Summary & Lectures - Consumer Behaviour: MAN-MMA024

Summary Consumer Behavior about the Book
(Hoyer, MacInnis, Pieters) – Chapter 1-10 & 17 – 7th
edition
Part 1: An introduction to Consumer Behavior
Chapter 1: Understanding Consumer Behavior
Consumer behavior  the totality of consumers’ decisions with respect to the acquisition,
consumption, and disposition of goods, services, activities, experiences, people, and ideas by
(human) decision-making units (over time)




1) Consumer behavior involves more than just buying (2nd block in the figure):
- Acquisition  process by which a consumer comes to own an offering
- Usage  process by which a consumer uses an offering
- Disposition  process by which a consumer discards an offering
2) Consumer behavior is a dynamic process (5th block in the figure)
- changes in consumer behavior can occur over time
3) Consumer behavior can involve many people (4th block in the figure)
- Individuals engaging in consumer behavior can take on several roles ( see examples in
the figure!)
4) Consumer behavior involves many decisions (1st block in the figure)
- SO: whether/what/why/when/where etc. to acquire/use/dispose an offering?
- One of the most important reasons why consumption occurs, is when an offering
meets someone’s needs, values, or goals.
- Sometimes the reasons why we use an offering are filled with conflict (e.g. smoking;
harmful, but it helps in gaining acceptance)
- Different ways of how we acquire an offering: trading, renting/leasing, bartering
(exchanging), gifting, finding, stealing, sharing
- Different ways of how we dispose an offering:
 Find a new use for it
 Get rid of it temporarily

,  Get rid of it permanently
- Factors influencing when we acquire/use/dispose an offering:
 Timing
 Need for variety
 Transitions (e.g. graduation, birth, retirement, marriage)
 Others (e.g. going to gym when others are not going)
 First letter of our name (e.g. later in alphabet you buy faster, because you were
last in line as a kid, you have learned to wait and developed a desire not to wait)
5) Consumer behavior involves emotions and coping
- Positive and negative emotions as well as specific emotions (e.g. loneliness, hope,
fear, regret) can affect how consumers think, how they make their choice, how they
feel after making a decision, what they remember and how much they enjoy an
experience. Consumers often use products to regulate their feelings (e.g. go to
amusement parks when you fail a test)


FACTORS AFFECTING ACQUISITION, USAGE, AND DISPOSITION (MODEL OF
CONSUMER BEHAVIOR):
Psychological core - Motivation, ability, opportunity
- Exposure, attention, perception, and comprehension
- Memory and knowledge
- Forming and changing attitudes

Process of making - Problem recognition and the search for information
decisions - Making adjustments and decisions
- Making post-decision evaluations

Consumer’s culture - Reference groups (groups which consumers compare
themselves) and other social influences
- Diversity influences
- Household and social class influences
- Values, personality, and lifestyles

Consumer behavior - Innovativeness, adoption, resistance, and diffusion
outcomes and issues - Symbolic consumer behavior (external signs to express
behavior)
- Marketing ethics and social responsibility



WHO BENEFITS FROM THE STUDY OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOR?
- Marketing managers (to see what customers value)
- Ethicists and advocates
- Public policymakers and regulators (protect consumers from unfair marketing)
- Academics
- Consumers and society (tools for decision-making)

,MAKING BUSINESS DECISIONS BASED ON CONSUMER RESEARCH
1. Developing and implementing customer-oriented strategy
- Segmenting the market
- Find out how profitable each segment is
- Find out the characteristics of consumers in each segment
- Find out whether consumers are satisfied with existing offerings
2. Selecting the target market
3. Developing products
- Customers’ ideas about products
- Which attributes need to be changed/added
- Branding of attributes
- Package and logo
4. Positioning (how an offering should be positioned in consumer minds)
- Positioning of competitive offerings
- Our positioning
- Repositioning
5. Promotion and marketing communications decisions
- Communication objectives
- Marketing communications
- Where to advertise?
- When to advertise?
- Effectiveness of advertising
- Sales promotion objectives and tactics
- Effectiveness of sales promotions
- How can salespeople serve our customers as best?
6. Making price decisions
- Price to be charged (endowment effect: people tend to overestimate how much others
will pay for goods. You should not set a higher price than buyers are willing to pay)
Endowment effect  people tend to value items that they own more highly than they
would if they did not belong to them
7. Making distribution decisions
- Where and when are target customers likely to shop? (time and convenience)
- Assortment of stores
- Design of stores

, Part 2: The Psychological Core
Chapter 2: Motivation, Ability, and Opportunity (MAO)
MOTIVATION
Motivation  inner state of activation that provides energy to achieve a goal.
EFFECTS OF MOTIVATION:
- High-effort behavior  behavior that brings a goal closer, willingness to spend time
and money
- High-effort information processing and decision-making  pay attention, think
about it, understand it, evaluate information, remember information
- Felt involvement  the consumer’s experience of being motivated with respect to a
product or service, or decisions and actions about these. Types of involvement:
 Enduring involvement
 Situational (temporary) involvement (e.g. buying a car)
 Cognitive involvement (e.g. interest in learning/thinking about offering)
 Affective involvement (e.g. interest in spending emotional energy/evoking deep
feelings about offering)
Response involvement  interest in certain decisions and behaviors
Motivated reasoning  information processing in a way that allows you to reach the
conclusion you want to reach (process information in a biased way so that you can obtain the
particular conclusion you want to reach)


MOTIVATION IS AFFECTED WHEN CONSUMERS REGARD SOMETHING AS:
1. Personal relevant
2. Consistent with self-concept, values, needs, goals, and self-control
3. Risky
4. Moderately inconsistent with attitudes
Personal relevance  extent to which it has a direct effect on and significant implications
for your life
Self-concept  your view of yourself and the way you think others view you
Values  abstract beliefs that guide what people regard as important or good
Need  an internal state of tension experienced when there is a discrepancy between the
current and an ideal or desired state