Chapter 1

Consumers Rule
By Michael R. Solomon

Consumer Behavior
Buying, Having, and Being
Opening Vignette: Gail

 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 organizations give and receive
something of value
Some Issues That Arise During
Stages in the Consumption Process

Figure 1.1
BMW of North America, LLC.
The company is highly sensitive to such key trends
as:
● A desire for environmentally friendly products
● Increasingly congested roadways and the
movement by some cities such as London to
impose fees on vehicles in central areas
● New business models that encourage consumers
to rent products only while they need them rather
than buying them
outright

BMW anticipated changes in consumer behavior as

it develops electric car models like the i8 that satisfy
dual desires for style and environmental
responsibility.
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 or groups.
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
 Ex.: Age, Gender, Family Structure, Social Class and Income, Race
and Ethnicity, Lifestyle, and Geography
 McDonald’s
McDonald’s sponsor closed-circuit sports programming it pipes into
Hispanic bars and for ads in Upscale, a custom-published magazine
distributed to barber shops that cater to African American consumers.
McDonald’s advertises on Foot Locker’s in-store video network to reach young
men, and it zeroes in on mothers through ads in women’s magazines such as
O: The Oprah Magazine and Web sites such as iVillage.com. McDonald’s
even sponsored one of the first global alternate reality games (ARGs), called
The Lost Ring.
McDonald’s strategically placed 27 game artifacts in the United States,
Germany, Australia, China, France, Spain, Switzerland, Japan, Canada,
Argentina, England, Singapore, Korea, South Africa, Sweden, Italy, the
Netherlands, and Mexico. the chain benefited from a substantial boost in
favorability ratings when people learned who was behind the global game
Market Segmentation
Consumers from the same social class tend to gravitate
toward similar artistic or recreational outlets.
 Market Segmentation

In the fast-food industry, the heavy user (no pun intended) accounts
for only one of five customers but for about 60 percent of all visits to fast-
food restaurants. Taco Bell developed the Chalupa, a deep-fried and
higher-calorie version of its Gordita stuffed taco, to appeal to its heavy
users. The Checkers burger chain describes its core customer as a single
male under age 30 who has a working-class job, loves loud music,
doesn’t read much, and hangs out with friends. To attract the same
customer, Hardee’s unveiled its Monster Thickburger that weighs in at
1,418 calories—comedian Jay Leno joked that the burger comes in a
cardboard box shaped like a coffin. Finally, Burger King aims a lot of its
promotions (including its weird but popular King character) to its “Super
Fans”—mostly young men who pop into fast-food restaurants 16 times a
month on average.
Market Segmentation
This Italian ad for a yacht company appeals to people who
have money or who dream they will someday have enough
to buy a yacht.
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
precisely to people’s wants and needs based on this
information
 Database marketing:
Big Data

We all generate massive amounts of information that holds

tremendous value for marketers. The data that comes from many
sources—sensors that collect climate information, the comments you
and your friends make to your favorite social media sites, the credit card
transactions we authorize, and even the GPS signals in our smartphones
that let organizations know where most of us are pretty much anytime
day or night. This incredible amount of information has created a new
field that causes tremendous excitement among marketing analysts
 Database marketing:
Big Data
In a single day, consumers create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data (or 2.5
exabytes). New data pops up so quickly that this number doubles about
every 40 months—and 90 percent of the data in the world today was
created in the last 2 years alone. In addition to the huge volume of
information marketers now have to play with, its velocity (speed) also
enables companies to make decisions in real time that used to take
months or years.
For example, when the company analyzed how shoppers’ buying
patterns react when forecasters predict a major hurricane, it discovered
that people do a lot more than simply stock up on flashlights. Sales of
strawberry Pop-Tarts increase by about 700 percent, and the top-selling
product of all is . . . beer. Based on these insights, Walmart loads its trucks
with toaster pastries and six-packs to stock local stores when a big storm
approaches.
 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 world
and how we live in it.
 Popular Culture

We are surrounded by elements of popular culture—the

good, the bad, and the ugly. This ad for the Museum of Bad Art
reminds us of that.
 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—The product helps to establish the
user’s identity.
 Nostalgic attachment—The product serves as a link with a
past self.
 Interdependence—The product is a part of the user’s daily
routine.
 Love Love—The product elicits emotional bonds of warmth,
passion, or other strong emotion.
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 perceptions of
the United States (both positive and negative).
The Global Consumer
American products like Levi jeans are in
demand around the world.
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 (consumer-to-consumer) activity.
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 and
consumer perceptions of reality.
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
novel.
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 people, organizations,
and cultures.
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?
 Advertisers simply don’t know enough to manipulate
people.
Discussion Question

 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:
A strategy to disrupt efforts by the corporate world
to dominate our cultural landscape
The Consumer Product Safety Commission
Culture Jamming

 Adbusters Quarterly
is a Canadian
magazine devoted
to culture jamming.
This mock ad
skewers Benetton.
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. drunk driving)
Consumer Related Issues

 UNICEF sponsored this advertising campaign against child

labor. The field of consumer behavior plays a role in
addressing important consumer issues such as child
exploitation.
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
ways and on different levels
Journal of Consumer Research
The Pyramid of Consumer
Behavior

Figure 1.2
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):
 Paradigm that emphasizes the importance of symbolic, subjective
experience and meaning is in the mind of the person
Positivist vs. Interpretivist Approaches to CB
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
 Section V – Consumers and Culture
 Discussion Session

What aspects of consumer behavior would

interest a financial planner? A university
administrator? A graphic arts designer? A
social worker in a government agency? A
nursing instructor?