Because learning changes everything.
CHAPTER 4
Perspectives on
Consumer
Behavior
© McGraw Hill LLC. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw Hill LLC.
Learning Objectives
LO4-1 Discuss why an understanding of consumer behavior is
valuable in developing advertising and promotional
programs.
LO4-2 Describe the steps in the consumer decision-making
process.
LO4-5 Explain the influence of external factors like culture and
subculture.
LO4-6 Identify new ways to study consumer behavior.
© McGraw Hill 2
An Overview of Consumer Behavior
Consumer Behavior
• Process and activities people engage in with relation to products
and services to satisfy their needs and desires.
• Searching for.
• Selecting.
• Purchasing.
• Using.
• Evaluating.
• Disposing of.
© McGraw Hill 3
Figure 4-1 Basic Model of Consumer Decision Making
Access the text alternative for slide images.
© McGraw Hill 4
The Consumer Decision-Making Process 1
Problem Recognition (Trigger)
• Consumer perceives a need and gets motivated to solve the problem.
• Caused by difference between consumer’s ideal state and actual
state.
• Sources:
• Out of stock.
• Dissatisfaction.
• New needs or wants.
• Related products or purchases.
• Marketer-induced problem recognition.
• New products.
© McGraw Hill 5
Exhibit 4-3
Splat used this ad to encourage people to not be
content with their current hair color and change it.
© McGraw Hill Source: Splat 6
The Consumer Decision-Making Process 2
Examining Consumer Motivations
• Consumer perception of a problem influences remainder of purchase
decision.
• Motives: Factors that compel a consumer to take a particular action.
• Hierarchy of needs
• Maslow’s theory of human motivation.
• Lower-level physiological and safety needs must be satisfied before
higher-order needs become meaningful.
© McGraw Hill 7
Figure 4-2 Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Access the text alternative for slide images.
© McGraw Hill 8
Exhibit 4-5
The Volvo ad appeals to security by promoting safety.
The Lexus ad appeals to self-actualization by advertising its
car as the ideal.
© McGraw Hill Sources: Volvo Car Corporation; Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. 9
The Consumer Decision-Making Process 3
Examining Consumer Motivations continued
• Psychoanalytic theory:
• Freud’s theory influenced modern psychology and explanations of
motivation and personality.
• Applied to study of consumer behavior.
• Deep motives can only be determined by probing the subconscious.
• Motivation research:
• Use psychoanalytic techniques to determine consumers’ purchase
motivations.
© McGraw Hill 10
Figure 4-3 Some of the Marketing Research Methods
Used to Probe the Mind of the Consumer
In-depth interviews
Face-to-face situations in which an interviewer asks a consumer to talk freely in
an unstructured interview using specific questions designed to obtain insights into
his or her motives, ideas, or opinions.
Projective techniques
Efforts designed to gain insights into consumers’ values, motives, attitudes, or
needs that are difficult to express or identify by having them project these internal
states upon some external object.
Association tests
A technique in which an individual is asked to respond with the first thing that
comes to mind when they are presented with a stimulus; the stimulus may be a
word, picture, ad, and so on.
Focus groups
A small number of people with similar backgrounds and/or interests who are
brought together to discuss a particular product, idea, or issue.
© McGraw Hill 11
The Consumer Decision-Making Process 4
Examining Consumer Motivations continued
• Problems of psychoanalytic theory and motivation research while both
are not questioned enough because of being research industry
standards:
• Psychoanalytic theory criticized as:
• Too vague.
• Unresponsive to external environment.
• Too reliant on early development of the individual.
• Uses small sample for drawing conclusions.
• Motivation research criticized for:
• Results difficult to verify.
• Lack of experimental validation.
• Findings not generalizable to entire population.
© McGraw Hill 12
The Consumer Decision-Making Process 5
Examining Consumer Motivations continued
• Contributions of psychoanalytic theory and motivation research:
• Psychoanalytic theory:
• A basis for advertising messages aimed at buyers’ deeply rooted
feelings, hopes, aspirations, and fears.
• Motivation research:
• Qualitative nature helps assess how and why consumers buy.
• Helps get around stereotypical or socially desirable responses.
• Forerunner of psychographics.
© McGraw Hill 13
The Consumer Decision-Making Process 6
Information Search
• Internal search: Information retrieval that involves recalling:
• Past experiences.
• Information regarding various purchase alternatives.
• Sufficient for routine, repetitive purchases.
• External search: Seeking information from external sources.
• Internet, personal, and public sources. (netnography)
• Marketer-controlled sources.
• Personal experience.
© McGraw Hill 14
Exhibit 4-7
Internet sources provide one option for an external search. This
Yelp ad asks consumers if they “Need to chill?” and helps them
search for ways to accomplish this.
© McGraw Hill Source: Yelp Inc. 15
The Consumer Decision-Making Process 7
Information Search continued
• Extent of external source to be used depends on:
• Importance of purchase decision.
• Effort needed to acquire information.
• Amount of relevant past experience.
• Degree of perceived risk associated with purchase.
• Time available.
© McGraw Hill 16
The Consumer Decision-Making Process 8
Perception
• Receiving, selecting, organizing, and interpreting information to
create a meaningful picture of the world.
• Schemas
• Depends on:
• Internal factors such as beliefs or mood.
• Characteristics of a stimulus such as size or color.
In this ad for Simply
Orange, the use of color
and context influences the
consumer’s perception and
helps promote the urge to
purchase orange juice.
© McGraw Hill Source: Coca-Cola Company 17
The Consumer Decision-Making Process 14
Alternative Evaluation
• Comparing brands that have been identified as capable of:
• Solving the problem.
• Satisfying the needs or motives that initiated the decision process.
• Evoked set: Subset of all brands of which consumer is aware.
• Size depends on:
• Importance of the purchase.
• Time and energy spent comparing alternatives.
• Top-of-mind awareness; reminder advertising.
© McGraw Hill 18
Exhibit 4-11
The ad from the Michigan
Economic Development
corporation presents the
many benefits of Michigan
and encourages
prospective businesses to
consider it in their evoked
set of places to locate or
relocate.
© McGraw Hill Source: Michigan Economic Development Corporation 19
The Consumer Decision-Making Process 15
Alternative Evaluation continued
• Evaluative criteria and consequences.
• Evaluative criteria: Dimensions or attributes of a product that are used to
compare different alternatives.
• Objective or subjective.
• Viewed as product or service attributes.
• Consumers think in terms of consequences or outcomes.
• Functional consequences: Concrete outcomes of product or service
usage.
• Tangible and directly experienced by consumers.
• Example: The taste of a potato chip.
© McGraw Hill 20
The Consumer Decision-Making Process 16
Alternative Evaluation continued
• Evaluative criteria and consequences. continued
• Psychosocial consequences: Abstract outcomes that are more
intangible, subjective, and personal.
• Subprocesses:
• Process by which consumer attitudes are created, reinforced, and
changed.
© McGraw Hill 21
The Consumer Decision-Making Process 22
Purchase Decision
• Purchase intention:
• Predisposition to buy a certain brand by matching purchase motives with
attributes of brands considered.
• Based on motivation, perception, attitude formation, integration.
• Brand loyalty:
• Preference for a particular brand that results in repeated purchases.
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Figure 4-6 Brands That Have the Most Brand Loyalty
Brand Keys Loyalty Leaders
Amazon: online retail (#1)
Apple: smartphones (#4)
Netflix: video streaming (#2)
Domino’s pizza (#5)
Amazon: video streaming (#3)
Disney+: video streaming (#7)
Google: search engine (#6)
WhatsApp: instant messaging (#9)
© McGraw Hill Source: Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Leaders List 2021 23
The Consumer Decision-Making Process 23
Postpurchase Evaluation
• Satisfaction occurs when consumer’s expectations are met or
exceeded.
• Dissatisfaction occurs when product performance is below
expectations.
• Cognitive dissonance: Psychological tension experienced after a
difficult purchase choice.
• Reduce by seeking reassurance and opinions from others.
• Postpurchase communication from marketer is important to reinforce
wisdom of decision.
© McGraw Hill 24
The Consumer Decision-Making Process 24
Variations in Consumer Decision Making
• Many purchase decisions based on habitual or routine choice
process.
• Marketers need to keep brands in consumer’s evoked set.
• Marketers of new brands or those with a low market share must find ways
to disrupt routine choice process.
• A more complicated decision-making process occurs when
consumers have limited experience in purchasing a particular product
or service.
© McGraw Hill 25
The Consumer Learning Process 1
Behavioral Approach
• Learning occurs as result of responses to external stimuli in the
environment.
• Classical conditioning
• Instrumental Conditioning
• Cognitive Learning theory
© McGraw Hill 26
Figure 4-7 The Classical Conditioning Process
Access the text alternative for slide images.
© McGraw Hill 27
Exhibit 4-16
This ad for
Davidoff Reborn
applies the
classical
conditioning
process. It
associates its
product with the
look and freshness
of water.
© McGraw Hill Source: Zino Davidoff 28
Figure 4-8 Instrumental Conditioning in Marketing
Access the text alternative for slide images.
© McGraw Hill 29
The Consumer Learning Process 4
Behavioral Learning Theory continued
• Cognitive learning theory:
• Studies complex mental processes that underlie consumer decision
making.
• Perception.
• Formation of beliefs about brands.
• Attitude development and change.
• Integration.
© McGraw Hill 30
Environmental Influences on Consumer Behavior 1
Culture
• Complexity of learned meanings, values, norms, and customs shared
by members of society.
Subcultures
• Smaller segments within a culture, whose beliefs, values, norms, and
patterns of behavior set them apart from the larger cultural
mainstream.
• Social class:
• Homogeneous divisions in a society into which people sharing similar
lifestyles, values, norms, interests, and behaviors can be grouped.
• Three broad levels in the United States: upper, middle, and lower.
© McGraw Hill 31
Exhibit 4-18
This ad for Giorgio Armani's
fragrance Si Passione, is
meant to appeal to the
growing Hispanic subculture
in the U.S.
© McGraw Hill Source: Giorgio Armani S.p.A 32
Alternative Approaches to Consumer Behavior
New Methodologies
• Qualitative methods.
• Linguistic or historical perspective of communications.
• Examining symbolic meanings of advertising and facets of
consumption.
• Netnography
New Insights
• Leads to better understanding of:
• Cultural significance of advertising messages.
• Influence of advertising images on society.
© McGraw Hill 33
Consumer Decision Journey - Mckinsey Version
© McGraw Hill 34
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