Consumer psychology
Lecture 1 - Introduction
Products don’t build brand, consumers do
Important question to ask yourself: What are consumers think?
What is consumer psychology (also consumer behavior)
In general terms, consumer behavior is a psychologically-based study of how individuals
make buying decisions and what motivates them to make a purchase.
Several facets of consumer behavior exist, such as:
- How a consumer feels about certain brands, products, or services
- What motivates a consumer to pick one product over another and why
- What factors in a consumer's everyday environment affect buying decisions or brand
perceptions and why
More than just products (e.g., going to the dentist, what TV programs to watch, taking
aerobics class, going skydiving, donating to a cause, etc.)
Marketing management decisions are based on assumption regarding the psychology of
the consumer
Example: paper back
WTP:
WHAT DRIVES THESE CONSUMPTION DECISIONS?
- Emotions
- Psychological states
- Environment
- Beliefs
- Financial resources
1
,Experimental consumer research
The amateur researcher
Example:
Does a person sleep with shoes on
1= yes
0= no
Does this person wake up with a headache
Conclusion: Person who sleeps with shoes, have bigger change to wake up with headache
Problem: Can not make this assumption because of to many other factors. The shous does
not cause the headache
In this example: Drinking is the issue
When is person is drunk the change is bigger he sleeps with shoes on and the change for
waking up with headache is bigger
Other example: Higher ice-cream consumption = higher sunburn
No correlation because “dry, hot and sunny summer weather” cause both higher ice-crem
consumption and higher sunburn
Experiments
Allows investigators establish cause-and-effect relationships. In other words, investigators
can isolate different effects by manipulating an independent variable, and keeping other
variables constant, to see how it influences a specific outcome variable.
PAPER: (Iyengar, 2000) – When choice is demotivating…
Does having a lot of options to choose from make us happy?
Researchers thought it was. BUT:
Planning to buy a cell phone online on Amazon?
Amazon’s “Phones & Accessories” category alone contains over 82 million products. And the
proliferation of options is not limited to online retailers or brick-and-mortar stores. Anyone
purchasing water bottle, healthcare plans, car insurance, or financial services is flooded with
choices.
2
,INTUITION ISN’T ALWAYS RIGHT. IN FACT, SOMETIMES IT IS EXACTLY WRONG.
In essence, choice overload refers to a cognitive process in which people have a difficult time
making a decision when faced with many options. There are a few reasons for this:
1. It becomes more difficult/stressful to determine which option is the best one for you.
2. As humans, we inherently feel sorrow about the opportunities that we forego.
3. Moreover, when it’s not clear which option is best for you, you’re more likely to
regret the decision that you eventually do make.
Paper: WHEN CHOICE IS DEMOTIVATING: CAN ONE DESIRE TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING?
Field study: supermarket
H0: when number of option increase, the satisfaction with product decreases
Saturday: They show a table with a number of jam pots
Table 1: 6 different flavors
Table 2: 24 different flavors
Switched every hour
Let’s take a closer look
1. Study conducted in a supermarket (à field experiment)
2. Research assistants dressed as employees (à confederate)
3. Tasting booth (table) with 6 or 24 flavors (à manipulation, IV)
4. Observer noted amount of consumers who approached the table and consumers
who did not stop and sampled jams (à dependent variable)
5. Interested shoppers received a redeemable coupon (à dependent variable)
6. Two consecutive Saturdays, displayes rotated hourly and counterbalanced between
days (à attempts to decrease confounding variables!)
3
, Field Experiment
Field experiments are done in the everyday (i.e. real life) environment of the participants.
The experimenter still manipulates the independent variable, but in a real-life setting.
- Strength: Behavior in a field experiment is more likely to reflect real life because of
its natural setting, i.e. higher ecological validity than a lab experiment. Also, there is
less likelihood of demand characteristics affecting the results, as participants may not
know they are being studied. This occurs when the study is covert.
- Limitation: There is less control over extraneous variables that might bias the results.
This makes it difficult for another researcher to replicate the study in exactly the
same way.
Paper study 2: Lab Experiment
Participants saw a movie. After seeing it they were asked to write an essay about it.
6 essay topics Vs. 30 essay topics
DV 1: % chose to write the essay
DV 2: Quality of the essay
Choice overload can leave you dissatisfied with the choice you made, what is often described
as “buyer’s remorse.” Or it can even lead to behavioral (choice or decision) paralysis, which
is a situation “where people are faced with so many choices that they can’t decide among
them and make no choice at all.”
4
Lecture 1 - Introduction
Products don’t build brand, consumers do
Important question to ask yourself: What are consumers think?
What is consumer psychology (also consumer behavior)
In general terms, consumer behavior is a psychologically-based study of how individuals
make buying decisions and what motivates them to make a purchase.
Several facets of consumer behavior exist, such as:
- How a consumer feels about certain brands, products, or services
- What motivates a consumer to pick one product over another and why
- What factors in a consumer's everyday environment affect buying decisions or brand
perceptions and why
More than just products (e.g., going to the dentist, what TV programs to watch, taking
aerobics class, going skydiving, donating to a cause, etc.)
Marketing management decisions are based on assumption regarding the psychology of
the consumer
Example: paper back
WTP:
WHAT DRIVES THESE CONSUMPTION DECISIONS?
- Emotions
- Psychological states
- Environment
- Beliefs
- Financial resources
1
,Experimental consumer research
The amateur researcher
Example:
Does a person sleep with shoes on
1= yes
0= no
Does this person wake up with a headache
Conclusion: Person who sleeps with shoes, have bigger change to wake up with headache
Problem: Can not make this assumption because of to many other factors. The shous does
not cause the headache
In this example: Drinking is the issue
When is person is drunk the change is bigger he sleeps with shoes on and the change for
waking up with headache is bigger
Other example: Higher ice-cream consumption = higher sunburn
No correlation because “dry, hot and sunny summer weather” cause both higher ice-crem
consumption and higher sunburn
Experiments
Allows investigators establish cause-and-effect relationships. In other words, investigators
can isolate different effects by manipulating an independent variable, and keeping other
variables constant, to see how it influences a specific outcome variable.
PAPER: (Iyengar, 2000) – When choice is demotivating…
Does having a lot of options to choose from make us happy?
Researchers thought it was. BUT:
Planning to buy a cell phone online on Amazon?
Amazon’s “Phones & Accessories” category alone contains over 82 million products. And the
proliferation of options is not limited to online retailers or brick-and-mortar stores. Anyone
purchasing water bottle, healthcare plans, car insurance, or financial services is flooded with
choices.
2
,INTUITION ISN’T ALWAYS RIGHT. IN FACT, SOMETIMES IT IS EXACTLY WRONG.
In essence, choice overload refers to a cognitive process in which people have a difficult time
making a decision when faced with many options. There are a few reasons for this:
1. It becomes more difficult/stressful to determine which option is the best one for you.
2. As humans, we inherently feel sorrow about the opportunities that we forego.
3. Moreover, when it’s not clear which option is best for you, you’re more likely to
regret the decision that you eventually do make.
Paper: WHEN CHOICE IS DEMOTIVATING: CAN ONE DESIRE TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING?
Field study: supermarket
H0: when number of option increase, the satisfaction with product decreases
Saturday: They show a table with a number of jam pots
Table 1: 6 different flavors
Table 2: 24 different flavors
Switched every hour
Let’s take a closer look
1. Study conducted in a supermarket (à field experiment)
2. Research assistants dressed as employees (à confederate)
3. Tasting booth (table) with 6 or 24 flavors (à manipulation, IV)
4. Observer noted amount of consumers who approached the table and consumers
who did not stop and sampled jams (à dependent variable)
5. Interested shoppers received a redeemable coupon (à dependent variable)
6. Two consecutive Saturdays, displayes rotated hourly and counterbalanced between
days (à attempts to decrease confounding variables!)
3
, Field Experiment
Field experiments are done in the everyday (i.e. real life) environment of the participants.
The experimenter still manipulates the independent variable, but in a real-life setting.
- Strength: Behavior in a field experiment is more likely to reflect real life because of
its natural setting, i.e. higher ecological validity than a lab experiment. Also, there is
less likelihood of demand characteristics affecting the results, as participants may not
know they are being studied. This occurs when the study is covert.
- Limitation: There is less control over extraneous variables that might bias the results.
This makes it difficult for another researcher to replicate the study in exactly the
same way.
Paper study 2: Lab Experiment
Participants saw a movie. After seeing it they were asked to write an essay about it.
6 essay topics Vs. 30 essay topics
DV 1: % chose to write the essay
DV 2: Quality of the essay
Choice overload can leave you dissatisfied with the choice you made, what is often described
as “buyer’s remorse.” Or it can even lead to behavioral (choice or decision) paralysis, which
is a situation “where people are faced with so many choices that they can’t decide among
them and make no choice at all.”
4
