2.3 Social Factors
Humans are inherently social animals, and individuals greatly influence each other. Therefore, consumer behaviour is also shaped by social factors as reference groups, family, social roles and statuses.
2.3.1 Reference Group
Reference groups create pressure for conformity that may affect actual products and brand choice and come in several forms:
The aspirational reference group or those others against whom one would like to compare oneself. For example, Police eyewear uses the famous footballer, David Beckham as spokesperson, who what many people would ideally like to be (Fig. 3).
Associative reference groups include people who realistically representing the individuals’ current equals or near-equals, e.g., coworkers, neighbours (Fig 4).
Finally, the dissociative reference group includes people that the individual would not like to be like. For example, the government uses advertisements showing gross pictures of people who died in drink-driving accidents to discourage others from drink-driving.
Reference groups may shape a person’s attitude towards purchases, especially for large-items (sports car, house etc). This is especially so as the purchase would show others what type of person he is, and due to the risk involved (money spent), the consumer tends to ask for opinion to prevent a ‘wrong’ or ‘regretful’ purchase.
2.3.2 Family
Family members can hold strong influences on a consumer and/or can be actually involved in the purchase. Hence, marketers need to know the roles and relative influence of the various members of the family (these roles vary in different countries and social class). In China and Thailand, men are the ones who make large purchases but women and child make most decisions regarding household purchases (Fig 5). The differing roles of family members complicate things for the marketer. A toy can be targeted at the mother although the child would be the user and influencer for the products. This is because the mother is the gatekeeper and buyer in most cases, hence her decision is final.
2.3.3 Social Role & Status
A person participates in many groups (family, clubs, etc) and the person’s position in each group can be defined in terms of role and status (Kotler, 2003). A role carries a status and consists the activities the person is expected to perform. Hence, people often choose products that communicate their role and status in society.
3. Personal Factors
A buyer’s decisions are also influenced by personal characteristics.
3.1 Age and Stages in Life Cycle
Goods consumed differ as the consumer goes through different stages of life, milk powder when baby, packet milk when young adult and special calcium-enriched milk during old age etc. Their tastes also differ when they are single and married. Marketers need to develop appropriate products and marketing plans for each cycle.
3.2 Occupation and Economic Situation
A persons’ occupation will affect consumption patterns. Blue collar workers may eat packed lunches whereas a company director would eat at a posh restaurant. The marketing strategy could be tailored especially to the specific occupation group for best results. Product choice however, is greatly influenced by a person’s economic situation. Having more expendable income equates to greater purchasing ability. Hence a marketer who knows the economy well would take steps to reposition, reprice and redesign the products if there is a recession. This is seen in a dip in local hotel rates as a result of the worsening economy.
3.3 Personality and Self-Concept
Personality refers to the set of distinguishing human psychological traits that lead to relatively consistent and enduring responses to environment stimuli (Armstrong, Kotler, 2003). Personality is often described as traits, such as kind, friendly, competent etc. and is a useful variable in analyzing consumer preference for certain products or brand choice. Human traits can also be added into the products and one example is Harley Davidson, which uses traits like ‘ruggedness’ and ‘tough’. Thus, people who want to associate themselves with the same trait would be likely to buy the products.
Another idea inked to personality is the idea of self-concept. The consumer faces several possible selves. The actual self reflects how the individual actually is and ideal self reflects a self that a person would like to have, but does not in fact have. For example, a couch potato may want to be a World famous athlete, but may have no actual athletic ability. Individuals will often seek to augment and enhance their self concepts, and it may be possible to market products that help achieve this goal. For example, someone who knows nothing about golf may want to own a set of golf kit to boost an image as a golf enthusiast. This fundamental of one’s possession contribute and reflecting one’s identity is very important as self-esteem advertising could also be used to change product’s attributes by stimulating positive feelings about the self (Fig. 6). (Solomon, 2002)
3.4 Lifestyle & Situational Influences
Self-concept often translates into a person’s lifestyle, or the way that he or she lives his or her life. For example, a person may be very materialistic; preferring to wear flashy clothes and drive expensive cars, or prefer instead a simpler life with fewer visible status symbols. Lifestyles are classified into groups and when used correctly, can help marketer strike a chord with the consumer.
Specific circumstances often influence consumer behavior. For example, consumers in a rush are likely to take the most convenient product available. Consumers whose attention is demanded elsewhere are likely to disregard commercial messages. Consumers shopping for a special occasion (e.g., a wedding) may buy different products.
4. Psychological Factors
Buying behaviour is further influenced by 4 major psychological factors.
4.1 Motivation
A motive is a need that is sufficiently pressing to drive the person to act. (Kotler, 2003) Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a popular approach in understanding consumer motivation as it explains why people are driven by particular needs at a particular time. A person needs to satisfy his basic objectives before progressing to the next level, e.g. a hungry person would seek for food (physiological needs) before going for a movie (social needs).
The present of a goal (upgrading oneself) or objective (free gifts given with the product) would also serve as a motive. Buyers are motivated by symbolic as well as functional drives in their purchase decisions, leading to the use of sexual appeals in advertisement as in Fig. 7.
4.2 Perception
Perception is the process by which people select, organize, and interpret information to form meaningful picture of the world. (Armstrong, Kotler, 2000) Our perception is an approximation of reality and differs individually. A racing car may be perceived as flashy by young adults whereas perceived as dangerous by the elderly.
To achieve a successful marketing strategy, marketers have to ensure that their products are retained in the minds of the consumers. Despite being exposed to over 1,500 random advertisements a day, we only pay attention to products that interest us in a particular time (selective attention). The advertisement would be interpreted (selective comprehension) and finally retained (selective retention) in the minds of the consumer. Interpretation involves making sense of the stimulus. For example, when we see a golden arch, we may categorize it as MacDonald. Hence, the marketer could use repetitions or mnemonics e.g. jingles, to retain the product in consumers’ minds.
4.3 Learning
Learning involves "a change in the content or organization of long term memory and behavior." It can arise from past experiences or through the interplay of drives, stimuli, cues, responses and reinforcement.
In learning, classical conditioning and operant conditioning are two main schools of study. Many modern day advertisers use classical conditioning. Beautiful women (unconditioned stimulus) cause emotional arousal in males (unconditioned response), thus beautiful women are portrayed repetitively with cars (conditioned stimulus) and cause arousal. Finally, the car causes arousal (conditioned response).
Operant conditioning is also used in modern days. Recently, National Kidney Foundation (Singapore) gave discount coupons as a reward for donating to charity (positive reinforcement). Negative reinforcement can also be used although marketers usually have relatively little power to use negative reinforcement (e.g. voiding of warranty).
It is also possible to learn from observing the consequences of others. For example, viewers may empathize with characters in advertisements that experience (usually positive) results from using a product. The Head ‘n’ Shoulders advertisement, where a poor man is rejected by women until he successfully rid his dandruff problem, is a good example of vicarious learning. And if a consumer uses the product and finds the experience rewarding, the response will be reinforced, increasing the possibility of further purchases.
A "scripts," or procedures we remember for doing things, involve a series of steps for doing various things. In general, the marketing strategy would have the brand name incorporated into scripts (e.g., to have the consumer reflexively ask the counter for Ziplock bag rather than an unspecified brand of container bags).
Through learning theory, marketers can understand how to build up demand for products through associating them with strong drives, motivating cues and providing positive reinforcement.
4.4 Beliefs and Attitude
Consumer attitudes are a composite of a consumer’s beliefs and/or feelings about, and behavioral intentions toward some object within the context of marketing, usually a brand or retail store. These components are viewed together since they are highly interdependent and together represent forces that influence how the consumer will react to the object. (Kotler, 2003)
A consumer may hold both positive (e.g., hot chocolate tastes good) and negative (e.g., hot chocolate stains papers) beliefs toward an object. A consumer’s beliefs about a product or brand and their country of productions influence their buying behaviour (e.g., products made in Indonesia are believed to be of lower quality than products made in America). These beliefs could be based on knowledge, opinion, or an act of faith and often carry an emotional charge (Coke-Cola’s blunder in phrasing out the Old Coke almost created a riot in the 60’s among the brand loyal).
Attitude is as important and is defined as a person’s enduring favourable or unfavourable evaluations, emotional feelings, and actions tendencies towards some object or idea. (Armstrong, Kotler, 2000) People have attitudes towards almost everything and this leads people to believe in a fairly consistent way towards similar objects. Marketers create favourable attitudes towards new products, reinforce existing favourable attitudes or change negative attitudes. This can be done through reminding customers about the products’ attributes, changing relative importance of the attributes, adding new attributes or even changing consumer beliefs of the attributes (comparison advertisement Fig 8).
5. Impact on Marketing Strategy Planning
A good knowledge of consumer behaviour can help marketers improve their marketing campaigns and strategies to effectively reach the consumer. For example, by understanding that people are more receptive to food advertising when hungry, snack advertisements are best scheduled in the late afternoons. Often, a combination of strategy is used to target the consumer’s black box more effectively as seen in Fig 1 and 3.
6. Mini Case Study – Burger King
Burger King (BK) have successfully craved a niche market in the fast-food industry by offering bigger (compared to MacDonald’s’) flame-broiled (BK recognize a cultural shift, i.e health consciousness) burger. Having marketed successfully as up-class fast-food restaurant targeting mostly teenagers and young adults, making clever use of pricing, restaurant outlay (hip and trendy) and logo-design (striking orange and red). BK appeals to consumer with ‘trendy’ traits and those who want to be perceive as trendy. Being sensitive to different culture, BK makes “Halah” burgers in Muslim dominated places (e.g. Malaysia) and have No-Beef menu in Hindu Places (India). BK emphasise on their long history (49 years) and uses various methods of advertising to reach out to different consumers (Fig 9, 10 & 11). These successes are made possible due to having good knowledge of consumer behaviour.
7. Conclusion
The study of consumers greatly helps firms and organizations improve their marketing strategies, through understanding consumers’ thought reasoning and selection process and how the environment affects the consumers. The marketer can then apply various methods to reach out to consumers, enticing them to make purchases.
(2557 words)
7. Bibliography
Dibb, Sally, Simkin Lyndon, William M. Pride and O.C. Ferrell (1994) “Marketing: Concepts and Strategies”, 2nd Edition, Houghton Mifflin, London
Gary Armstrong, Philip Kotler (2000) “Marketing-An Introduction”, 5th Edition, Prentice Hall International
George E. Belch, Micheal A. Belch (1998) “Advertising and Promotion”, 4th Edition, McGraw
Loudon, David L. and Della Bitta, Albert J. (1993) "Consumer Behavior: Concepts and Applications" 4th edition, McGraw
Michael R. Solomon (2002) “Consumer Behaviour, International Edition”, 5th Edition, Prentice Hall International
Philip Kotler (2003), “Marketing Management, International Edition”, 11th Edition, Prentice Hall International
William M.Pride, O.C Ferrell (2000) “Marketing 2000e”, 1st Edition, Houghton Mifflin.
