REPORT

ON CONSUMER
BEHAVIOR

SUBMITTED BY-
Varinda Gupta
A1802009217
SECTION-F
Consumer Behaviour
The study of individuals, groups, or organizations and the processes
they use to select, secure, use, and dispose of products, services,
experiences, or ideas to satisfy needs and the impacts that these
processes have on the consumer and society.

Scope of consumer behaviour

• Consumer behaviour theory provides the manager with the

proper questions to ask
• Marketing practice designed to influence consumer behavior
influences the firm, the individual, and society
• All marketing decisions and regulations are based on
assumptions about consumer behaviour.

Applications of consumer behaviour

Behaviour of consumer can help the marketer in

taking appropriate marketing decision at various
level -

Firm:
Product positioning
Sales
Customer Satisfaction

Individual:
Need Satisfaction
Injurious Consumption

Society:
Economic
Physical Environment
Social Welfare
CULTURE AND CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

Culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge,

belief, art, law, morals, customs, and any other capabilities
and habits acquired by humans as members of society.

Subculture
A distinct cultural group that exists as an identifiable
segment within a larger, more complex society

Enculturation
Enculturation is the process by which a person learns the
requirements of the culture by which he or she is
surrounded, and acquires values and behaviors that are
appropriate or necessary in that culture

Acculturation
Acculturation is the exchange of cultural features that
results when groups of individuals having different cultures
come into continuous first hand contact; the original cultural
patterns of either or both groups may be altered, but the
groups remain distinct

Cultural values and consumer behaviour

Major cultural factors

Language
Demography
Values
Non verbal communications

All these factors play a very important role in

studying the consumer behavior of an individual or
group of individuals.
SOCIAL CLASS INFLUENCES ON CONSUMER
BEHAVIOUR

Social Class System –

Hierarchical division of society into relatively permanent and

homogeneous groups with respect to attitudes, values and
lifestyles

Criteria for a Social Class System: Individual Classes

Must Be:

• Bounded
• Ordered
• Mutually Exclusive
• Exhaustive
• Influential

Measuring Social Status

Single-Item Indexes
– Education
– Occupation (e.g., Socioeconomic Index: SEI)
– Income (e.g., individual, family, before or
after tax)

• Multi-Item Indexes

– Hollings head Index of Social Position

– Warner’s Index of Status Characteristics
– Census Bureau’s Index of Socioeconomic
Status

Consumer Socialization
The process by which children acquire the skills,
knowledge, and attitudes necessary to function as
consumers
REFERENCE GROUP
What Is a Group?

Two or more people who interact to accomplish

either individual or mutual goals

Major Consumer Reference Groups

Individual
Family
Friends
Social class
Selected subculture
One’s own culture
Other culture

DEGREE OF REFERENCE GROUP INFLUENCES

• When the product or brand is visible too the

group
• Less of a necessity item
• Individual commitment to the group
• Relevance of particular activity to group’s
functioning
• Individual’s confidence in the purchase situation

Selected Consumer-Related Reference Groups

 • Friendship groups
• Shopping groups
• Work groups
• Virtual groups or communities
• Consumer-action groups

PERCEPTION

• The process by which an individual selects,

organizes, and interprets stimuli into a
meaningful and coherent picture of the world
• How we see the world around us

The Nature of Perception

• Exposure: when a stimulus comes within range

of our sensory receptor nerves
– Random vs. Deliberate

• Attention: when the stimulus activates one or

more sensory receptor nerves and the resulting
sensations go to the brain for processing
– Low vs. High Involvement

• Interpretation: the assignment of meaning to

sensations
– Low vs. High Involvement

Elements of Perception
Sensation
• The immediate and direct response of the
sensory organs to stimuli
• Sensitivity to stimuli varies with the quality of
an individuals sensory receptors
The absolute threshold
• The lowest level at which individual can
experience a sensation is called the absolute
threshold.

Differential Threshold
Minimal difference that can be detected between two
similar stimuli

Subliminal Perception
• Stimuli that are too weak or too brief to be
consciously seen or heard may be strong enough
to be perceived by one or more receptor cells.

Issues in Consumer Imagery

• Product Positioning and Repositioning

• Positioning of Services
• Perceived Price
• Perceived Quality
• Retail Store Image
• Manufacturer Image
• Perceived Risk

Perceptual Mapping

• A research technique that enables marketers to

plot graphically consumers’ perceptions
concerning product attributes of specific brands

Price/Quality Relationship
 • The perception of price as an indicator of
product quality (e.g., the higher the price, the
higher the perceived quality of the product.)

Attitude

A learned predisposition to behave in a consistently

favorable or unfavorable manner with respect to a
given object.

Functions of Attitude
1. Utilitarian
2. Knowledge
3. Ego Defensive
4. Value-Expressive

Structural Models of Attitudes

The Tricomponent Model

The knowledge and perceptions that are acquired by

a combination of direct experience with the attitude
object and related information from various sources

Multiattribute Attitude Models

Attitude models that examine the composition of consumer

attitudes in terms of selected product attributes or beliefs

Attitude-Toward-the-Ad Model

A model that proposes that a consumer forms various

feelings (affects) and judgments (cognitions) as the result of
exposure to an advertisement, which, in turn, affect the
consumer’s attitude toward the ad and attitude toward the
brand

CREATIVE APPROACHES

• COMPARATIVE ADVERTISING
1. EXPLICIT
2. IMPLICIT
3. LEADERS Vs Followers
Learning

IT IS RELATIVELY PERMANENT CHANGE IN BEHAVIOUR

OCCURING AS A RESULT OF EXPERIENCE.

TYPES OF LEARNED BEHAVIOUR

• PHYSICAL BEHAVIOUR
• SYMBOLIC LEARNING AND PROBLEM SOLVING
• AFFECTIVE LEARNING

PRINCIPLE ELEMENTS OF LEARNING

• MOTIVE- they arouse individuals ,thereby increasing

their readiness to respond

• CUES- It is a weak stimulus not strong enough to

arouse consumers, but capable of providing direction to
motivated activity

• RESPONSE- mental or physical activity the consumer

makes in reaction to a stimulus situation

• REINFORCEMENT- anything that follows a response and

increases the tendency of response to reoccur in a
similar situation.
Postpurchase Dissonance

1. Postpurchase (cognitive) dissonance is anxiety or

doubts about the wisdom of a purchase .
a. Usually for higher involvement products
b. Difficult to alter or reverse the decision
c. Important to the consumer
d. Close choices
e. Individual characteristics

Dissonance Responses

2. Increase the desirability of the brand purchased

3. Focus on positive attributes and increase their
importance, seek additional information

4. Decrease the desirability of the rejected alternatives

5. Ignore or distort positive information, minimize the
importance, discredit the source

6. Decrease the importance of the purchase decision

7. it does not matter, next time...

8. Reverse the purchase decision

Dissatisfaction

1. Marketing strategies to reduce dissatisfaction

a. Create realistic expectations
b. Maintain product quality
 c. After sales service and promotions assuring
customers of quality and emphasizing important
attributes
d. Consumer hot lines
e. Constant product improvement based on feedback

Relationship Marketing

1. Research has revealed that it costs five times as much

or more to obtain a new customer than it does to keep
an existing one and that profits can be doubled by
simply retaining 5% more of a firm’s current customers.

2. Relationship marketing is defined as “all marketing

activities directed toward establishing, developing, and
maintaining successful relational exchanges.” (Morgan
and Hunt 1994).