7.6 Chapter Summary
Review Questions
- Explain what physical factors, social situations, time factors, and/or moods have affected your buying behaviour for different products.
- Explain how someone’s personality differs from his or her self-concept. How does the person’s ideal self-concept come into play in a consumer behaviour context?
- Describe how buying patterns and purchase decisions may vary by age, gender, and stage of life.
- Why are companies interested in consumers’ cognitive ages and lifestyle factors?
- How does the process of perception work, and how can companies use it to their advantage in their marketing?
- How does Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and learning affect how companies market to consumers?
- Why do people’s cultures and subcultures affect what they buy?
- How do subcultures differ from cultures? Can you belong to more than one culture or subculture?
- How are companies trying to reach opinion leaders?
- How do low-involvement decisions differ from high-involvement decisions in terms of relevance, price, frequency, and the risks their buyers face? Name some products in each category that you’ve recently purchased.
- What stages do people go through in the buying process for high-involvement decisions? How do the stages vary for low-involvement decisions?
- What is postpurchase dissonance, and what can companies do to reduce it?
Maybe you already thought of examples from your own decision-making while reading this chapter. Use the below exercise to think through a decision in detail.
Understanding consumer behaviour is essential in marketing. Companies invest in studying online patterns, analyzing brain scans, and monitoring physical movements. Small businesses also benefit from studying customer behaviour through methods like zip code analysis and coupon code tracking.
Businesses, including startups, leverage blogs and social networking sites to connect with customers, share information, and gather feedback at a low cost. This engagement fosters a sense of connection and customer loyalty.
The chapter concludes by highlighting the multifaceted factors influencing consumer behaviour, including environmental factors and marketing actions. Upcoming sections will delve into specific factors and explore low-involvement versus high-involvement buying decisions and the consumer’s decision-making process.
Key Terms
Agreeableness: How easy you are to get along with.
Atmospherics: Physical factors that firms can control, such as the layout of a store, music played at stores, the lighting, temperature, and even the smells you experience.
Conscientiousness: How diligent you are.
Consumer behaviour: It considers the many reasons – personal, situational, psychological, and social – why people shop for products, buy and use them, sometimes become loyal customers, and then dispose of them.
Dissociative groups: Groups where a consumer does not want to be associated.
Extended Problem Solving: Customers spend a lot of time comparing different aspects, such as the features of the products, prices, and warranties.
Extraversion: How outgoing or shy you are.
High-Involvement Decisions: Carry a higher risk to buyers if they fail, are complex, and/or have high price tags.
Ideal Self: Is how you would like to see yourself—whether it’s prettier, more popular, more eco-conscious, or more “goth,”.
Impulse Buying: Some low-involvement purchases are made with no planning or previous thought.
Level of Involvement: It reflects how personally important or interested you are in consuming a product and how much information you need to make a decision
Low-Involvement Decisions: Typically, products that are relatively inexpensive and pose a low risk to the buyer if they make a mistake by purchasing them.
Motivation: Is the inward drive we have to get what we need.
Neuroticism: How prone you are to negative mental states.
Openness: How open you are to new experiences.
Opinion Leaders: Are people with expertise in certain areas.
Perception: Is how you interpret the world around you and make sense of it in your brain.
Personality: Describes a person’s disposition, helps show why people are different and encompasses a person’s unique traits.
Planned obsolescence: A deliberate effort by companies to make their products obsolete or unusable after a period of time.
Postpurchase dissonance: Occurs when a product or service does not meet your expectations. Consumers are more likely to experience dissonance with products that are relatively expensive and that are purchased infrequently.
Psychographics: Combines the lifestyle traits of consumers and their personality styles with an analysis of their attitudes, activities, and values to determine groups of consumers with similar characteristics.
Reference Groups: Are groups (social groups, work groups, family, or close friends) a consumer identifies with and may want to join. They influence consumers’ attitudes and behaviour.
Selective Attention: Is the process of filtering out information based on how relevant it is to you. It’s been described as a “suit of armour” that helps you filter out information you don’t need.
Selective Distortion: Misinterpretation of the intended message.
Selective Retention: People forget information, even if it’s quite relevant to them.
Self-Concept: Is how you see yourself—be it positive or negative.
Shock Advertising: Using surprising stimuli or shock advertising. One study found that shocking content increased attention, benefited memory, and positively influenced behaviour among a group of university students (Dahl et al., 2003).
Social Class: Is a group of people who have the same social, economic, or educational status in society.
Subliminal Advertising: Is the opposite of shock advertising and involves exposing consumers to marketing stimuli such as photos, ads, and messages by stealthily embedding them in movies, ads, and other media.
“3.1 Factors That Influence Consumers’ Buying Behavior” & “3.2 Low-Involvement Versus High-Involvement Buying Decisions and the Consumer’s Decision-Making Process” from Principles of Marketing – H5P Edition by [Author removed at the request of original publisher] is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.—modifications: review questions used.
“3.4 Key Terms” from Principles of Marketing by [Author removed at the request of original publisher] is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
