Consumer behavior is comprised of the processes and factors consumers use to make purchase decisions. To most people, consumer behavior just “is.” Many consumers only vaguely recognize the factors that influence their actions or the process they go through in making choices. But to marketers, understanding consumer behavior is critical to developing a successful marketing strategy.
The first step in the consumer buying process is problem or need recognition. Before consumers consider making purchases, a wide variety of social circumstances and psychological factors influence their problem or need recognition. This can be as simple as deciding one is thirsty or as complex as deciding to get married. In both situations, consumers are influenced by both personal and interpersonal forces in their decisions.
Personal or psychological factors—including needs, perceptions, attitudes, learning, and self-concept—can all influence people’s actions. In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, there are basic physiological needs, such as thirst. People typically address their physiological needs before allocating time and money to meet higher-order needs. Perceptions are the process of receiving, organizing, and assigning meaning to stimuli detected by the five senses. Humans constantly receive stimuli from their environment. Some of the stimuli, like the sound of a bird, are natural, but others, like the roar of a jet, are man-made. Many man-made stimuli are marketing messages, and the typical American consumer is exposed to thousands of such messages daily—for example, commercials, signs, labels, and trademarks.
Marketers understand that one aspect of consumer behavior is reaction to stimuli. Consumers tend to pay selective attention to stimuli, screening out unpleasant or unfamiliar sensory information. As part of the perceptual process, people also distort meanings from stimuli, changing their interpretation to be consistent with their beliefs, in addition to selectively retaining sensory images. Relatively new studies indicate that significant events cause chemical changes in human brains, explaining why emotional situations can be recalled vividly many years later. Part of the task for marketers is to understand how people interpret stimuli. Understanding consumers’ perceptions can help in designing products, packaging, and promotions, especially when considering new target markets.
Learning takes place through changes in behavior resulting from experience and observation. A thirsty person will observe signs of water keenly. Attitudes are consumers’ learned predispositions. Dentists, for example, know most of their customers come into their offices with fear and trepidation developed from past painful learning experiences.
A last psychological factor influencing consumer behavior is people’s self-concept, or personal “picture.” This can include their “real” self, self-image, and ideal self. Numerous popular psychology books have been written about the differences in men’s versus women’s self-image, usually suggesting that men see themselves as better and women as worse than their real selves. Consumer behavior is often influenced by self-image and by ideal self-image— that is, how we would like to be seen. Even a simple need like thirst can be influenced by self-concept. In recent years, marketers have made millions of dollars selling bottled water. Chemical studies usually show bottled water to be of no better quality than tap water, but blue bottles and French names appeal to consumers’ self-image.
As stated earlier, consumer behavior is influenced by both psychological and social forces. The power of others to influence behavior is well known to marketers. Social influences are typically categorized into four groups: culture, social class, reference groups, and families.
Culture refers to values, norms, tastes, and preferences passed from one generation to the next. Many people, for instance, buy the same goods and services that their parents purchased. Marketers also recognize many distinct subcultures in the United States, which are often the source of new ideas and trends adopted into the mainstream culture. The fastest-growing subculture in the United States is the Hispanic population. Both the Republican and Democratic parties recognize the importance of Hispanic voters and develop specific messages to appeal to them. (American marketers are also beginning to distinguish subcultures within the Hispanic population.)
Social class is a powerful influence on consumer behavior. Social class includes peoples’ education, occupations, and habitats. The phrase “keeping up with the Joneses” refers to the common practice of people striving to display a lifestyle equal to that of their neighbors. Realtors often quietly relate stories of people selling empty houses, which had originally been purchased in order to live in the “right” neighborhood, even if it cost more than the family could afford.
Similar to the factor of social class is that of reference groups—that is, groups with which consumers identify. The behavior of a reference group often influences individual consumer behavior, as in the purchase of conspicuous items such as automobiles. Few Americans recognize that U.S. products and trends are closely watched and influence consumer trends in other countries. American music, movies, and dress are copied by teenagers around the world, and the use of celebrity spokespeople in marketing campaigns is often aimed at people who aspire to be like those celebrities.
Lastly, families influence individual consumer behavior. In the United States changing family demographics— including more single-parent households, children returning to the “nest” households, and two-adult but unrelated households—influence purchasing decisions. Home builders have constructed more two-bedroom, two-bath dwellings for the two unrelated adults market. Numerous time-saving products have been created for the singleparent market, and parents are still adjusting to children returning home after college. One source stated that 35 percent of college graduates move home.
Further reading
Boone, Louis E., and David Kurtz. Contemporary Marketing. 10th ed. Fort Worth: Dryden Press, 2001; Etzel, Michael J., Bruce J. Walker, and William J. Staunton. Marketing, 12th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2001.