3.4 Key Terms

Agreeableness:  How easy you are to get along with. 3.1

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. 3.1

Attitudes: These are “mental positions” or emotional feelings, favourable or unfavourable evaluations, and action tendencies people have about products, services, companies, ideas, issues, or institutions. 3.1

Big Five: Personality traits that psychologists discuss frequently include openness or how open you are to new experiences, conscientiousness or how diligent you are, extraversion or how outgoing or shy you are, agreeableness or how easy you are to get along with, and neuroticism or how prone you are to negative mental states. 3.1

Chronological Age: Actual age in years. 3.1

Classical Conditioning: A learning process that occurs by associating a conditioned stimulus (CS) with an unconditioned stimulus (US) to get a particular response. 3.1

Cognitive Age: Is how old you perceive yourself to be. 3.1

Conscientiousness: how diligent you are 3.1

Culture: Refers to the shared beliefs, customs, behaviours, and attitudes that characterize a society. 3.1

Extended Problem Solving: Customers spend a lot of time comparing different aspects such as the features of the products, prices, and warranties. 3.2

Extraversion: How outgoing or shy you are. 3.1

Evaluative Criteria: Are certain characteristics that are important to you such as the price of the backpack, the size, the number of compartments, and the colour. 3.2

High-Involvement Decisions: Carry a higher risk to buyers if they fail, are complex, and/or have high price tags. 3.2

High-Involvement Decisions: Carry a higher risk to buyers if they fail, are complex, and/or have high price tags. 3.2

Ideal Self: Is how you would like to see yourself—whether it’s prettier, more popular, more eco-conscious, or more “goth,” and others’ self-concept, or how you think others see you, also influences your purchase behaviour. 3.1

Ideal Self: Is how you would like to see yourself—whether it’s prettier, more popular, more eco-conscious, or more “goth,”. 3.1

Impulse Buying: Some low-involvement purchases are made with no planning or previous thought. 3.2

Learning: Refers to the process by which consumers change their behaviour after they gain information or experience. 3.1

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. 3.2

Low-Involvement Decisions: Typically products that are relatively inexpensive and pose a low risk to the buyer if they makes a mistake by purchasing them. 3.2

limited Problem Solving: When Customers already have some information about a good or service but continue to search for a little more information. 3.2

Motivation: Is the inward drive we have to get what we need. 3.1

Neuroticism: How prone you are to negative mental states. 3.1

openness: How open you are to new experiences. 3.1

Operant or Instrumental Conditioning: When researchers are able to get a mouse to run through a maze for a piece of cheese or a dog to salivate just by ringing a bell. 3.1

Opinion Leaders: Are people with expertise in certain areas. 3.1

Perception: Is how you interpret the world around you and make sense of it in your brain. 3.1

Personality: Describes a person’s disposition, helps show why people are different, and encompasses a person’s unique traits. 3.1

Post Purchase Dissonance: Occurs when a product or service does not meet your expectations. For example high-involvement decisions can cause buyers a great deal of postpurchase dissonance (anxiety) if they are unsure about their purchases or if they had a difficult time deciding between two alternatives. 3.2

Post Purchase Dissonance: Occurs when a product or service does not meet your expectations. 3.2

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. 3.1

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. 3.1

Routine Response Behaviour: Customers make low-involvement decisions—that is, they make automatic purchase decisions based on limited information or information they have gathered in the past. 3.2

Selective Distortion: Misinterpretation of the intended message. 3.1

Selective Retention: People forget information, even if it’s quite relevant to them. 3.1 

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. 3.1

Self-Concept: Is how you see yourself—be it positive or negative. 3.1

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.^[1] 3.1

A Social Class: Is a group of people who have the same social, economic, or educational status in society. 3.1

A Subculture: Is a group of people within a culture who are different from the dominant culture but have something in common with one another such as common interests, vocations or jobs, religions, ethnic backgrounds, and geographic locations. 3.1

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