Chapter 5

CONSUMER MARKETS AND

BUYER BEHAVIOR
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Define the consumer market and construct a simple model of consumer buyer
behavior.

Consumer buyer behavior refers to the buying behavior of final consumers—

individuals and households who buy goods and services for personal consumption.

All of these consumers combine to make up the consumer market.

The American consumer market consists of more than 323 million people.

Model of Consumer Behavior

The central question for marketers is: How do consumers respond to various marketing
efforts the company might use?

The starting point is the stimulus-response model of buyer behavior shown in Figure 5.1.

Marketing stimuli consist of the four Ps: product, price, place, promotion.

Other stimuli include major forces and events in the buyer’s environment: economic,
technological, social, and cultural.

The marketer wants to understand how the stimuli are changed into responses inside the
consumer’s “black box,” which has two parts.

1. The buyer’s characteristics influence how he or she perceives and reacts to the stimuli.
2.
3. The buyer’s decision process itself affects the buyer’s behavior.
4.
Review Learning Objective 1: Define the consumer market and construct a simple
model of consumer buyer behavior.

Name the four major factors that influence consumer buyer behavior.

Characteristics Affecting Consumer Behavior

Cultural Factors
Culture is the most basic cause of a person’s wants and behavior.

Marketers are always trying to spot cultural shifts.

Subcultures are groups of people with shared value systems based on common life
experiences and situations.

The U.S. Hispanic market consists of more than 55 million consumers.

More than 44 million African-American consumers wield nearly $1.3 trillion in annual
buying power.

Asian Americans are the most affluent U.S. demographic segment.

Many marketers now embrace a total market strategy—the practice of including ethnic
themes and cross-cultural perspectives within their mainstream marketing.

Social classes are society’s relatively permanent and ordered divisions whose members
share similar values, interests, and behaviors.

Social class is not determined by a single factor but is measured as a combination of

occupation, income, education, wealth, and other variables.

Major American social classes:

• Upper Class
• Middle Class
• Working Class
• Lower Class

Social classes show distinct product and brand preferences in areas such as clothing,
home furnishings, travel and leisure activities, financial services, and automobiles.
Social Factors

Groups and Social Networks. A person’s behavior is influenced by many small groups,
including membership groups, aspirational groups, and reference groups.

Marketers use word-of-mouth influence and buzz marketing to spread the word about
their brands.

Opinion leaders are people within a reference group who, because of special skills,
knowledge, personality, or other characteristics, exert social influence on others.

This small percentage of Americans is referred to as the influentials or leading adopters.

Online social networks are online communities where people socialize or exchange
information and opinions.
Family. The family is the most important consumer buying organization in society.

• Forty-one percent of men identify themselves as primary grocery shoppers in

their households, and 39 percent handle most of their household’s laundry.

• Women account for 60 percent of all new technology purchases and influence
more than 80 percent of all new car purchases.

• The nation’s kids and tweens influence an estimated $1.2 trillion of spending
annually.

Roles and Status. A role consists of the activities people are expected to perform. Each
role carries a status reflecting the general esteem given to it by society.

Personal Factors

Age and Life Stage. People change the goods and services they buy over their lifetimes.

Tastes in food, clothes, furniture, and recreation are often age-related. Buying is also
shaped by the stage of the family life cycle.

Marketers often define their targets in terms of life-cycle stage and develop appropriate
products and marketing plans for each stage.

Consumer information giant Nielsen’s PRIZM Lifestage Groups system places U.S.
households into one of 66 consumer segments and 11 life-stage groups based on
affluence, age, and family characteristics.

Life-stage segmentation provides a powerful marketing tool for marketers in all

industries to better find, understand, and engage consumers.

Occupation. A person’s occupation affects the goods and services they purchase.

Economic Situation. A person’s economic situation will affect store and product choice.
Marketers watch trends in spending, personal income, savings, and interest rates.

Lifestyle is a person’s pattern of living as expressed in his or her psychographics.

This involves measuring major AIO dimensions such as activities (work, hobbies,
shopping, sports, social events), interests (food, fashion, family, recreation), and
opinions (about themselves, social issues, business, products). It profiles a person’s
whole patters of acting and interacting in the world.

Personality and Self-Concept

Personality refers to the unique psychological characteristics that distinguish a person or
group.

A brand personality is the specific mix of human traits that may be attributed to a
particular brand. One researcher identified five brand personality traits:
1. Sincerity (down-to-earth, honest, wholesome, and cheerful)
2. Excitement (daring, spirited, imaginative, and up-to-date)
3. Competence (reliable, intelligent, and successful)
4. Sophistication (upper class and charming)
5. Ruggedness (outdoorsy and tough)

The basic self-concept premise is that people’s possessions contribute to and reflect their
identities; that is, “we are what we have.”

Psychological Factors

Motivation

A motive (or drive) is a need that is sufficiently pressing to direct the person to seek
satisfaction.

Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud suggested that a person’s buying decisions are affected by
subconscious motives that even the buyer may not fully understand.

Motivation research refers to qualitative research designed to probe consumers’ hidden,

subconscious motivations.

Abraham Maslow sought to explain why people are driven by particular needs at
particular times. He determined that human needs are arranged in a hierarchal fashion.

Perception is the process by which people select, organize, and interpret information to
form a meaningful picture of the world.

Selective attention is the tendency for people to screen out most of the information to
which they are exposed.

Selective distortion describes the tendency of people to interpret information in a way

that will support what they already believe.

Selective retention involves retaining information that supports personal attitudes and
beliefs.

Learning describes changes in an individual’s behavior arising from experience.

A drive is a strong internal stimulus that calls for action.

A drive becomes a motive when it is directed toward a particular stimulus object.

Cues are minor stimuli that determine when, where, and how the person responds.

Beliefs and Attitudes

A belief is a descriptive thought that a person has about something.

An attitude is a person’s relatively consistent evaluations, feelings, and tendencies

toward an object or idea. Attitudes are difficult to change.

Review Learning Objective 2: Name the four major factors that influence consumer
buyer behavior.
List and define the major types of buying decision behavior and the stages in the
buyer decision process.

Buying Decision Behavior and the Buyer Decision Process

Types of Buying Decision Behavior

Figure 5.4 shows types of consumer buying behavior based on the degree of buyer
involvement and the degree of differences among brands.

Complex Buying Behavior

Consumers undertake complex buying behavior when they are highly involved in a
purchase and perceive significant differences among brands.

Consumers may be highly involved when the product is expensive, risky, purchased
infrequently, and highly self-expressive.

Typically, the consumer has much to learn about the product category.

Marketers of high-involvement products must understand the information-gathering and

evaluation behavior of high-involvement consumers.

Dissonance-Reducing Buying Behavior

Dissonance-reducing buying behavior occurs when consumers are highly involved

with an expensive, infrequent, or risky purchase, but see little difference among brands.

After the purchase, consumers might experience postpurchase dissonance (after-sale

discomfort) when they notice certain disadvantages of the purchased brand or hear
favorable things about brands not purchased.

To counter such dissonance, the marketer’s after-sale communications should provide

evidence and support to help consumers feel good about their brand choices.
Habitual Buying Behavior

Habitual buying behavior occurs under conditions of low consumer involvement and
little significant brand difference.

Consumer behavior does not pass through the usual belief-attitude-behavior sequence.

Consumers do not search extensively for information about the brands, evaluate brand
characteristics, and make weighty decisions about which brands to buy.

They passively receive information as they watch television or read magazines.

Because buyers are not highly committed to any brands, marketers of low-involvement
products with few brand differences often use price and sales promotions to stimulate
variety-seeking buying behavior.

Consumers undertake variety-seeking buying behavior in situations characterized by low

consumer involvement but significant perceived brand differences.

In such cases, consumers often do a lot of brand switching.

The Buyer Decision Process

The buyer decision process consists of five stages:

1. Need recognition
2. Information search
3. Evaluation of alternatives
4. Purchase decision
5. Postpurchase behavior

Need Recognition

The buyer recognizes a problem or need triggered by either internal stimuli or external
stimuli.

Information Search

Information search may or may not occur.

Consumers can obtain information from any of several sources.

• Personal sources (family, friends, neighbors, acquaintances)

• Commercial sources (advertising, salespeople, Web sites, dealers, packaging,
displays)
• Public sources (mass media, consumer-rating organizations, Internet searches)
• Experiential sources (handling, examining, using the product)

Commercial sources inform the buyer.

Personal sources legitimize or evaluate products for the buyer.

Evaluation of Alternatives

Alternative evaluation is how the consumer processes information to arrive at brand

choices.

How consumers go about evaluating purchase alternatives depends on the individual

consumer and the specific buying situation.

In some cases, consumers use careful calculations and logical thinking.

At other times, the same consumers do little or no evaluating; instead, they buy on
impulse and rely on intuition.

Purchase Decision
Generally, the consumer’s purchase decision will be to buy the most preferred brand.

Two factors can come between the purchase intention and the purchase decision.

1. Attitudes of others
2. Unexpected situational factors

Postpurchase Behavior

The difference between the consumer’s expectations and the perceived performance of
the item purchased determines the degree of consumer satisfaction.

If the product falls short of expectations, the consumer is disappointed; if it meets

expectations, the consumer is satisfied; if it exceeds expectations, the consumer is said to
be delighted.

Cognitive dissonance, or discomfort caused by postpurchase conflict, occurs in most

major purchases.

Review Learning Objective 3: List and define the major types of buying decision
behavior and the stages in the buyer decision process.
Describe the adoption and diffusion process for new products.

The Buyer Decision Process for New Products

A new product is a good, service, or idea that is perceived by some potential customers
as new.

The adoption process is the mental process through which an individual passes from
first learning about an innovation to final adoption. Adoption is the decision by an
individual to become a regular user of the product.

Stages in the Adoption Process

Consumers go through five stages in the process of adopting a new product:

1. Awareness: The consumer becomes aware of the new product, but lacks
information about it.
2. Interest: The consumer seeks information about the new product.
3. Evaluation: The consumer considers whether trying the new product makes
sense.
4. Trial: The consumer tries the new product on a small scale to improve his or her
estimate of its value.
5. Adoption: The consumer decides to make full and regular use of the new product.

Individual Differences in Innovativeness

People differ greatly in their readiness to try new products.

The five adopter groups have differing values.

1. Innovators are venturesome—they try new ideas at some risk.

2. Early adopters are guided by respect—they are opinion leaders in their
communities and adopt new ideas early but carefully.
3. The early mainstream are deliberate—while rarely leaders, they adopt new ideas
before average persons.
4. The late mainstream are skeptical—they adopt an innovation only after a
majority of people have tried it.
5. Lagging adopters are tradition bound—they are suspicious of changes and adopt
the innovation only when it has become something of a tradition itself.

People can be classified into the adopter categories shown in Figure 5.6.

Influence of Product Characteristics on Rate of Adoption

Five characteristics are important in influencing an innovation’s rate of adoption.

 1. Relative advantage: The degree to which the innovation appears superior to
existing products.
2. Compatibility: The degree to which the innovation fits the values and experiences
of potential consumers.
3. Complexity: The degree to which the innovation is difficult to understand or use.
4. Divisibility: The degree to which the innovation may be tried on a limited basis.
5. Communicability: The degree to which the results of using the innovation can be
observed or described to others.

Review Learning Objective 4: Describe the adoption and diffusion process for new
products.