In addition, there are many demographic variables that can help in understanding groups of consumers.
Students, consumers must be segmented, and consumers are segmented according to demographics.
Thus, demographics are statistics that measure observable aspects of a population.
Some of the most common demographic measures are age, gender, family structure, social
class, race or ethnicity, and geography.
Even lifestyles can be useful to marketers in that consumers may share demographic characteristics
but have very different lifestyles.
Marketers try to understand their customers and develop lifelong relationships.
Marketers who follow this approach are said to follow the philosophy of relationship marketing.
Marketers may also utilize database marketing in order to track consumers' buying habits.
A particular consumer segment is rednecks.
Red Neck Bank is real bank and targets by social classes.
Generally, people who belong to the same social class are approximately equal in terms of
their incomes and social standing in the community.
This bank boastfully and successfully targets rednecks as a consumer segment.
Please see http://redneck.bank/
Database marketing tracks specific consumers' buying habits very closely and crafts products
and messages tailored precisely to people's wants and needs based on this information.
The collection and analysis of extremely large datasets is called Big Data.
In a single day, consumers create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data.
Big Data can influence many areas of consumer life.
For instance, monitoring of Google searches for fever and flu can help epidemiologists
to identify specific areas of the US that have been hit by flu outbreaks even before
patients begin visiting doctors and hospitals.
This has turned into a thriving career path in Analytics for many that are quantitatively
focused.
Students, Learning Objective Three states that our choices as consumers relate in powerful
ways to the rest of our lives.
Thus, marketing influences popular culture and popular culture influences marketing.
We are surrounded by elements of popular culture- the good, the bac, and the ugly.
This ad for the Museum of Bad Art reminds us of that.
Many people don't realize the extent to which marketers influence popular culture.
Thus, popular culture is the music, movies, sports, books, celebrities, and other forms
of entertainment that the mass market produces and consumes and is both a product of and
an inspiration for marketers.
Whether we are talking about music, movies, sports, or entertainment, these forms of popular
culture both influence and are influenced by marketing.
As humans we are definitely in the know that we have relationships with people, yet we
find that consumers may develop relationships with brands over time.
The slide lists some of the types of relationships we may see between consumers and their brands.
Self-concept attachment means that the product helps to establish the user's identity.
This was one of our early points in this chapter.
Nostalgic attachment means the product serves as a link to the consumer's past.
Interdependence means that the product is a part of the user's daily routine.
Love means that the product elicits emotional bonds of warmth, passion, or other strong
emotion.
Students, I want us to do a reflection exercise and meditate upon your relationships with
brands.
- What kind of relationship do you have with your car?
- Do these feelings correspond to the types of relationships consumers may develop with
products?
- How do these relationships affect your behavior?
This slide covers Learning Objective 4.
Our motivations to consume are definitively complex and varied.
People often buy products not for what they do but for what they mean.
Products play an extended role in our lives.
Motivation refers to the processes that lead people to behave as they do.
It occurs when a need is aroused that the consumer wishes to satisfy.
Consumers can be described or classified according to many different needs.
Three of the most commonly discussed needs include need for affiliation, power, and uniqueness.
This further corroborates that our motivations to consume are complex and varied.
Need for affiliation is relevant to products for people in groups.
Need for power relates to our desire to have a mastery over our environment and surroundings.
Need for uniqueness relates to our desire to be distinctive.
Do these needs explain some of your own purchases?
I am sure many of you recall this well-known pyramid.
Thus, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is also useful in understanding needs and how consumers
seek to fulfill those needs.
Figure 1.2 presents this model.
Lower level needs include physiological and safety needs.
Upper level needs include those for belonging and ego.
Ultimately, consumers may experience a need for self-fulfillment.
One study found that products can fulfill needs on multiple levels.
For instance, gardening can satisfy the need for physical activity, the need to feel safe
by eating one's homegrown food, the need to share the activity with others, the need to
feel that one is competent as a gardener, and the need for a sense of peace.
Students, I would ask you to do another Reflection Exercise.
Which levels of the hierarchy do you experience most often as a consumer?
Students, Learning Objective Five States Technology and culture create a new 'always on' consumer.
Access to the Internet is incredibly influential for consumer behavior.
It changes who you may interact with, the information you can find, the choices you
see as available, and the time and energy you spend dealing with various decisions.
The Internet has made it possible for businesses to use an additional channel of distribution
(B2C e-commerce) but it's also made possible C2C e-commerce, in the form of outlets like
Etsy.com.
You are likely at the forefront of the impact of the Web on consumer behavior because you
are a digital native.
Digital natives grew up in a wired world.
This slide covers all the individuals that study Consumer Behavior.
Learning Objective 6 states many specialists study Consumer Behavior.
Table 1.1 illustrates the interdisciplinary nature of consumer behavior.
This figure provides a glimpse at some of the disciplines working in the field and the
level at which each tackles research issues.
The fields closer to the top of the pyramid concentrate on individual behavior.
This is the micro consumer behavior focus.
Those toward the base is more interested in the aggregate activities that occur among
large groups of people.
This is the macro consumer behavior focus.
Students, it is time for Reflection Exercise.
I am asking you to pick two of the disciplines shown in Figure 1.3.
How would their approaches to the same marketing issue differ?
Students let us discuss Learning Objective 7There are differing perspectives regarding
how and what we should understand about consumer behavior:
- Positivist approach - Interpretivist approach
We call a set of beliefs that guide our understanding of the world a paradigm.
Some belief consumer behavior is in the midst of a paradigm shift, which occurs when a competing
paradigm challenges the dominant set of assumptions.
The basic set of assumptions underlying the dominant paradigm is positivism or modernism.
It emphasizes that human reason is supreme and there is a single, objective truth that
science can discover.
The newer paradigm of interpretivist (or postmodernism) questions these assumptions.
This perspective argues that societal beliefs deny the complex social and cultural world
in which we really live.
Table 1.2 summarizes the major differences between these two perspectives on consumer
research.
To understand how an interpretive framework helps us to understand marketing communications,
let's refer to an analysis of one of the best-known and longest-running (1959-1978) advertising
campaigns of all time: the work the advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB) did for the
Volkswagen Beetle.
This campaign, was widely noted for its self-mocking wit.
It found many ways to turn the Beetle's homeliness, small size, and lack of power into positive
attributes at a time when most car ads were emphasizing just the opposite.
An interpretative analysis of these messages linked the image DDB created for the humble
car to other examples of what scholars of comedy call the 'Little Man' pattern.
This is a type of comedic character who is related to a clown or a trickster,
a social outcast who is able to poke holes in the stuffiness and rigidity of bureaucracy
and conformity
Students, I would ask you to do another Reflection Exercise.
How do you think the two paradigms of consumer research affect the choices marketers make
in targeting consumer segments?
Students, we are at the close of Lecture One on Chapter One.
I ask you to review the learning objectives with me.
1.
Consumer behavior is a process.
2.
Marketers need to understand the wants and needs of different consumer segments.
3.
Our choices as consumers relate in powerful ways to the rest of our lives.
4.
Our motivations to consume are complex and varied.
5.
Technology and culture create a new 'always on' consumer.
6.
Many different types of specialist's study consumer behavior.
7.
There are differing perspectives regarding how and what we should understand about consumer
behavior.
I am eager for you to be enrolled in Consumer Behavior and trust that you have grown exponentially
in content knowledge.
I am Nancy Southerland.