According to the National Statistics the average child drinks more that 400 litres of soft drink each year and today’s youth account for the largest group of soft drink consumers. Figure 1.0 Trends and projections in total UK population by age group will be shown in Appendix One
Children’s and teenagers pocket money or income from a part-time job has risen steadily throughout the decade. Generally ahead of the rate of inflation disposable income is a major purchasing factor on a child’s buying behaviour, when purchasing soft drinks. Figure 2.0 is shown in Appendix Two Children’s Average Weekly Income 1993 – 2001.
Coca-cola target the product Coke, at individuals and groups of all ages and demographics, with a variety of different advertising campaigns formulated by extensive testing and research.
Several studies attribute numerous health problems due to soft drinks, particularly among children. The asthma and Allergy Research Centre stated that additives in 40% of children’s drinks can cause fidgeting, rudeness and excessive behaviour. According to Highlands Spring’s A Spoonful of Sugar (Makes the Medicine go down) dentists also blamed the increase in tooth decay, which affects more that 50% of 4-18 year olds in the UK. It is said to be known that their are 12 spoonful of sugar in Coke. The same report showed that one in eight teenagers drink more that 22 cans each week.
The campaign group Milk for Schools, has called to ban all carbonated drinks in schools and start providing milk, fruit juice, this will improve children’s health and will also help alleviate child obesity.
It has become clear that carbonates are still extremely popular, but their potential to grow further is slowing down. The major brand owners are refocusing their efforts on non-carbonated business and spending time and money improving their existing image in key targets area’s particularly schools.
Consumer Behaviour can be defined as activities people undertake when Obtaining, Consuming and disposing of products and services. Consumer behaviour can also be defined as a field of study, focusing on consumer activities. The study of consumer behaviour focuses on buyer behaviour, or why do people buy? Once this question has been answered, it will be easier to develop strategies to influence consumers to buy.
As a group what we understand of consumer behaviour is there are two types of influences Consumer and Organisational Influences. Consumer influences can be anything from personal issues for an individual such as, family, life stage, culture, past experiences, income, ethnicity, personality etc. Organisational influences can range from (point of sale) which is advertising, promotional activities, word of mouth, product availability and product features etc.
My behaviour as a consumer is influenced by, income, what I like and prefers, my family and friends, culture, past experiences, advertising on T.V. Posters and Billboards. When I’m purchasing clothes, such as sportswear, it has to be Nike, Adidas and Reebok. Out of the three I do prefer Nike and Adidas, I don’t know why, probably because the way the advertise. I couldn’t say it’s because of the Quality of the clothes or footwear, because both are good quality, the features of the trainers are new and interesting. When I am buying casual clothes, it has to be a well-known shop, or name that everybody knows on the high street. It doesn’t necessarily have to be designer clothing such as Versace, because I haven’t got the income for that.
The influences that affect me as a consumer the most is
Family – I was brought up in away that for example, I eat the brand Baked Beans, but I will also eat Asda own brand, but I would not eat Tesco own brand. The reason being is because the packaging looks cheap. Therefore I could not have a tin of Tesco brand in my cupboard, because it would look at bit embarrassing in front of my peers. Some people have different opinions and would say that these brands are not different in anyway, maybe consumers just believe the adverts and what the companies would say about their product e.g. best quality, cheaper prices, new improved recipe etc.
Cultural factors have the broadest influence, because they constitute a stable set of values, perceptions, preferences and behaviours that has been learnt by the consumers throughout life. For example, in the Western culture consumption is often driven by a consumer’s need to express individuality, while on the other hand in Eastern cultures, consumers are more interested conforming to group norms. In addition to the influence of a dominant culture, consumers may be also influenced by several subcultures. Social class is also a sub cultural factor: members of any given social class tend to share similar values, interests and behaviour.
The theories and measurement of consumer behaviour forms an important part of modern economic theory. It was developed during the 19th century on the basis of the following conceptions; that the purchase of any commodity gives the consumer a positive satisfaction; the additional satisfaction derived from additional purchases of the same commodity declines as the consumers supply of that particular commodity increases; and with a given amount of money to spend, the consumer distributes the expenditure among commodities to maximise the total satisfaction or utility attainable from all those purchases.
The advantage of this approach is that it separates the main economic variables influencing consumer behaviour-that is income and prices-from all the remaining influences, such as individual preferences, social pressures, customs, and habits, but at the same time it unites them in a single analytical apparatus. It is useful to assume that the leaves of a tree attempt to maximise the amount of sunlight they receive, since the assumption implies that the leaves are denser on the sunny side of trees than the shady side, which can only be checked by experience.
Similarly to assume that consumers behave as if they were rational utility maximisers help to provide accurate predictions of a broad range of market phenomena e.g. a fall in the price of a commodity will generally lead to increased consumption of that commodity, and an increase in consumer income will leas to increased consumption of most commodities.
