Consumer Behaviour Shopping Buying And Evaluating Notes

Shopping Buying and Evaluating

Introduction

• The store environment exerts a major influence; shopping is like a stage performance with the customer involved either as a member of the audience or as an active participant. The quality of the performance is affected by the other cast members as well as by the setting of the play and props.

• In addition the consumer activity per se occurs after a product has been purchased and brought home. After using a product the consumer must decide whether or not they are satisfied with it. The satisfaction process is especially important to marketers who realise that the key to success is not selling a product once but rather forging a relationship with the consumer so that they will continue to buy in the future.

Antecedent States

• A person’s mood or physiological condition at the time of purchase can have a major impact on what is bought and can also affect how products are evaluated.

• One reason for this is that behaviour is directed towards certain goal states.

• The person’s particular social identity or the role that is being played at a given time will be influential.

Situational Effects; Mood and Consumption Situations

• A consumer’s mood will have an impact on purchase decisions. Two dimensions determine whether a shopper will react positively or negatively to a store environment; pleasure and arousal. A person can enjoy or not enjoy a situation and they can feel stimulated or not.

• Different combinations of pleasure and arousal can result in a variety of emotional states.

• An arousing situation can be either distressing or exciting depending on whether the context is positive or negative.

• A specific mood is some combination of pleasure and arousal. In general, a mood state biases judgements of products and services in that direction. Simply consumers like things much better when they are in a good mood.

• Moods can be affected by store design, the weather of other factors specific to the consumer. In addition music and television programming can affect mood; this has important consequences for commercials. When consumers hear happy music or watch happy programmes they have more positive reactions to the commercials and products especially when marketing appeals are aimed at arousing emotional reactions.

• A consumption situation is defined by factors over and above the characteristics of the person and of the product. Situational effects can be behavioural or perceptual.

• Common sense tells us that people tailor their purchases to specific occasions or that the way we feel at a specific time affects what we feel like buying or doing.

• One reason for this variability is that the role a person is plays at any time is partly determined by their situational self-image.

Situational Segmentation

• By systematically identifying important usage situations, market segmentation strategies can be developed to position products that will meet the specific needs arising from these situations.

• Situations can be used to fine tune a segmentation strategy. By mapping context against users a matrix can be constructed that identifies specific product features that should be emphasised for each situation.

• Our brand loyalty may also be dependent on the situation.

Social and Physical Surroundings

• A consumer’s physical and social environment can make a big difference in affecting their motives for product purchase and also product evaluation.

• Important cues include the number and type of other consumers as well as dimensions of the physical environment.

• Décor, smells and even temperature can significantly influence consumption.

• In additional to physical cues, many of a consumers purchase decisions are significantly shaped affected by the groups or social settings in which these occur.

• In some cases the presence or absence of co consumers can be a determinant attribute and function as a product attribute. At other times the presence of others can have a positive value.

• The presence of large numbers of people in a consumer environment increases arousal levels so a consumer’s subjective experience of a setting tends to be more intense.

• While the experience of other people creates a state of arousal, the consumer’s actual experience depends on their interpretation of and reaction to this arousal. Crowing may result in avoidance, aggressiveness, opportunism or self-blame.

• It is important therefore to distinguish between density and crowing.

• Density refers to the actual number of people occupying a space while the psychological state of crowing exists only if a negative affective state occurs as a result of this density.

• In addition the type of consumers who patronise a store or service cab serve as a store attribute and the type of consumers who use a product can influence evaluations. We may infer something about a store by examining its customers.

Temporal Factors

• Time is one of consumers most precious and limiting resources. Recent research shows that there are significant time money differences when consumers use heuristics for decision making which suggests that although time and money seem to be economically equivalent they are in fact psychologically different.

• Our perspectives on time can affect many stages if decision making and consumption such as needs that are stimulated the amount of information search we undertake and so on.

• Common sense tells us that more careful information search and deliberation occurs when we have the luxury of taking our time.

Economic Time

• Time is an economic variable; it is a resource that must be divided among activities. Consumers try to maximise satisfaction by allocating time to the appropriate combination of tasks.

• An individual’s priorities determine their time style. Time style incorporates dimensions like economic time, past orientation, future orientation, time submissiveness and time anxiety.

• Research identified four dimensions of time;

  • Social – refers to individuals categorisation of time as either time for me or time...

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