Consumer Behavior– you are

what you buy…

Dr. Fatima Beena

• Think of a recent important purchase– briefly draw a
flowchart of the steps you recall moving through from
the awareness of need to post purchase

• What influenced you at each step?

 Consumer Decision-Making
Process
Need
Need Recognition
Recognition

Information
Information Search
Search
Cultural,
Cultural, Social,
Social,
Individual
Individual and
and
Psychological Evaluation
Evaluation
Psychological of
Factors
Factors of Alternatives
Alternatives
affect
affect
all
all steps
steps Purchase
Purchase

Postpurchase
Postpurchase
Behavior
Behavior
 Complete model of consumer behavior

Start
Need
recognition
Internal
search Influences
Search
• culture
Exposure
• social class
• family
Stimuli Attention Alternative • situation
(marketer evaluation
dominated, Memory
Comprehension
other) Individual
differences
Acceptance Purchase
• resources
• motivation &
Retention involvement
Outcomes • knowledge
• attitudes
• personality,
values, lifestyle
External
search
Dissatisfaction Satisfaction
• How do you know when to shop? What are the
triggers that initiate an awareness & search?

• What are the internal & external sources of these

triggers?
 Need Recognition
• When a current product isn’t
Marketing helps
consumers recognize performing properly
(or create) an imbalance
between present status • When the consumer is running
and preferred state out of an product

• When another product seems State

Preferred
superior to the one currently used
 The information search stage

An internal search involves the

scanning of one's memory to recall previous Personal sources
experiences or knowledge concerning (friends and family)
solutions to the problem-- often sufficient for
frequently purchased products.
Public sources (rating
services like Consumer
An external search may be necessary Reports)
when past experience or knowledge is
insufficient, the risk of making a wrong
purchase decision is high, and/or the cost of Marketer-dominated
gathering information is low. sources (advertising
or sales people)

The evoked set: a group of

brands from which the buyer can
choose
• go back to your past purchase– what were the
specific internal and external sources of
information that influenced your decision?

• how do you determine (and rate) the credibility of

these sources?

• what specific information influenced you?

Determinants of External Search
 Buyer Behavior
Other people often influence a consumers purchase decision.
The marketer needs to know which people are involved in the
buying decision and what role each person plays, so that
marketing strategies can also be aimed at these people.
(Kotler et al, 1994).

• Initiator: the person who first suggests or thinks of the idea of buying a
particular product or service.

• Influencer: a person whose views or advice carry weight in making the

final buying decision

• Decider: the person who ultimately makes the final buying decision or any
part of it

• Buyer: the person who makes the actual purchase

• User: the person who consumes the product or service
Note: teens are increasingly assuming more of these roles

Think about your past purchase– who was in which role?

 Wife
Relative influence of husbands & wives
Dominant
Child clothing Women’s
clothing
Final Information groceries
Pots & pans
decision search
NonRx
lamps
Toys/games
furniture
luggage
carpet
Paint wallpaper
refrigerator
vacations
Men’s leisure clothing
Joint Men’s business clothing
stereo
TV sets
camera
Financial planning

Family car Sport equipment

hardware

Lawn mower

Husband
Extent of role specialization Dominant

100 75 50 25 0
 Consumer decision making
varies with the level of involvement in the
purchasing decision

• Extensive: problem solving occurs when

buyers purchase more expensive, less
frequently purchased products in an
unfamiliar product category requiring
information search & evaluation; may
experience cognitive dissonance.

• Limited: problem solving occurs when buyers are

confronted with an unfamiliar brand in a familiar product Increase in
category Consumer
evaluation
• Routine: response behavior occurs processes
when buyers purchase low cost, low risk, brand loyal,
frequently purchased, low personal identification or
relevance, items with which they are familiar.
• quickly list 10 items you have purchased in the past
month

• reexamine how long it took you to make a decision

on each

• why did such a difference in decision occur?

 Factors affecting
Consumer involvement

• Previous experience: low level involvement

• Interest: high involvement

• Perceived risk of negative consequences: high involvement

• Situation: low to high due to risk

• Social visibility: involvement increases with product visibility

So…
• Offer extensive information on high involvement products
• In-store promotion & placement is important for low involvement products
• Linking low-involvement product to high-involvement issue can increase sales
 Types of consumer involvement
and decision making

Routine Limited Extensive

Involvement Short Low to High

moderate
Time Low Short to Long
moderate
Cost Short Low to High
moderate
Information Internal only Mostly Internal &
Search internal external
Number of one few many
alternatives
 Compensatory Decision: Using product characteristics to guide decision
• Select the best overall brand-- evaluates brand options in terms of each
relevant attribute and computes a weighted or summated score for each brand. The
consumer chooses the brand with the highest score.
• Compensatory model because a positive score on one attribute can outweigh a
negative score on another attribute.

• Conjunctive Decision Rule (cutoff criteria)-- Consumer sets a minimum

standard for each attribute and if a brand fails to pass any standard, it is dropped from
consideration.
• Reduces a large consideration set to a manageable size.
• Often used in conjunction with another decision rule.

• Disjunctive Decision Rule (rank by importance)-- sets a minimum

acceptable standard as the cutoff point for each attribute--any brand that exceeds the
cutoff point is accepted.
• Reduces large consideration set to a more manageable number of
alternatives.
• Consumer may settle for the first satisfactory brand as final choice or may
use another decision rule.
• Synthesized decision rule-- Consumers maintain overall evaluations of
brands in their long term memories. Brands on not evaluated on individual attributes
but on the highest perceived overall rating.
• think of an important purchasing decision
you have made

• what are some of the thoughts you have had

following your purchase? Any regrets?

• what has influenced those thoughts?

• how have you dealt with the discomfort?

• how has the company anticipated or dealt with

your discomfort?
 Postpurchase Behavior

?
Cognitive Dissonance

Can minimize through:

Effective Communication
Follow-up
Did I make a good decision? Guarantees
Warranties
Did I buy the right product? Underpromise &
overdeliver
Did I get a good value?
Sour Grapes–
a story of
cognitive
dissonance

…after being unable to reach the grapes the fox said, “these
grapes are probably sour, and if I had them I would not eat
them.”
--Aesop
 Cognitive Dissonance
• psychological discomfort caused by inconsistencies
among a person’s beliefs, attitudes, and actions
• varies in intensity based on importance of issue and
degree of inconsistency
• induces a “drive state” to avoid or reduce dissonance
by changing beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors and
thereby restore consistency

Applications:

Tendency to avoid information can be countered by eliciting interest,

norm of fairness, or perceive usefulness of information

Post-decision “buyer’s remorse” may be increased by importance or difficulty

or irreversibility of decision

Counter-attitudinal action, freely chosen with little incentive or

justification, leads to attitude change (e.g., new product at special low
price)
• think of an innovation in your field

• describe different groups of employees in your

organization who would respond early and
favorably, as well as later and unfavorably

• what are the differences between these groups?

• how could you use this information to market the

innovation to them more effectively?
 Adopter Categories

• Innovators (venturesome)
• Early Adopters (respect)
• Early Majority (deliberate)
• Late Majority (skeptical)
• Laggards (traditional)
• Identify an innovation in your organization or an
organization you are familiar with
• Identify the subgroups who responded to the
innovation using the Rogers & Shoemaker
stakeholder model
• What could have been done to facilitate
acceptance by each of these groups?
Decision Processing
Sleeper Effect:
• when secondary source becomes more credible than primary source
over time
• persuasion may increase over time with a weak source
• forget the source but remember the message
• not if source is learned prior to the message (will ignore or bias
processing)

Example: Attack ads during political campaigns