Consumer Behaviour Chapter 1 Yassin Younes
Chapter One
Consumers Rule
Topics to be covered:
• What is consumer behavior?
1. Consumers are actors on the marketplace stage.
2. Consumer behavior as a process
3. Consumer behavior involves many different actors.
Consumer's impact on marketing strategy
Relationship marketing: building bonds with consumers
Marketing's impact on consumers
The meaning of consumption and types of attachments.
• Needs and wants: Do marketers manipulate consumers?
• Consumerism
• The dark side of consumer behavior
• Interdisciplinary influences on the study of consumer behavior.
• Marketing Concept
• The essence of marketing consists of satisfying consumers’ needs, creating value,
and retaining customers.
• The objective of providing value is to retain highly satisfied customers.
Successful Relationships:
• Loyal customers are key:
• They buy more products • Servicing them is
• They are less price cheaper
sensitive • They spread positive
word of mouth
Consumer Behaviour Chapter 1 Yassin Younes
What is Consumer Behavior?
• The study of the processes involved when individuals or groups select, purchase,
use, or dispose of products, services, ideas, or experiences to satisfy needs and
desires.
What is a Need?
• Need: State of felt deprivation including physical, social, and individual needs.
• Physical:
• Food, clothing, shelter, safety
• Social:
• Belonging, affection
• Individual:
• Learning, knowledge, self-expression
What is a Want?
• Wants: Form that a human need takes, as shaped by culture and individual personality.
• Wants + Buying Power = Demand
Actors in Consumer Behavior
• Consumer: a person who identifies a need or desire, makes a purchase, and then disposes
of the product.
Purchaser versus User versus Influencer
• The purchaser and user of a product might not be the same person.
• The influencer is providing recommendations for or against certain products without actually
buying or using them.
Organization/group as consumer.
• Consumers may take the form of organizations or groups , one or several persons may
make the decisions involved in purchasing products that will be used by many.
Why do We Study Consumer Behavior?
Consumers’ impact on Marketing Strategy:
• Understanding consumer behavior is good business.
• A basic marketing concept holds that firms exist to satisfy consumers’ needs. These needs
can only be satisfied to the extent that marketers understand the people or organizations
who will use the products and services they are trying to sell, and that they do so better
than their competitors.
• Knowledge and data about customers:
• Help to define the market
• Identify threats/opportunities to a brand
• Nothing is forever as the only constant thing in the world of business and marketing is
change. This knowledge also helps to ensure that the product continues to appeal to its
core market.
Segmenting Consumers
• Market Segmentation: the process of market segmentation identifies groups of consumers
who are similar to one another in one or more ways, and then devises marketing strategies
that appeal to one or more groups.
§ Example: “Heavy Users” of fast-food industry
• Promotion budgets used toward more specialized media
• McDonalds uses ethnic programming, women’s blogs, in-store videos for young men
• Marketers build brand loyalty by going after heavy users
Consumer Behaviour Chapter 1 Yassin Younes
Segmenting Consumers: Demographics
Demographics: statistics that measure observable aspects of a population, such as:
• Age • Social class and income
• Gender • Race and ethnicity
• Family structure • Geography
Psychographics:
• The way we feel about ourselves • The things we do in our spare time
• The things we value
Relationship Marketing: Building Bonds with customers:
• A key success is building lifetime relationships between brands and customer through :
• Regular interaction with customers
• Database Marketing: tracking specific consumers’ buying habits closely and crafts
products and messages tailored precisely to people’s wants and needs based on this
information (e.g Walmart stores massive amounts of information about their
customers shoppings inorder for the company to use these data to fine-tune its
offerings.
Marketing’s impact on consumers
• Marketers significantly influence the world and the information we learn!
• Advertisements, stores, and products communicate and persuade
The Meaning of Consumption
• People often buy products not for what they do, but for what they mean
• Brands…
§ …Convey image/personality
§ …Define our place in modern society
§ …Help us to form bonds with others who share similar preferences
§
Brand Relationship Types
• People often buy products not for what they do, but for what they mean
• Consumers can develop relationships with brands:
• Self-Attachment Concept: The product helps to establish the user’s identity.
• Nostalgic Attachment: the product serves as a link with a past self
• Interdependence: the product is a part of the user’s daily routine
• Love: the product elicits emotional bonds of warmth & passion
The Global Consumer
• Global Consumer Culture
• People united by common devotion to:
§ Brand name consumer goods
§ Movie stars
§ Celebrities
§ Leisure activities
• Pressure to understand similarities and differences of customers in various countries
Consumer Behaviour Chapter 1 Yassin Younes
Virtual Consumption
• Electronic marketing has increased convenience by breaking down many of the barriers
caused by time and location.
• Impact of the Web on consumer behavior
• 24/7 shopping without leaving home
• Instantaneous access to news
• Handheld devices & wireless communications
• C2C e-commerce
• Virtual brand communities.
• Consumer chat rooms
• Wired” Americans spend…
• …Less time with friends/family
• …Less time shopping in stores
• …More time working at home after hours
• But, many report that e-mail strengthens family ties
Blurred Boundaries: Marketing and Reality
• Marketers and consumers coexist in a complicated, two-way relationship. It’s often hard to
tell where marketing efforts leave off and the real world begins.
• In other words, no longer sure where the line separating this fabricated world from reality
begins and ends.
