Consumer Behaviour

The study of processes involved when indivduals or groups select, purchase, use or dispose of products, services, ideas, or experiences to satisfy the needs and desires.
Plays an important role in our social, psychological, economical, political and cultural lives.
Buy products not for what they do, but for what they MEAN!
Role theory
1. People act out many different roles they may modify their consumption decisions according to the particular 'play' they are in at the time.
  1. Plays
    1. CHOOSERS: Somebody who can choose between different alternatives and explores various criteria for making this hoice.
    2. COMMUNICATORS: We are all involved in a communication system through our consumption activities, whereby we communicate our roles and statuses.
    3. IDENTITY SEEKERS: Searching to construct our identity, our 'real selves;, through various consumption activities.
    4. PLEASURE SEEKERS: Exploration of a few of the many possibilities the market has to offer us, maybe in search of a 'real kick of pleasure'.
    5. VICTIMS: On the more serious side we may feel victimised by fraudulent or harmful offerings, and we may decide to take action against such risks from the market place by becoming active in consumer movements.
    6. REBEL: We may react against the authority of the producers by co-opting their products, and turning them into something else, as when military boots all of a sudden became 'normal' footwear for peaceful women.
    7. ACTIVISTS: We may decide to take action as 'political consumers' and boycott products from companies or countries whose behaviour does not meet our ethical or environmental standards.
It's a PROCESS
1. The EXCHANGE, in which two or more organisations or people give and receive something of value, is an integral part of marketing.
  1. Early stage of development
  2. Before, During and After
Market Segmentation
1. DEMOGRAPHICS: Statistics that measure observable aspects of a population, such as birth rates, age distribution or income. Changes are of great interest to marketers.
2. PSYCHOGRAPHIC: Hard to measure. differences in consumers' personalities and tastes which can't be measured objectively.
3. GEOGRAPHIC: Region, and Country Differences.
4. BEHAVIOURAL: Brand loyalty, extent to usage, usage situations and benefits desired.
5. NEW SEGMENTS: The gay community, single females and Disabled people.
  1. IBM and NISSAN have used disabled actors in their actors in their advertising campaign.
Consumer Identity
1. Consumers use products to help them define their identities.
2. A branded world
  1. Relationships with brands: Marketers making an effort to keep in touch with their customers on a regular basis, and are giving them reasons to maintain a bond with the company over time. Many offer services that are appreciated by their customers.
    1. Self-concept attachment
    2. Nostalgic Attachment
    3. Interdependence
    4. Love
  2. Brand Communities
    1. Shared consciousness
3. Consumer Culture
  1. Describes the current type of social organisation in the economically-developed world.
  2. Personal identities are mediated through consumption.
  3. The core of consumer culture is that consumption goes beyond solving practical and utilitarian.
  4. A way of creating meaningful lives in the context of personal identity and social relatioships.
  5. Consumption, branding and marketing have become some of the prime reflectors of current values, norms and social roles.
  6. Economy and cultures of consumption are thus closely intertwined.
The Meaning of things
1. Significantly influenced by marketers
2. Surrounded by marketing stimuli competing for our attention and our cash.
3. The meaning of consumption
  1. Deeper meaning of a product may help it stand out from similar goods.
  2. Cultural symbols are very powerful and product meanings are to some extent self-fulfilling.
4. Music, films, sports, books, celebrities and other forms of entertainment consumed by the mass market, is both a product of and an inspiration for marketers.
Postmodernism: It argues that we live in a period where the modern order, with its shared beliefs in certain central values of modernism and industrialism, is breaking up.
1. HYPERREALITY: Becoming reality of what is initially simulation or "hype". A person looses the sense of what is real and what is fantasy. E.g. Las Vegas
2. CHRONOLOGY: Nostalgic search for the authentic and a preoccupation with past. Retro-branding 'the revival or re-launch of a brand from a prior historical period that differs from nostalgic brands by the elements of updating'.
3. FRAGMENTATION: Ever-growing product ranges and brand extensions in more and more specialised variations. Identities are fragmented. E.g. Virtual versus real identities.
4. DE-DIFFERENTIATION: Blurring boundaries between hierarchies. E.g. Gender categories, High and Low culture
5. PASTICHE: Playful and ironic mixing of existing categories and styles is typical of pastiche.
6. ANTI-FOUNDATIONALISM: Questioning the foundations of advertising (promoting a product.)
Reversal of production and consumption
1. Co-Creation of value
2. Consumer as a producer; not target of products, but produce of experiences.
3. Identity Projects: Consumer is the marketer of her self image.
4. Consumer Literacy brings ability to control images.
5. Shift from passive to active consumer
6. DECENTRING OF THE SUBJECT: Subject Centred versus Subject Decntred
7. PARADOXCAL JUXTAPOSTIONS: Dualism like global-local-west, rural-urban, secular-religious, modern-traditional are juxtaposed and hybrid forms emerge.
Two Perspective on Consumer Research
1. THE POSITIVIST PERSPECTIVE: Emphasizes the objectivity of science and the consumer as a rational decision-maker.
2. THE INTERPRETIVIST PERSPECTIVE: Stresses the subjective meaning of the consumer's individual experience and the idea that any behaviour is subject to multiple interpretations rather than one single explanation.
The Global Consumer Culture
1. Globalisation as one of the most central in understanding the development of consumer society. Should be considered as Glocalization.
  1. Glocalization: All global phenomena exist and become meaningful in a local context. E.g. McDonald's restaurant has different meanings to different roles for consumers when placed in Chiago
2. U-commerce is the use of ubiquitous networks that will slowly but surely become a part of us, whether in the form of wearable computers or customised advertisements beamed to us on our mobile phones.
3. The Politics of Consumption
  1. Political Consumer: Who 'votes with their shopping basket' in an attempt to influence companies to care for the natural as well as human environment, adding issues such as human rights to the set of dimensions that influence purchases.
Consumer Protection
1. There are ten principles that help consumers rely on their government for regulation, policy safety and environmental standards.
2. The Consumer DarkSide
  1. Consumer Terrorism
  2. Materialistically orientated consumption
  3. Addictive Consumption
  4. Consumed Consumer
  5. Illegal activities
  6. Compulsive Consumption
3. Deviant Consumer Behaviour
  1. Compulsive Buying
  2. Consumer Thefts: Black Markets
  3. Addictive Consumption
  4. Underage and Drug Use
Marketing's Impact on consumer
1. Do they create artificial needs?
  1. Some conservative traditionalists believe that advertising contributes to the moral breakdown of society by presenting images of hedonistic pleasure.
  2. Some leftists argue that the same misleading promises of material pleasure function to buy of people who otherwise be revolutionaires working to change the system.
2. Do marketers provide miracles?
  1. The consumer will react in a predefined way to certain stimuli.
  2. We are all partly socialised by the market and its messages.
  3. Advertising changes patterns of consumption
3. Is advertising necessary?
  1. Radio and TV is an important tool to accomplish manipulation of the masses.
  2. Products are there to meet exisisting needs, advertising only helps to communicate their availability.

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	Created by Crogers almost 10 years ago