Chapter 1
Consumers Rule
By Michael R. Solomon
Consumer Behavior
•
What useful ways can marketers categorize
Gail as a consumer?
•
How do others influence Gail’s purchase
decisions?
•
What role did brand play in Gail’s surfing
habits?
•
What other factors influence Gail’s evaluation
of products?
What is Consumer Behavior?
• Consumer Behavior:
– The study of the processes involved when individuals or
groups select, purchase, use, or dispose of products,
services ideas, or experiences to satisfy needs and desires
• Role Theory:
– Identifies consumers as actors on the marketplace stage
• Consumer Behavior is a Process:
– Exchange: A transaction in which two or more
Consumer Behavior Involves
Many Different Actors
•
Consumer:
– A person who identifies a need or desire, makes a
purchase, and then disposes of the product
• Many people may be involved in this sequence of events.
– Purchaser / User / Influencer
• Consumers may take the form of organizations
Consumers’ Impact on
Marketing Strategy
•
Market Segmentation:
– Identifies groups of consumers who are similar to
one another in one or more ways and then devises marketing strategies that appeal to one or more groups
•
Demographics:
– Statistics that measure observable aspects of a
population
A Lesson Learned
• Nike was forced to pull this advertisement for a running shoe after
disabilities rights groups claimed the ads were offensive.
• How could Nike have done a better job of getting its message
Market Segmentation
Finely-tuned marketing segmentation strategies allow marketers to
reach only those
consumers likely to be interested in buying
Consumers’ Impact on
Marketing Strategy (cont.)
•
Relationship Marketing: Building
Bonds with Consumers
– Relationship marketing:
• The strategic perspective that stresses the long-term, human side of buyer-seller interactions
– Database marketing:
• Tracking consumers’ buying habits very closely, and then crafting products and messages tailored
Marketing’s Impact on Consumers
•
Marketing and Culture:
– Popular Culture:
• Music, movies, sports, books, celebrities, and other forms of entertainment consumed by the mass
market.
– Marketers play a significant role in our view of the
Popular Culture
Companies often create product icons to develop an
Marketing’s Impact on Consumers: The
Meaning of Consumption
•
The Meaning of Consumption:
– People often buy products not for what they do,
but for what they mean.
– Types of relationships a person may have with a
product:
• Self-concept attachment • Nostalgic attachment • Interdependence
•
What kind of statement does the Nike
Swoosh make?
Marketing’s Impact on Consumers: The
Meaning of Consumption
(cont.)
•
Consumption includes intangible
experiences, ideas and services in
addition to tangible objects.
•
Four types of Consumption Activities:
– Consuming as experience
– Consuming as integration
– Consuming as classification
Marketing’s Impact on Consumers: The
Global Consumer
•
By 2006, the majority of people on earth
will live in urban centers.
•
Sophisticated marketing strategies
contribute to a global consumer culture.
•
Even smaller companies look to expand
overseas.
•
Globalization has resulted in varied
The Global Consumer
Marketing’s Impact on Consumers:
Virtual Consumption
• The Digital Revolution is one of the most
significant influences on consumer behavior.
• Electronic marketing increases convenience
by breaking down the barriers of time and location.
• U-commerce:
– The use of ubiquitous networks that will slowly but surely become part of us (i.e., wearable computers, customized advertisements beamed to cell phones, etc.)
• Cyberspace has created a revolution in C2C
Blurred Boundaries
Marketing and Reality
•
Marketers and consumers coexist in a
complicated two-way relationship.
•
It’s increasingly difficult for consumers to
discern the boundary between the
fabricated world and reality.
•
Marketing influences both popular culture
Blurred Boundaries
Marketing managers often borrow imagery from other forms of popular culture to connect with an
audience. This line of syrups adapts the “look” of a pulp detective
Marketing Ethics and Public Policy
•
Business Ethics:
– Rules of conduct that guide actions in the
marketplace
– The standards against which most people in the
culture judge what is right and what is wrong, good or bad
•
Notions of right and wrong differ among
Needs and Wants:
Do Marketers Manipulate Consumers?
• Consumerspace
• Do marketers create artificial needs?
– Need: A basic biological motive
– Want: One way that society has taught us that need can be
satisfied
• Are advertising and marketing necessary?
– Economics of information perspective: Advertising is an
important source of consumer information.
• Do marketers promise miracles?
• This ad was created by the American
Association of
Advertising Agencies to counter charges that ads create
artificial needs.
• Do you agree with the
premise of the ad? Why or why not?
Public Policy and Consumerism
• Consumer efforts in the U.S. have contributed
to the establishment of federal agencies to oversee consumer-related activities.
– Department of Agriculture
– Federal Trade Commission
– Food and Drug Administration
– Securities and Exchange Commission – Environmental Protection Agency
• Culture Jamming:
Culture Jamming
• Adbusters Quarterly
is a Canadian
magazine devoted to
culture jamming. This mock ad skewers
Consumerism and
Consumer Research
• Kennedy’s “Declaration of Consumer Rights”
(1962)
• Green Marketing:
– When a firm chooses to protect or enhance the natural
environment as it goes about its activities
• Reducing wasteful packaging • Donations to charity
• Social Marketing:
– Using marketing techniques to encourage positive activities (e.g. literacy) and to discourage negative activities (e.g.
Consumer Related Issues
The Dark Side of
Consumer Behavior
•
Consumer Terrorism:
– An example: Susceptibility of the nation’s food
supply to bioterrorism
•
Addictive Consumption:
– Consumer addiction:
• A physiological and/or psychological dependency on
products or services
•
Compulsive Consumption:
– Repetitive shopping as an antidote to tension,
The Dark Side of
Consumer Behavior (cont.)
•
Consumed Consumers:
– People who are used or exploited, willingly or not, for commercial gain in the marketplace
•
Illegal Activities:
– Consumer Theft:
• Shrinkage: The industry term for inventory and cash losses from shoplifting and employee theft
– Anticonsumption:
Consumer Behavior
As a Field of Study
•
Consumer behavior only recently a
formal field of study
•
Interdisciplinary influences on the
study of consumer behavior
– Consumer behavior studied by researchers from diverse backgrounds
– Consumer phenomena can be studied in different
Consumer Behavior Disciplines
•
The Issue of Strategic Focus
– Should CB have a strategic focus or be studied as a pure social science?
•
The Issue of Two Perspectives on
Consumer Research
– Positivism (modernism):
• Paradigm that emphasizes the supremacy of human reason and the objective search for truth through science
– Interpretivism (postmodernism):
Taking it From Here:
The Plan of the Book
•
Section I
– Consumer Behavior
•
Section II
– Consumers as Individuals
•
Section III
– Consumers as Decision Makers
•
Section IV
– Consumers and Subcultures
