A Consumer’s Psychology based research to understand what influences

buying decisions: A Kolkata based study on Youth and FMCG.

Dissertation submitted to the department of Mass

Communication and Videography,

St. Xavier’s College (Autonomous), Kolkata

in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of B.Sc. Honours

ANKITA GOUR

ROLL NO. - 813

PAPER CODE: MV36511

MENTOR: UTSAV CHATTERJEE

 A Consumer’s Psychology based research to understand what influences
buying decisions: A Kolkata based study on Youth and FMCG.

I affirm that I have identified all my sources and that no part of my dissertation
paper uses unacknowledged materials.

X
ANKITA GOUR

ANKITA GOUR

Roll no. – 813

Paper code- MV36511

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 Contents

Chapter Title Page No.

I. Introduction 3.

II. Literature Review 5.

III. Rationale 7.

IV. Objective 8.

1. How a Mind of a 9.
Consumer Works?

2. What Influences a 10.

Consumer?

3. Analysis of the Survey 13.

conducted.

4. Conclusion 18.

V. Bibliography 20.

VI. Sample of Questionnaire 21.

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 I.

Introduction
This dissertation examines the psychology of a consumer, to understand what influences a
consumer’s buying decision, why a consumer buys the same product every time. This
dissertation will seek to interrogate to what extent a consumer’s mind is limited to buy goods
and services. The following essay will explain what are the factor that influences a consumer
buying decision is. The significance of this study is to find out how different consumer has
the mind-sets, because maximum amount of consumers are influenced by the same thing
(mainly quality, advertising, marketing, etc.). This dissertation will be content basis and
survey basis. The survey will take place in Kolkata among the youths as its study population
because market survey proves that youth have considerable disposable money to buy FMCG
products.

“A consumer is an individual who buys products or services for personal use and not
manufacture or resale. A consumer is someone who makes decision whether or not to
purchase an item at the shop, and someone who can get influenced by marketing and
advertisements.”1

Consumer psychology is the study of consumer’s beliefs; thoughts, feelings, and perception
influence how a consumer buys and relate to goods and services. 2 The study tries to explain
consumers’ choices and how they respond to the marketing, as well as the other stimuli
(advertising, public relation, environmental variables, packaging, etc.) that convince them to
buy a certain product3.

Brand is a product, services, person, company, or a concept which has characteristics like a
name, symbol, etc. to be differentiated from others in the market. A brand is what makes the
product identifiable and differentiable.

Brand loyalty can be defined as the extent of consumer faithfulness towards a specific brand
and this faithfulness is expressed through repeat purchases and other positive behaviours such
as word of mouth advocacy, irrespective of the marketing pressures generated by the other

1
http://www.investorwords.com/1055/consumer.html
2
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-consumer-psychology-2794899
3
https://study.com/academy/lesson/consumer-psychology-definition-behavior.html

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competing brands (Kotler & Keller, 2006; Kotler, et al., 2008). Brand loyalty may exist when
a consumer is unwilling to switch from a brand that he or she is familiar with.4

Philip Kotler defines four patterns of behaviour regarding brand loyalty-

1. Hard-core Loyals - who buy the brand all the time?

2. Split Loyals - loyal to two or three brands.

3. Shifting Loyals - moving from one b rand to another.

4. Switchers - with no loyalty.5

4
https://www.kbmanage.com/concept/brand-loyalty
5
http://bankexams99.blogspot.in/2016/12/brand-loyalty-patterns-by-philip-kotler.html

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 II.

Literature Review

According to Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller, Consumer behaviour is the study of how
individuals, groups and organisations select, buy, use and dispose of goods, services, ideas, or
experiences to satisfy their needs and wants (Kotler and Keller, 2006). Studying consumers
provides clues for improving or introducing products or services, setting prices, devising
channels, crafting messages, and developing other marketing activities (Kotler, et al., 2008).
Jim Blythe in his book “Consumer Behaviour”, explains how a consumer behaviour depends
or on different segmentations. Which are Geographical, Psychographic, Behavioural and
Demographic Segmentations. Whereas, segmentation is “the act of dividing up a market into
groups of people with similar needs” (Blythe, 2008).6

1. Geographic Segmentation- is dividing a market into smaller groups based on locations

(example- someone living in cold are tend to buy to warm clothes, heating
equipment, woods etc. so, markets in these area will sell products which are required
to live in cold condition), this segment influence the decision making of a consumer
to a high extent.7
2. Psychographic Segment- dividing a market according to the psychological profiles of
potential customers.8
3. Behavioural Segmentation- dividing up a potential market according to the behaviour
of its members9 (it depends upon a consumer’s personal preferences like their likes,
dislikes, hobbies, taste, work, etc.).
4. Demographic Segmentation- dividing up a market according to people’s age, income
and social standings.10

According to Kellogg, “brands have a remarkable ability to impact the way people view
products. Consumers rarely just see products or service; they see the product together with
the brand. As the result, how they perceive the product is shaped by the brand” (Kellogg,
2005)11. One would agree with this statement of Kellogg because consumers do look at the

6
Jim Blythe; “Consumer Behaviour”( SAGE Publication, 2016), 10
7
I Bid
8
I Bid
9
I Bid
10
I Bid
11
Kellogg; “Kellogg on Branding” (New Jersey: Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, 2005)

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products through brand (example- in India mist consumer call Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate
as Cadbury, where Cadbury is the brand not the product, the product is Dairy Milk
chocolate).

Rosser Reeves in his book “Reality in Advertising” explains that these two statements “It’s a
good campaign, if sales goes up” and “It’s a bad campaign, if sales goes down”, he says that
these statements aren’t true, because suppose if a food manufacturing company is selling the
product in the market with good advertising campaign and even its sales are high but then
suddenly a batch of food product goes out in the market which contain bad quality of raw
materials or there is harmful chemicals in the product which would harm the consumers, then
its sales goes down by itself and it is not the fault of advertisement. It was the fault of the
company who sold products which was not good in quality or had some bad raw materials.12

12
Rosser Reeves; “Reality in Advertising” (New York: N.W. Widener,2015)

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 III.

Rationale

Quality alone cannot win the race. It is for the reason branding, advertising, public relation,
environmental variables, packaging, etc. plays integrate role in buying decision of a
consumer. The result from the research and survey will help to read consumer minds and
understand the roles this integrated marketing plays in buying decision. The survey will take
place in Kolkata among the youths as its study population because market survey proves that
youth have considerable disposable money to buy products of FMCG. The group of young
people commonly referred to as “Generation – Z” that is, people born beginning around
1998- already possess $44 billion in annual purchasing power. Today’s youth follow trends;
if one person buys one product the other one buys which raises the sales of a particular
product. Youth as tomorrow’s customer will be quite different from today’s customer. The
research will therefore concentrate on FMCG brands (e.g. - Dabur, Emami, Britannia, Amul,
Nestle, PepsiCo, Asian Paints etc.). The methodology of this dissertation will be on content
basis and survey basis. Through this dissertation paper one would find that what is
responsible for a consumer’s buying decision, what makes a consumer to buy the same brand
every time and makes them to try a new brand in the market, what are the thought processes
and decision behind consumer’s decision, what motivates them to choose one brand above
another, how personal factors and individual differences affect people’s buying choices, what
marketers can do to effectively reach out to their target customers.

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 IV.

Objective

The purpose of this dissertation is to find out-

i) How a consumer mind works,

ii) What the factors that influences a consumer decision making.
iii) To understand the role quality plays in influencing buying behaviours of consumers,
iv) if brand loyalty is constant even if new brands are available with better promises,
v) To access the importance of packaging and promotion in buying decision and to
understand if the mass media promotion messages have a higher importance than
price and quality for a consumer.

With the help of the survey conducted one would get to know what millennials mean by
FMCG products and brand or what the maximum amount of FMCG products they buy and
why.

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 1.

How a mind of a consumer works?

A person buys goods and service for his/her personal benefits or use. That person is called a
consumer. A consumer buys those goods and services when he/she are in need of those
products or just for inner satisfaction or by getting influenced by some other stimuli. A
consumer may sometime know what exactly to buy when he/she needs it (example- a person
is out of clothes he/she goes to a store and buys clothes). But a consumer may not know what
exactly to buy (example- in reference to earlier example, after going in a garment store the
consumer may not know what exactly to buy, like what he/she should buy a shirt, dress,
pants, t-shirt etc.). When that consumer comes know what exactly to buy, then he must not
know what brand should he buy or which brand is good (example- after choosing a particular
type of clothe like shirt he/she now may get confused among the brands, like one should buy
a shirt of Peter England, Allen Solley, Raymond or Levis brand). After being successful in
choosing a brand, then comes the question of quality. Some consumer may know which
brand gives what kind of quality, but the one who doesn’t know refer to some other people,
advertising etc. (example- after choosing the brand a consumer may not be sure about the
quality then there enters a salesman who influences the consumer to buy that particular shirt
because he/she may which is good. If a salesman is not present sometimes advertisements
does the work of decision making). Sometimes a consumer may have limited amount of
money to spend on goods and services. So, even though one knows that product of a
particular brand is a good quality product but couldn’t buy it because that product may be
costly and he/she can’t afford it. For this reason he/she had to buy a product which is cheaper
than that one and quality may differ or he/she could get the same quality product at different
prices, just because of the brand name the price may differ (example- price of a Raymond
shirt is Rs. 2000 and a price of a Peter England shirt is Rs. 1500, but quality may differ or can
be same). After going through when, what, why and how to buy a consumer finally takes that
product and goes to the billing counter pays the money and that product in hand.

This is how a basic consumer mind works. A consumer had to go through to lot of questions
before buying a product because he/she wants the best. In this buying decision of a consumer
advertisement, marketing, quality, brand, culture, family, signs etc. plays a very important
role.

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 2.

What influences a consumer?

A consumer before buying goods and services is influenced by many things. Those
influencers are mainly quality, brand, advertising, culture, marketing campaign, personal
preferences, group influence and purchasing power.

Quality is one of the greatest influencer of consumer because quality is the standard of
something as measured against other similar things; how good or bad something is.13 Every
consumer wants a good quality product one does not compromises in quality. A good quality
product stays even longer (example- clothes) than a bad quality product. A consumer always
wants his/her product to last longer so that they could use it longer because every product has
a price (example- a person buys a washing machine which he/she uses for two years and the
machines stops working and that person’s some lacs of money gets wasted because that
washing machine was not of a good quality. A washing machine is a lifetime investment
which means it is supposed to work for like at least 15-20 years).

Next comes the brand, many a times a quality of product depends on brand (example- Apple
brand, it sells the best quality of electronics). A brand is a type of a product made by a
company under a particular name.14 Most of the consumer buys a product by seeing a brand
name, because to him/her that is the best product. But some don’t do that, some might not at
all buy a branded product because of some reason (example- Some people buy only branded
clothes because they think it’s the best quality product and some buys clothes which are nit
branded which they may buy from local shops who don’t sell branded products, reasons can
be they are cheaper than branded clothes, or they don’t belief in brands or sometimes during
emergencies they had to buy non-branded clothes, etc.).

The second most important influencer in the decision making of a consumer is

advertisement. Advertisement plays an important in decision making; an advertisement
could change a mind of a consumer even at a last moment while buying a product (example-
Suppose a consumer goes to a store to buy a particular product of a particular brand but then
his/her falls on some other brand and suddenly remembers about the advertisement of that
product, then instead of buying the other brand which he/she was supposed to buy they buy

13
Oxford dictionary
14
I Bid

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the new brand to try it as they have seen it on an advertisement). Therefore “an advertisement
is a public announcement with the avowed purpose not so much to inform as to persuade the
public to buy a product, a service or an idea”(Kumar, 2014)15 . “The common measures of
advertising effectiveness include ad recall, ad recognition, brand awareness, clicks or click
through rate, attitude towards the ad and the brand, and purchase consideration” (Kumar and
Raju, 2013).16

Culture influences a consumer’s thoughts and behaviours. Culture is the boundary line or
limitation of a consumer. It holds a consumer hands and tells him/her that what to buy;
because people coming from different culture tend to consume differently (example- a
Bengali person will have a proper Bengali lunch which includes fish. Bengali buys fish more
than any other people like Gujarati, Bihari, Punjabi, etc. because a Bengalis have a culture of
having fish than any other caste). A culture is the norms or social behaviour found in human
societies or groups. Culture sets restrictions within which most individuals think, act, and feel
in a manner consistent with that of other members of the same culture because it seems
natural or right thing to do so (Parker-Pope, 1996; Fielding, 2006).17 Cultural values are
widely held beliefs that affirm what is desirable. These values affect behaviour through
norms, which specify an acceptable, range of responses to specific situations.18

Advertisement is a public announcement which informs one about a particular product. But
this announcement needs to be carried on to that extent which will have the power to get
one’s mind and tell him/her what to buy. This process of making announcement is called
Marketing Campaign. Marketing campaign if done regular basis can influence consumer
decision making to that extent which could make them choose one brand over another or
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indulge in indulgent or frivolous shopping. A good marketing campaign helps to remind
consumers about the advertisement of a brand that plays with a consumer’s mind.

Everyone has his/her likes, dislikes, priorities, morals, and values. A consumer’s behaviour is
greatly influenced by his/her personal preferences mostly in the field of fashion, food and
personal care. People have certain likes or preferences which an advertisement, brand,

15
Keval J. Kumar; Mass Communication in India (India: Jaico Publishing House, 2014), 402
16
Dr. D.Prasanna Kumar & K. Venkateswara Raju; The Role of Advertising in Consumer Decision Making ( IOSR
Journal of Business and Management (IOSR-JBM)
e-ISSN: 2278-487X, p-ISSN: 2319-7668. Volume 14, Issue 4) (Nov. - Dec. 2013), 38
17
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140908174823-354556068-does-culture-influence-our-consumer-
behavior-if-so-how/
18
I Bid
19
http://www.iresearchservices.com/5-common-factors-influencing-consumer-behavior/

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quality, culture cannot change. The personal view and opinion of the consumer pertaining to
style and fun can become the dominant influencing factor. Though advertisement can help in
influencing these factors to some extent, the personal consumer likes and dislikes exert
greater influence on the end purchase made by a consumer.20

Group influence like suggestions from influential people like family members, friends,
classmates, relatives, neighbours, acquaintance, etc. have seen greater influence on
consumer’s decision making (example- if one is going to buy a car he/she don’t directly goes
to a car’s showroom and comes out with a car. Those consumers will first go to different
people who are important to him/her and ask for their suggestions on the basis of their
suggestions and experiences that consumer finally chooses a car and buys it).

All the above factors play their role in decision making of a consumer but what if a consumer
doesn’t have that amount of money. Here comes the purchasing power of a consumer. Before
buying goods and services a consumer analyses his/her purchasing capacity. A product may
be excellent, but if a consumer doesn’t have that purchasing power then that consumer will
look for some other product which meets his/her purchasing power even if that other product
is not as good the one earlier but for the need of the consumer and in that amount of money
he/she buy. Thus purchasing power is the number and quality or value of goods and services
that can be purchased with a unit of currency.21

20
http://www.iresearchservices.com/5-common-factors-influencing-consumer-behavior/
21
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power

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 3.

Analysis of the Survey Conducted

A survey was conducted among the youths of Kolkata for this dissertation to read the
consumer minds and what influences them the most in decision making. It was conducted
among the youths because today youths have considerable disposable money to spend on
FMCG brands. The survey concentrated on FMCG brands because youths are more intended
to buy FMCG products the most.

Methodology- A set of questionnaire with eleven questions was made and was circulated
among the millennials (age group of 20-35) and sixteen responses were received.

Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) or consumer packaged goods (CPG) are products
22
that are sold quickly and at a relatively low cost (example- packaged food, beverages,
toiletries, other consumable, etc.). Thus FMCG are products that young people usually buy
every time and there are many brands which are most favoured by the youths (example-
Nestle Maggi) and are bought the most.

A set of questionnaire was prepared for the survey which includes questions which revolve
around the FMCG products and brands, and what make one to buy those products. The
questionnaires were filled by the millennials (age group of 20-35), among them most of them
were of age group of 19-21 and are students. So, basically their monthly income is less than
Rs.5000 but still every one of them buys FMCG products. The most often FMCG brands
bought by the millennials are Amul, Nestle, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Britannia, ITC, Cadbury
and Emami. According to the survey as these brands are bought the most, these brands are
mainly food product selling brands. So, one could say that today’s millennials are more into
food and beverages, they spent their maximum amount of money every month in these
products. When asked what makes them buys those products of those brands most of the
response were for the quality, then next was advertisement, then environmental variables and
then availability. According to the following graph one could see the percentages for the
preferences of buying that product. So, for a consumer quality is most important, as discussed
earlier no one wants to compromise in quality, especially in the case of food products

22
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast-moving_consumer_goods

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everyone looks for quality, because if the quality of food product is bad is could affect one’s
health. Advertisement comes next after the quality, some consumer buy those products by
seeing an advertisement for trying new products or they must have liked the advertisement or
for the celebrities who are promoting it. Environmental variables and availability are least

Image 1

preferred by the consumer because of the personal preferences and if someone wants to try
new products they go for environmental variables. Sometimes some of the products which a
consumer wants are not available, as the survey was conducted in the city FMCG products
and mostly of all brands are easily available so for that the reason the percentage of
availability is low. But in remote places availability of all products will be an issue. So, there
may be the availability will have the highest percentage. According to graph the packaging of
products do not matter at all to the consumer. A consumer just wants a good quality product,
with good advertisement or marketing campaign.

Advertisement do plays an important role in buying decision of consumer. When asked

whether any consumer of those products or brands could recall any advertisement, they
mentioned about what particularly they remember. If one refers to Image- 2, can understand
why the consumer remembers the advertisement and why. Some remembers because of the
creativity of the advertisement, some because of their favourite celebrities, some responded
that product doesn’t need any advertisement, etc. So, one could see that it varies from

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consumer to consumer. Every one doesn’t remember an advertisement because of same
reason, as every consumer have different thinking, mind-sets, remembering power and trust
issues or brand or product loyalty. According to questionnaire when asked whether anyone
could remember any different advertisement not of their favourite brand, then there were

Image -2

replies with different brand names, some did not remember any advertisement, some
remembered because of the celebrities, etc.

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 Image-3

Packaging also plays an important role in decision making of a consumer. A good packaging
of products attracts consumer. Most amount of consumers attracted to packaging, because
some of the product packaging is very attractive, creative, some have pictures of celebrities,
etc. When asked about packaging whether any consumer could remember during the moment,
there were many similar responses (mainly Maggi was a very common answer). Referring to
responses, one could see that the packaging of Maggi is most remembered than any other
brands. The reason could be that Maggi is the most favourite product of consumers as even
mentioned earlier in the report. Nestlé’s Maggi is one of the favourite FMCG products among
the young people because i) Most of the millennials live alone, for them it is very easy to
cook; ii) It is easily available, iii) It is of good quality, iv) It is tasty. These are the common
reasons for being the most FMCG products among the millennials. But if one research in the
field of packaging of Maggi, then one would find that packaging is not too good. Sometimes
the packaging is loose, the product inside the packet is broken, etc. but the packaging is quite
attractive and the packaging haven’t been changed over years, the packet of the product is
same old yellow in colour, with a picture of the noodles and name of the product in red, with
“2- minute noodles” written on it (Image-4). This unchanged packaging style could be one of
the other reason consumers remembering it any moment. In the above graph some of the
consumers remember packaging of different products on an average scale but again they are
food products.

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 Image-4

According to the survey when asked that if a new brand is given to the consumers they will
try or not. The responses to the question were “yes” from all the consumers. When asked
what features they will look in a new brand, most of the consumers answered quality because
again quality is one of the biggest influencer. Packaging, presence in media advertising,
advice from shopkeeper, etc. does not matter much than quality. Thus one could say it is
quality which always wins the race (refer to Image- 5).

Image-5

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 4.

Conclusion

After a thorough research on consumer psychology on could say that consumers are different
people but they want same thing. This thing matters to every consumer, in every product and
brand that is quality. According to the survey conducted almost every consumer looks for
quality in every brand and product and as the survey was conducted among youth or
millennials their most favourite FMCG products were related food products and brands, so
basically as it is a food product everyone looks for quality because if one compromises in
quality of food products it could affect their health, no one wants to affect to their health.
According survey one could say that today’s youth spend their most of disposable money in
food products. The reason could be that millennials stay alone in hostel for studies or in
rented apartment in some other city for job, etc. so they don’t have easy access to food at
home and they buy packaged food which is easily available, easy to cook, etc. for their daily
routine.

Some consumers when chooses a brand and when they are satisfied with product they tend to
buy products of that brand which is known as brand loyalty. So, many consumers don’t like
to try a new brand and some consider in trying a new brands for many reasons those can be,
some consumers wants to give some chance to new brand, some try it because of their
advertisement which attracts consumers to buy their products, some because of the celebrities
who promotes that brand, etc. Some consumers even if the quality of the product is not good
or packaging or any other thing about a product is not good, overall even if a consumer is not
satisfied with the product or brand they still buy because of their favourite celebrities. They
think that if this celebrity is promoting a brand then must be good or they think or read
somewhere in newspapers or magazines that those celebrities use these brand they tend to
buy that brand.

Thus every consumer’s minds or psychology is different from each other, one could not tell
what one wants but one could tell what a particular group of consumers wants according to
age groups and geographical conditions (like people in cities will have different taste in
products than people living in a village). Some consumers buy products according to their
needs, some because of advertisement, some according to availability of products; some buy
a product which is cheaper than the other brand as they may not have that much of

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purchasing power, some buys because of the quality of the product even if they don’t have
that amount of purchasing power they don’t compromise on quality.

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 IV.

Bibliography

1. http://www.investorwords.com/1055/consumer.html

2. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-consumer-psychology-2794899

3. https://study.com/academy/lesson/consumer-psychology-definition-behavior.html

4. https://www.kbmanage.com/concept/brand-loyalty

5. http://bankexams99.blogspot.in/2016/12/brand-loyalty-patterns-by-philip-kotler.html

6. Jim Blythe; “Consumer Behaviour”( SAGE Publication, 2016)

7. Kellogg; “Kellogg on Branding” (New Jersey: Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.,
Hoboken, 2005)

8. Rosser Reeves; “Reality in Advertising” (New York: N.W. Widener, 2015)

9. Oxford dictionary

10. Keval J. Kumar; Mass Communication in India (India: Jaico Publishing House, 2014),
402

11. Dr. D.Prasanna Kumar & K. Venkateswara Raju; The Role of Advertising in Consumer
Decision Making ( IOSR Journal of Business and Management (IOSR-JBM e-ISSN: 2278-
487X, p-ISSN: 2319-7668. Volume 14, Issue 4) (Nov. - Dec. 2013), 38

12. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140908174823-354556068-does-culture-influence-
our-consumer-behavior-if-so-how/

13. http://www.iresearchservices.com/5-common-factors-influencing-consumer-behavior/

14. http://www.iresearchservices.com/5-common-factors-influencing-consumer-behavior/

15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power

16. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast-moving_consumer_goods

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