1. Introduction

“Consumer behaviour is the study of processes involved when individuals or groups select, purchase, use, or dispose of products, services, ideas, or experiences to satisfy needs and desires.” (Solomon, 2002). Why? How? When? What? Where individuals and groups buy? People talk rationally but they buy emotionally. People buy a car not because of the great gas mileage or the price. They buy it because it makes them feel good. People “feel” on the basis of the words used and the pictures painted by those words. Literally, a rose by any other name probably wouldn’t sell.

   

1.1 Consumer behaviour and Marketing 

Why should managers, advertisers and other marketing professionals bother to learn about consumer behaviour? Because firms exist to satisfy consumers’ needs. The study of consumers helps firms and organizations improve their marketing strategies. Consumer response is the ultimate test of whether a marketing strategy will succeed. Thus, knowledge about customers should be incorporated into every facet of a successful marketing plan. In order to understand why customers react the way they do, the following behavioural sciences have to be examined.

  1. Perception

“Perception is the process by which we recognize what is represented by the information provided by our sense organs.” (Carlson, Buskist, Mastin, 2000)

Our perception is an approximation of reality. We see things-cars, streets, people, books, trees, televisions. Our brain attempts to make sense out of the stimuli to which we are exposed. This works well for example, when we “see” a friend three hundred feet away at his or her correct height; however our perception is sometimes “off”-for example, certain shapes of ice cream containers look like they contain more than rectangular ones with the same volume.

2.1 Environmental Influences

Stimuli are many things, emulating the senses, the mind and the environment. Stimuli from the environment would be, smelling coffee out of a coffee shop; the smell makes you want to go in for a coffee. Moreover, marketers rely heavily on visual elements in advertising, store design and packaging. We find information form our environment using all of our senses: sight, smell, sound, touch and taste.

2.2 Internal Influences

We also use internal senses to aid our perception. We use pressure, pain and temperature, which are known as the Organic senses, we use our muscle tension, limb position etc, which are the kinaesthetic senses, and we use our vestubular senses, which is our balance and head position.

Other internal ways that we perceive: -

We are selective to what we pay attention to, and what information we retain. We are more likely to pay attention to or retain information that we are interested in. We also avoid information that contradicts our beliefs. If we believe that smoking is not so bad, when shown an advert about the dangers of smoking, we are not likely to pay any attention or retain the information.

2.3 External Influences

There are many external factors which affect our perceptions and they are as follows:

Habituation: - This is what we are used to, for example, I am used to hearing music from the next door, so I do not really notice it, whereas if there was a different noise I would notice it. Position: - If a product is in a different place to usual in a shop, we’ll notice it. Novelty: - We notice something new. Repetition: - If we see the same advert repeatedly, we will eventually remember it. Some more are intensity, contrast and movement.

2.4 Absolute thresholds and Weber’s Law

If there is a sight change in the external environment we are likely to notice. We have an absolute threshold, which is the point at which we notice a change. If I am in a room and the lights are very slowly getting dimmer, I probably would not notice immediately; whereas, if I was in a room and the lights suddenly went off, I would notice immediately.

“In the nineteenth century, a psychophysicist named Ernst Weber found that the amount of change that is necessary to be noticed is systematically related to the intensity of the original stimulus. The stronger the particular stimulus, the greater a change must be for it to be noticed” (Solomon, 2002). In marketing terms, this would mean that the higher the price of a good, the greater the change in price required for consumers to take notice.

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2.5 Expectation

Our expectations are influenced by our past experiences, and our experiences of the product, e.g. certain brands and our mind set. Our expectations are also influenced by the way something is presented to us. For example, if a ring is presented to us in an expensive looking box, we will expect it to be more expensive than if it was simply wrapped in tissue paper.

2.6 Brand perception

Brands are perceived in different ways. Usually, a company wants a brand to be perceived a certain way.

Renault is launching their ...

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