CONSUMER PSYCHOLOGY
INTRODUCTION
WHAT IS CONSUMER PSYCHOLOGY?
Consumer psychology = all behaviors that relate to people as consumers
• What makes them like/choose/buy? → emotions, rational behavior, situational influences, …
• How do consumers deal with persuasion attempts? → influence, resistance, young consumers, …
• Psychological methods (experiments), focus on (underlying) processes of attitudes & behavior (and individual
differences or other moderators) → gender: do men react different then
women?
CONSUMER INFORMATION PROCESSING
- Exposure to messages
- You pay attention to some things but not all
- If u pay attention to something u first need to understand
- People will accept it: “it’s good/bad” “it will do something or not”
- Retention
à Only used in circumstances where u really think about something (ex: thinking about the pros
and cons when you buy something really expensive (→high involvement product) but it is not
possible to process every stimulus conscious, it would consume too much of our energy: other
things are more automatic.
ZAJONIC (1980): PREFERENCES NEED NO INFERENCES
àExperiment: Chinese signs, the result showed that participants rated the characters thar they were exposed to more
frequently as more likeable →people can form preference without they even knowing they prefer it.
Led to the mere exposure effect = repeated exposure leads to liking
He applied the mere exposure effect on advertising (incidental processing): the adds placed between articles were liked
more than others (because people read the articles)
Because our brain is limited and we cannot think conscious all day (the brain gets tired) we developed addition ways to
make sense. → heuristics (short cuts):
- Reciprocity: obligation to give when you receive
• People are more likely to say yes to people that they owe →ex: when a friend invites you to a party there is an
obligation to invite him when you give a party
• Study: giving a mint when you give the bill to increase the tips →+3% when giving 1 mint and +14% when giving 2
mints
• Be the first to give and make sure that what you give is personalized and unexpected
- Scarcity: people want more of those things they can have less of
• Airline announced they can no longer be operating the twice daily Londen-NewYork flight sales took off → it had
become a scares resource
• The benefits + what’s unique + what they stand to lose
- Authority: people will follow credible, knowledgeable experts
• Trainers are able to persuade more of their patients with exercises if they display their medical diplomas on the
walls
,- Consistency: people like to be consisted with the things they have previously said or done
• Activated by looking for and asking for small initial commitments that can be made
• Study: people were unwilling to put a ‘drive safely’ bord on their front lawn, however when a couple days earlier
they agreed to place a small postcard on their window they were willingly to put the ‘drive safely’ bord
- Liking: people prefer to say yes to those that they like
• 3 important factors for liking:
o People who are similar to us
o People who pay us compliments
o People who cooperate with us towards mutual goals
• Study: one group was told ‘time is money’ get straight to business 55% were able to come to an agreement, in the
other group they were told to get to know each other first and look for similarities and 90% were able to come to a
successful and agreeable outcome
- Consensus: people will look to the actions of others to determine their own
• Study: a sign in a hotel to reuse their towels with the benefits on environmental protection leads to 35%
compliance but 75% will reuse their towels at some point during their stay, if you put this on your sign towel
reuses rises by 26, when you get a letter with “75% of people who stayed in this room reuse their towel” leads to a
33% increase in reuse
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
Important moderators:
- Sociodemographic: age, gender, cultural differences
- Behavioral patterns: restrained eating, disgust sensitivity
- Personality traits: need for cognition, prevention/promotion, personality scales
The relationship between the dependent and the independent changed by the moderator:
NEED FOR COGNITION
Need for cognition = the tendency for an individual to engage in and enjoy thinking
→ High need for cognition shows greater elaboration of message content compared to low need for cognition (ex:
advertisement)
PREVENTION/PROMOTION
Regulatory focus trait (Higgins) = people have different ways in which they get motivated
ð Prevention focus: focused on safety, stability and avoiding negative outcomes →prefer loss frames (ex: sunscreen
will prevent skin cancer)
ð Promotion focus: focused on growth, progress and achieving goals →prefer gain frames (ex: sunscreen will keep
your skin healthy)
BIOMETRIC VARIABLES
Biometric variables: stable physical characteristics (ex: fingerprints), unique for every human being, but
can reveal underlying traits → ex: 2D:4D & prenatal testosterone exposure
, ATTITUDES
CONSUMER INFORMATION PROCESSING
Attitude = Positive or negative dispositions of an individual towards an attitude-object
→Always an attitude towards something or someone but also towards a brand.
- Uni-dimensional view: Expressions of passions and hates, attractions and repulsions, likes and dislikes for certain
people, groups, situations, objects
ð The view that an attitude had one dimension
- Tripartite theory: an attitude is a combination of affective, cognitive and behavioral responses to an attitude-object
ATTITUDE FORMATION:
DIRECT:
- Classical conditioning: Pavlov
- Operant conditioning: based on reward or punishment you get out of behavior
- Mere exposure: the more you get exposed to something the more you like it
INDIRECT:
- Beliefs = attitudes are a function of beliefs and the values/evaluations associated with those beliefs
ATTTITUDE BELIEF MODEL
Formula: attitudeO = ∑ belief (bi) × evaluation (ei)
THEORY OF REASONED ACTION:
Not only attitude (belief + evaluation) predict behavior, rather behavioral intention + subjective norms
→What others think (normative belief) x the motivation to comply with this
Formula:
INTRODUCTION
WHAT IS CONSUMER PSYCHOLOGY?
Consumer psychology = all behaviors that relate to people as consumers
• What makes them like/choose/buy? → emotions, rational behavior, situational influences, …
• How do consumers deal with persuasion attempts? → influence, resistance, young consumers, …
• Psychological methods (experiments), focus on (underlying) processes of attitudes & behavior (and individual
differences or other moderators) → gender: do men react different then
women?
CONSUMER INFORMATION PROCESSING
- Exposure to messages
- You pay attention to some things but not all
- If u pay attention to something u first need to understand
- People will accept it: “it’s good/bad” “it will do something or not”
- Retention
à Only used in circumstances where u really think about something (ex: thinking about the pros
and cons when you buy something really expensive (→high involvement product) but it is not
possible to process every stimulus conscious, it would consume too much of our energy: other
things are more automatic.
ZAJONIC (1980): PREFERENCES NEED NO INFERENCES
àExperiment: Chinese signs, the result showed that participants rated the characters thar they were exposed to more
frequently as more likeable →people can form preference without they even knowing they prefer it.
Led to the mere exposure effect = repeated exposure leads to liking
He applied the mere exposure effect on advertising (incidental processing): the adds placed between articles were liked
more than others (because people read the articles)
Because our brain is limited and we cannot think conscious all day (the brain gets tired) we developed addition ways to
make sense. → heuristics (short cuts):
- Reciprocity: obligation to give when you receive
• People are more likely to say yes to people that they owe →ex: when a friend invites you to a party there is an
obligation to invite him when you give a party
• Study: giving a mint when you give the bill to increase the tips →+3% when giving 1 mint and +14% when giving 2
mints
• Be the first to give and make sure that what you give is personalized and unexpected
- Scarcity: people want more of those things they can have less of
• Airline announced they can no longer be operating the twice daily Londen-NewYork flight sales took off → it had
become a scares resource
• The benefits + what’s unique + what they stand to lose
- Authority: people will follow credible, knowledgeable experts
• Trainers are able to persuade more of their patients with exercises if they display their medical diplomas on the
walls
,- Consistency: people like to be consisted with the things they have previously said or done
• Activated by looking for and asking for small initial commitments that can be made
• Study: people were unwilling to put a ‘drive safely’ bord on their front lawn, however when a couple days earlier
they agreed to place a small postcard on their window they were willingly to put the ‘drive safely’ bord
- Liking: people prefer to say yes to those that they like
• 3 important factors for liking:
o People who are similar to us
o People who pay us compliments
o People who cooperate with us towards mutual goals
• Study: one group was told ‘time is money’ get straight to business 55% were able to come to an agreement, in the
other group they were told to get to know each other first and look for similarities and 90% were able to come to a
successful and agreeable outcome
- Consensus: people will look to the actions of others to determine their own
• Study: a sign in a hotel to reuse their towels with the benefits on environmental protection leads to 35%
compliance but 75% will reuse their towels at some point during their stay, if you put this on your sign towel
reuses rises by 26, when you get a letter with “75% of people who stayed in this room reuse their towel” leads to a
33% increase in reuse
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
Important moderators:
- Sociodemographic: age, gender, cultural differences
- Behavioral patterns: restrained eating, disgust sensitivity
- Personality traits: need for cognition, prevention/promotion, personality scales
The relationship between the dependent and the independent changed by the moderator:
NEED FOR COGNITION
Need for cognition = the tendency for an individual to engage in and enjoy thinking
→ High need for cognition shows greater elaboration of message content compared to low need for cognition (ex:
advertisement)
PREVENTION/PROMOTION
Regulatory focus trait (Higgins) = people have different ways in which they get motivated
ð Prevention focus: focused on safety, stability and avoiding negative outcomes →prefer loss frames (ex: sunscreen
will prevent skin cancer)
ð Promotion focus: focused on growth, progress and achieving goals →prefer gain frames (ex: sunscreen will keep
your skin healthy)
BIOMETRIC VARIABLES
Biometric variables: stable physical characteristics (ex: fingerprints), unique for every human being, but
can reveal underlying traits → ex: 2D:4D & prenatal testosterone exposure
, ATTITUDES
CONSUMER INFORMATION PROCESSING
Attitude = Positive or negative dispositions of an individual towards an attitude-object
→Always an attitude towards something or someone but also towards a brand.
- Uni-dimensional view: Expressions of passions and hates, attractions and repulsions, likes and dislikes for certain
people, groups, situations, objects
ð The view that an attitude had one dimension
- Tripartite theory: an attitude is a combination of affective, cognitive and behavioral responses to an attitude-object
ATTITUDE FORMATION:
DIRECT:
- Classical conditioning: Pavlov
- Operant conditioning: based on reward or punishment you get out of behavior
- Mere exposure: the more you get exposed to something the more you like it
INDIRECT:
- Beliefs = attitudes are a function of beliefs and the values/evaluations associated with those beliefs
ATTTITUDE BELIEF MODEL
Formula: attitudeO = ∑ belief (bi) × evaluation (ei)
THEORY OF REASONED ACTION:
Not only attitude (belief + evaluation) predict behavior, rather behavioral intention + subjective norms
→What others think (normative belief) x the motivation to comply with this
Formula:
