#6003 - Consumer Behaviour Theories - Consumer Behaviour

THEORIES

Introduction

Role theory (the perspective that much of consumer behaviour resembles action in a play)

• Each consumer has lines, props and costumes that are necessary to a good performance. Since people act out many different roles they may modify their consumption decisions according the particular play they are in at the times. The criteria that they use to evaluate products and services in one of their roles may be quite different from those used in another role.

• Another way of thinking about consumer roles is to consider the various plays that the consumer may engage in. One classical role here is the consumer as a chooser – somebody who can choose between different alternatives and explores various criteria for making this choice. But the consumer can have many other things at stake than just making the right choice.

• We are all involved in a communication system through our consumption activities, whereby we communicate our roles and statuses. We are also sometimes searching to construct our identity through various consumption activities.

• The main purpose of our consumption might be exploration of a few of the many possibilities the market has to offer us.

• We might feel victimised by fraudulent or harmful offerings from the marketplace and we may decide to take action against such risks from the marketplace by becoming active in consumer movements. Or we may react against the authority of the producers by co-opting their products and turning them into something else as when military boots all of a sudden became normal footwear for peaceful women.

• We may decide to take action as political consumers and boycott products from companies or countries whose behaviour does not meet our ethical or environmental standards.

• Hence as consumers we can be choosers, communicators, identity seekers, pleasure seekers, victims, rebels and activists.

Market Segmentation (strategies targeting a brand only to specific groups rather than to everybody)

• Depending on its goals and resources a company may choose to focus on just one segment or several, or it may ignore differences among segments by pursuing a mass market strategy.

• In the internet based market Amazon tries to reach multiple segments at the same time while Google News UK focuses on being a search engine for information and news for consumers in the UK.

• Age

  • Consumers in different age groups have very different wants and needs and a better understanding of the ageing process of European consumers will continue to be of great importance to marketers.

  • While people who belong to the same age group may differ in other ways, they do tend to share a set of values and common cultural experiences that they carry throughout life.

  • Marie Claire, the French magazine, that is published in 25 editions and 14 languages, has noticed that its circulation and readership has fallen in past years due to primarily not keeping pace with its younger readers and their reading habits. In the past article length was typically 9-10 pages and what is now desired is 2-5. Rather than concentrating on serious articles on contemporary women’s issues, the newer and younger readership is looking for something more fun and entertaining. Finding the balance of fun and serious has been the challenge in bridging women readers of different age groups.

• Gender

  • Differentiating by sex starts at a very early age – even nappies are sold in pink trimmer or blue trimmed versions. As proof that consumers take these differences seriously market research has showed that many parents refuse to put their baby boys in pink nappies.

  • One dimension that makes segmenting by gender so interesting is that the behaviours and tastes of men and women are constantly evolving. In the past most marketers assumed that men were the primary decision makers for car purchases, but this perspective is changing with the times.

  • Sometimes, the gender segmentation can be an unintended product of an advertising strategy. Wranglers launched a European campaign featuring macho Wild West values such as rodeo riding after an earlier campaign featuring a supermodel had made their sales of jeans to women grow 400% but put men off their brand.

  • Segmenting by gender is alive and well in cyberspace. In France a group of women started the first women’s electronic magazine and web portal called Newsfam.com. These entrepreneurs are hoping to reproduce the success of American sites like IVillage.com and Women.com.

• Family structure

  • A persons family and marital status is yet another important demographic variable as this has such a big effect on consumers spending priorities.

  • Young bachelors and newlyweds are most likely to take exercise, go to wine bars and pubs, concerts and to the cinema and to consume alcohol.

  • Families with young children are big purchasers of health food and fruit juices while single parent households and those with older children buy more junk food. Home maintenance services are most likely to be used by older couples and bachelors.

• Social class and income

  • People in the same social class are approximately equal in terms of their incomes and social status. They work in roughly the same occupations and tend to have similar tastes in music, clothing etc. They also tend to socialise with each other and share ideas and values.

• Race and ethnicity

  • As our societies grow increasingly multicultural, new opportunities develop to deliver specialised products to racial and ethnic groups and to introduce other groups to these offerings.

  • Sometimes this adaptation is a matter of putting an existing product or service into a different context. For example in Great Britain there is a motorway service station and cafeteria targeted at the Muslim population. It has prayer facilities, no pork menus and serves halal meat. Further research into this area has shown that a halal service station was discussed as referenced but this does not appear to have been built.

  • Turks in Berlin do not have to rely solely on the small immigrants greengrocers and kiosks known from so many European cities as a Turkish chain has opened the first department store in Berlin, carrying Turkish and Middle Eastern goods only, catering to both the large Turkish population as well as to other immigrant groups and Germans longing for culinary holiday memories.

  • As one of the fastest growing segments in the European food market, halal foods now has its own on-going marketing research organisations and media outlets for European managers and consumers.

Product attachment theories

• The hallmark of marketing strategies at the beginning of the 21^st century is an emphasis on building relationships with customers. The nature of these relationships can vary and these bonds help us to understand some of the possible meanings products have for us. Here are some of the types of relationship a person may have with a brand;

  • Self-concept attachment – the product helps to establish the user’s identity.

  • Nostalgic attachment – the product serves as a link with past self.

  • Interdependence – the product is a part of the user’s daily routine.

  • Love – the product elicits bonds of warmth, passion, or other strong emotion.

• Brand identities are thus potentially very closely linked with consumer identities and brands can elicit deep emotional engagement from consumers. Even brands we do not like can be very important to us because we often define ourselves in opposition to what we do not like.

Cultural influences

Culture (the values, ethics, rituals, traditions, material objects and services produced or valued by members of society) (etic perspective – an approach to studying culture that stresses the commonalities across cultures and emic perspective – an approach to studying cultures that stresses the unique aspects of each culture)

• Consumer culture is becoming increasingly globalised and brands have become signs of a global ideology of cultural vale and power.

• The process of globalisation has attracted a tremendous amount of interest in the last couple of decades. But learning about the relationship between the global and the local in the practices of other cultures is more than just interesting – it is an essential task for any company that wishes to expand its horizons and become part of the international or global marketplace at the beginning of the new millennium.

• This viewpoint represents an etic perspective which focuses on commonalities across cultures. An etic approach assumes that there are common, general categories and measurements which are valid for all countries under consideration. One such etic study identified four major clusters of consumer styles when they looked at data from the US, the UK, France and Germany; price sensitive consumers, variety seekers, brand loyal consumers and information seekers.

• One the other hand many marketers choose to study and analyse a culture using an emic perspective, which attempts to explain a culture based on the cultural categories and experiences of the insiders. For example cultures vary sharply in the degree to which references to sex and nudity are permitted. One study analysed responses to advertising for controversial products including potentially offensive adverts related to sexual behaviour such as adverts for condoms, female contraceptives, underwear and STI’s. It was found that results for what was deemed controversial highly differed between the UK and New Zealand on the one hand and Turkey and Malaysia on the other. While negative reactions to sexual references differed, racist imagery was ranked among the...