Principles of Marketing

Seventeenth Edition

Chapter 5
Consumer Markets
and Buyer Behavior

Copyright © 2018, 2016, 2014 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
• The aim of marketing is to engage customers
and affect how they think and act. To affect the
what, when, and how of buyer
behavior, marketers must first understand the
whys , the answers are often locked deep
within the consumer’s mind.
Consumer Markets and Buyer Behavior

• Consumer buyer behavior : is the

buying of final consumers—individuals and
behavior
households that buy goods and for
services consumption.
personal
•Consumer markets are made up of all
the individuals and households that buy or
acquire goods and services for personal
consumption.
 Model of Consumer
Behavior
• The central question for marketers is this: How
do consumers respond to various marketing
efforts the company might use? The starting
point is the stimulus‐response model of
buyer behavior, shows that marketing and
other stimuli enter the consumer’s “black
box” and produce certain responses.
• Marketers want to understand how the stimuli are
changed into responses inside the consumer’s black
box, which has two parts:
 First, the buyer’s characteristics influence how he
or she perceives and reacts to the stimuli.
These characteristics include a variety of cultural,
social, personal, and psychological factors.
 Second, the buyer’s decision process itself affects his
or her behavior. This decision process—from need
recognition, information search, and
evaluation to the alternative purchase
postpurchase. decision and
 Consumer Markets and Buyer
Behavior
Figure 5.1 The Model of Buyer Behavior
 Characteristics Affecting Consumer
Behavior
• Consumer purchases are influenced strongly by cultural,
social, personal, and psychological characteristics,
 1‐ Cultural Factors :
• Cultural factors deep influence on consumer
behavior. Marketers need to understand the
role played by the buyer’s culture, subculture,
and social class.
Culture :‐
• Culture is the most basic cause of a person’s
wants and behavior. Human behavior is
largely learned. Growing up in a society, a child
learns basic values, perceptions, wants, and
behaviors from his or her family and other
important institutions.
• Marketers are always trying to spot cultural shifts so
as to discover new products that might be wanted.
For example, the cultural shift toward greater
concern about health and fitness has created a huge
industry for health‐and‐fitness services, exercise
equipment and clothing, organic foods, and a variety
of diets.
Subculture
• Each culture contains smaller subcultures: A group
of people with shared value systems based on
common life experiences and situations.
• Subcultures include nationalities, religions, racial
groups, and geographic regions.
• Many subcultures make up important market
segments, and marketers often design products and
marketing programs fit to their needs.
 Total market strategy :
• Integrating ethnic themes and cross cultural
perspectives within a brand’s mainstream
marketing, appealing to consumer similarities
across subcultural segments rather than
differences.
 Social Class
• Social classes are society’s relatively permanent and
ordered divisions whose members share similar values,
interests, and behaviors.
• Social class is not determined by a single factor, such as
income, but is measured as a combination of
occupation, income, education, wealth, and
variables. other
• Marketers are interested in social class because people
within a given social class tend to exhibit similar buying
behavior. Social classes show distinct product and brand
preferences in areas such as clothing, home furnishings,
travel and leisure activity, financial services, and
automobiles.
 2‐ Social
• A consumer’s Factors
behavior also is influenced by social
factors, as the consumer’s
such groups, social networks,
small family, and social roles and
status.
o Groups and Social Networks
• Many small groups influence a person’s behavior:
1‐ Groups that have a direct influence and to which a person
belongs are called membership groups.
2‐ Aspirational Groups: Groups an individual wishes to belong
to
3‐ reference groups serve as direct or indirect points of
comparison or reference in forming a person’s attitudes or
behavior. People often are influenced by reference groups to
which they do not belong.
• Marketers try to identify the reference groups of their
target markets.
• Reference groups expose a person to new behaviors
and lifestyles, influence the person’s attitudes and self‐
concept, and create pressures to conform that may
affect the person’s product and brand choices. The
importance of group influence varies across products
and brands. It tends to be strongest when the product
is visible to others whom the buyer respects.
• Word‐of‐mouth influence can have a powerful impact
on consumer buying behavior. The personal words and
recommendations of trusted friends, family, associates,
and other consumers tend to be more credible than
those coming from sources, such as
commercial advertisements or
salespeople.

• Word
The ‐of ‐mouth influence
impact of the personal words and
recommendations of trusted friends, family, associates,
and other consumers on buying behavior.
• Opinion leaders—people within a reference group, because
of special skills, knowledge, personality, or other
characteristics, exert social influence on
others. Some
experts call this group the influentials or leading adopters.
When these influentials talk, consumers listen. Marketers try
to identify opinion leaders for their products and direct
marketing efforts toward them.
• Opinion leader :
• A person within a reference group who, because of special
skills, knowledge, personality, or other characteristics, exerts
social influence on others.
• Marketers are working to harness the power of new
social networks and other “word‐of‐web” opportunities
to promote their products and build closer customer
relationships. Instead of throwing more one‐way
commercial messages at consumers, they hope to use
digital, mobile, and social media to become an
interactive part of consumers’ conversations and lives.
o Online social networks :
• Online social communities—blogs, online social
media, brand communities, and other online forums—
where people socialize or exchange information and
opinions.
 o Family :
• Family members can strongly influence buyer behavior. The
family is the most important consumer buying organization in
society.
• Marketers are interested in the roles and influence of the
husband, wife, and children on the purchase of different
products and services.
• Husband–wife involvement varies widely by product category
and by stage in the buying process.
• Children also have a strong influence on family buying
decisions. A global survey showed that children—from babies
to teens—wield particular influence over their parents’
decisions regarding how money and free time are spent ,where
to go on vacation, how often to go out to eat.
 o Roles and Status :
• A person belongs to many groups—family, clubs,
organizations, online communities. The person’s
position in each group can be defined in terms of both
role and status.
• A role consists of the activities people are expected to
perform according to the people around them. Each
role carries a status reflecting the general esteem
given to it by society.
• People usually choose products appropriate to their
roles and status.
 3‐Personal
A buyer’sFactors
decisions also are influenced by
personal characteristics such as the
buyer’s occupation, age and life stage,
economic situation, lifestyle, and
personality and self‐ concept.
 Occupation :
• A person’s occupation affects the goods and
services bought. Blue‐collar workers tend to buy
more rugged work clothes, whereas executives
buy more business suits.
• Marketers try to identify the occupational groups
that have an above‐average interest in their
products and services.
• A company can even specialize in making
products needed by a given occupational group.
 Age and Life Stage :
• People change the goods and services they buy over
their lifetimes. Tastes in food, clothes, furniture, and
recreation are often age related. Buying is also shaped
by the stage of the family life cycle : the stages through
which families might pass as they mature over time.
• Life‐stage changes usually result from demographics
and life‐changing events—marriage, having children,
purchasing a home, divorce, children going to college,
changes in personal income, moving out of the house,
and retirement.
• Marketers often define their target markets in terms of
life‐cycle stage and develop appropriate products and
marketing plans for each stage.
 Economic Situation
• A person’s economic situation will affect his or
her store and product choices. Marketers
watch trends in spending, personal income,
savings, and interest rates. In today’s more
value‐conscious times, most companies have
taken steps to create more customer value by
redesigning, repositioning, and repricing their
products and services.
 Lifestyle
• People coming from the same subculture, social
class, and occupation may have quite different lifestyles.
• Lifestyle is a person’s pattern of living as expressed in
his or her psychographics.
• It involves measuring consumers’ major
dimensions— AIO
sports, social events),
activitiesinterests
(work, (food, fashion,
hobbies, family,
shopping,
recreation), and opinions (about themselves, social
issues, business, products).
• Lifestyle captures something more than the person’s
social class or personality. It profiles a person’s whole
pattern of acting and interacting in the world.
Lifestyle :
A person’s pattern of living as expressed in
his or her activities, interests, and opinions.
• the lifestyle concept can help
marketers understand changing consumer
values and how they affect buyer
behavior. Consumers don’t just buy
products; they buy the values and lifestyles
those products represent.
 Personality and Self‐Concept
• Each person’s distinct personality influences his or
her buying behavior.
• Personality to the unique psychological
refers
characteristics that distinguish a person or group.
• Personality is usually described in terms of traits such as
self‐ dominance, sociability, autonomy,
confidence, adaptability, and
defensiveness,
Personality can be aggressiveness.
useful in analyzing consumer behavior
for certain product or brand choices.
• The idea is that brands also have personalities, and
consumers are likely to choose brands with personalities
that match their own.
 4‐ Psychological Factors

• A person’s buying choices are further

influenced by four major psychological factors:
motivation, perception, learning, and beliefs
and attitudes.
 Motivation
• A person has many needs at any given time. Some are
biological, arising from states of tension such as hunger,
thirst, or discomfort. Others are psychological, arising from
the need for recognition, esteem, or belonging. A need
becomes a motive when it is aroused to a sufficient level of
intensity.
• Motive (drive) :
• A need that is sufficiently pressing to direct the person to
seek satisfaction of the need.
 Perception :
• A motivated person is ready to act. How the person
acts is influenced by his or her own perception of the
situation. All of us learn by the flow of information
through our five senses. However, each
receives, organizes, and interprets of us this
information in an individual way.
sensoryselect,
• Perception : is the process by which people
organize, and interpret information to form a
meaningful picture of the world.
 Learning :
• When people act, they learn. Learning
describes changes in an individual’s behavior
arising from experience.
• Learning occurs through the interplay
drives, stimuli, of cues,
reinforcement. responses, and
Beliefs and Attitudes :
• Through doing and learning, people acquire beliefs
and attitudes. These, in turn, influence their buying
behavior.
• A belief : is a descriptive thought that a person
holds about something.
• Beliefs may be based on real knowledge, opinion,
or faith and may or may not carry an emotional
charge.
• Marketers are interested in the beliefs that people
formulate about specific products and services
because these beliefs make up product and brand
images that affect buying behavior. If some of
the beliefs are wrong and prevent purchase,
the marketer will want to launch a campaign to
correct them.
• People have attitudes regarding, politics, clothes,
music, food, and almost everything else.
• Attitude : A person’s consistently favorable or
unfavorable evaluations, feelings, and
tendencies toward an object or idea.
• Attitudes put people into a frame of mind of
liking or disliking things, of moving toward or
away from them.
 Consumer Markets and Buyer
Behavior
Figure 5.1 The Model of Buyer Behavior
 Buying Decision Behavior and the
Buyer Decision Process
Types of Buying Decision Behavior :
• Buying behavior differs greatly for a tube of
toothpaste, a smart phone, financial services,
and a new car.
• More complex decisions involve more
usually buying more buyer
participants
deliberation.and
• Types of consumer buying behavior based on the degree
of buyer involvement and the degree of differences
among brands:
Complex Buying Behavior :
• Consumers undertake complex buying
in situations characterized by high
behavior
involvement in a purchase consumer and
perceived differences among brands. significant
• Consumers may be involved when
product
highly is expensive, the risky,purchased
infrequently, and highly self expressive.
• The consumer has much to learn about the
product category. For example, someone buying a
new car might not know what models, attributes,
and accessories to consider or what prices to
expect.
• This buyer will pass through a learning process, first
developing beliefs about the product, then attitudes,
and then make a thoughtful purchase choice.
• Marketers of high products must
understand involvement
information
the ‐gathering and
evaluation behavior of high‐
consumers. They need to help buyersinvolvement
learn about
product‐class attributes and their relative
importance. They need to differentiate their brand’s
features, perhaps by describing and illustrating the
brand’s benefits through printed
materials promotional or in‐depth online
videos. information and
Dissonance‐Reducing Buying
Behavior: ‐reducing
• Dissonance buying occurs
behavior
when consumers are highly involved with an
expensive, infrequent, or risky purchase but see
little difference among brands.
• Dissonance‐reducing buying behavior :
Consumer buying behavior in situations
characterized by high involvement but few
perceived differences among
brands.
• For example, consumers buying carpeting may
face a high‐involvement decision because
carpeting is expensive and self‐expressive. Yet
buyers may consider most carpet brands in a
given price range to be the same. In this case,
because perceived brand differences are not
large, buyers may shop around to learn what is
available but buy relatively quickly. They may
respond primarily to a good price or purchase
convenience.
• After purchase, consumers might
experience postpurchas dissonance (after‐
the
sale discomfort) ewhen they notice certain
disadvantages of the purchased carpet brand
or hear favorable things about brands not
purchased. To counter such dissonance,
the marketer’s after‐sale communications
provide
should evidence and support help
consumers
to feel good about their brand
choices.
Habitual Buying Behavior
• habitual buying behavior occurs in situations
characterized by low consumer involvement and
few significant perceived brand differences. For
example, take table salt. Consumers have little
involvement in this product category—they
simply go to the store and reach for a brand. If
they keep reaching for the same brand, it is out of
habit rather than strong brand loyalty.
• Consumers appear to have low involvement with
most low‐cost, frequently purchased products.
 Consumer behavior does not pass through the
usual belief‐attitude‐behavior sequence.
Consumers do not search extensively for
information about the brands, evaluate brand
characteristics, and make weighty decisions
about which brands to buy. Because they are
not highly involved with the product,
consumers may not evaluate the choice, even
after purchase.
• Because buyers are not highly committed to any
brands, marketers of low‐involvement products
with few brand differences often use price and
sales promotions to promote buying , they can add
product features or enhancements to differentiate
their brands from the rest of the pack.
Variety ‐ Seeking Buying
Behavior undertake variety‐seeking
• Consumers buying
behavior in situations characterized by
consumer involvement but lowsignificant perceived
brand differences.
• Consumers often do a lot of brand switching. For
example, when buying cookies, a consumer may hold
some beliefs, choose a cookie brand without much
evaluation, and then evaluate that brand during
consumption. But the next time, the consumer might
pick another brand out of boredom or simply to try
something different. Brand switching occurs for the
sake of variety rather than because of dissatisfaction.
• The marketing strategy may differ for the market
leader and minor brands. The market leader will
try to encourage habitual buying behavior by
dominating shelf space, keeping shelves fully
stocked, and running frequent reminder
advertising. Challenger firms will encourage
variety seeking by offering lower prices, special
deals, coupons, free samples, and advertising
that presents reasons for trying something new.
 The Buyer Decision Process
• the buyer decision process consists of five stages: need
recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives,
the purchase decision, and postpurchase behavior.
• Figure 5.5 The Buyer Decision Process
• Marketers need to focus on the entire buying
process rather than on the purchase decision only.
Figure 5.5 suggests that consumers pass through
all five stages with every purchase in a considered
way. But buyers may pass quickly or slowly through
the buying decision process. And in more routine
purchases, consumers often skip or reverse some
of the stages. Much depends on the nature of the
buyer, the product, and the buying situation.
A person buying a regular brand of toothpaste
would recognize the need and go right to the
purchase decision, skipping information
search and evaluation.
1‐ Need Recognition
• The buying process starts with need recognition—the
buyer recognizes a problem or need.
• The need can be triggered by internal stimuli when
one of the person’s normal needs—for example, hunger
or thirst—rises to a level high enough to become a
drive.
• A need can also be triggered by external stimuli. For
example, an advertisement or a discussion with a friend
might get you thinking about buying a new car.
• At this stage, the marketer should research consumers
to find out what kinds of needs or problems arise.
• Need recognition : The first stage of the buyer
decision process, in which the consumer
recognizes a problem or need.
2‐ Information Search :
• An interested consumer may or may not search for more
information:
 If the consumer’s drive is strong and a satisfying product is
near at hand, he or she is likely to buy it then
 If not, the consumer may store the need in memory or
undertake an information search related to the need.
• For example, once you’ve decided you need a new car, at
the least, you will probably pay more attention to car ads,
cars owned by friends, and car conversations. Or you may
actively search online, talk with friends, and gather
information in other ways.
• information search :
• The stage of the buyer decision process in which the
consumer is motivated to search for more information.

• Consumers can obtain information from any of several

sources , These include personal sources (family, friends,
neighbors, acquaintances), commercial sources
(advertising, salespeople, dealer and manufacturer web
and mobile sites, packaging, displays), public sources
(mass media, consumer rating organizations, social media,
online searches and peer reviews), and experiential
sources (examining and using the product).
• The relative influence of these information sources varies
with the product and the buyer.
• A company must design its marketing mix to
make aware of and knowledgeable about its
brand. It should carefully identify consumers’
sources of information and the importance of
each source.
 3‐ Evaluation of
•Alternatives
consumers use information to arrive at a set of final
brand choices. Next, marketers need to know about
alternative evaluation, that is : how consumers
process information to choose among alternative
brands.
• alternative evaluation :
• The stage of the buyer decision process in which
the consumer uses information to evaluate
alternative brands in the choice set.
• Unfortunately, consumers do not use a simple and
single evaluation process in all buying situations.
Instead, several evaluation processes are at work.
• How consumers go about evaluating purchase
alternatives depends on the individual consumer and the
specific buying situation.
• In some cases, consumers use careful calculations and
logical thinking. At other times, the same consumers do
little or no evaluating. Instead, they buy on impulse and
rely on intuition. Sometimes consumers make buying
decisions on their own; sometimes they turn to friends,
online reviews, or salespeople for buying advice.
• Marketers should study buyers to find out how they
actually evaluate brand alternatives. If marketers know
what evaluative processes go on, they can take steps to
influence the buyer’s decision.
4‐ Purchase Decision :
• In theevaluation stage, the ranks
consumer brands and forms purchase
intentions.
•• The
purchase decision
buyer’s :
decision about which brand
to purchase.
• Generally, the consumer’s purchase decision will be to buy
the most preferred brand, but two factors can come
between the purchase intention and the purchase decision :
• The first factor is the attitudes of others. If someone
important to you thinks that you should buy the lowest‐
priced car, then the chances of you buying a more expensive
car are reduced.
• The second factor is unexpected situational factors. The
consumer may form a purchase intention based on factors
such as expected income, expected price, and expected
product benefits. However, unexpected events may change
the purchase intention. For example, the economy might
take a turn for the worse, a close competitor might drop its
price. Thus, preferences and even purchase intentions do
not always result in an actual purchase choice.
 5‐ Postpurchase
• Behavior :
The marketer ’s job not end when the
does
product is bought. After purchasing the product,
the consumer will either be satisfied or
dissatisfied and will engage in
behavior of interest to the postpurchase
marketer.
•• The
postpurchase behavior
stage of :
the buyer process
which
decisionconsumers take further in after
purchase, based on their satisfaction or
action
dissatisfaction.
What determines whether the buyer is
satisfied or dissatisfied with a purchase?
• The answer lies in the relationship between
the consumer’s expectations and
the product’s perceived performance. If
…………..
Why is it so important to satisfy the
customer? satisfactionis
Customer a key to
profitable relationships building with
keeping and growing consumers and
consumers—to
reaping their customer lifetime value.
Satisfied customers buy a product again,
talk favorably to others about the product,
pay less attention to competing brands
and advertising, and buy other
products from the company. Manymarketers
go beyond merely meeting the
expectations ofcustomers—they aim to delight
customers.
 A dissatisfied consumer responds differently.
Bad word of mouth often travels farther and
faster than good word of mouth. It can quickly
damage consumer attitudes about a company
and its products. But companies cannot simply
wait for dissatisfied customers to
volunteer their complaints. Most unhappy
customers never tell the company about their
problems. Therefore, a company should
measure customer satisfaction regularly. It
should set up systems that encourage customers
to complain. In this way, the company can learn
how well it is doing and how it can
improve.
By studying the overall buyer decision process,
marketers may be able to find ways to help
consumers move through it. For example :
• if consumers are not buying a new product
because do not perceive a need for
marketing
they it, launch advertising messages
might
that trigger the need and show how the product
solves customers’ problems.
• If customers know about the product but are not
buying because they hold unfavorable attitudes
toward it, marketers must find ways to change
either the product or consumer perceptions.
 The Buyer Decision Process for
New Products
• A new product : is a good, service, or idea that is
perceived by some potential customers as new.
• It may have been around for a while, but our interest is
in how consumers learn about products for the first
time and make decisions on whether to adopt them.
• The adoption process : The mental process through
which an individual passes from first hearing about an
innovation to final adoption.
• Adoption : is the decision by an individual to
become a regular user of the product.
Stages in the Adoption Process :
• Consumers go through five stages in the process
of adopting a new product:
1. Awareness : The consumer becomes aware of
the new product but lacks information about it.
2. Interest : The consumer seeks information
about the new product.
3. Evaluation : The consumer considers whether
trying the new product makes sense.
4. Trial : The consumer tries the new product on a
small scale to improve his or her estimate of its
value.
5. Adoption : The consumer decides to make full
and regular use of the new product.
• This model suggests that should
marketers
think about how to help consumers move
through these stages. example, if
company For finds a
consideringthat
its products
many but are still tentative
consumers
about buying one, it might offer salesare
prices or
special promotions.
Individual Differences in Innovativeness

• People differ greatly in their readiness to try new

products. In each product area, there are
“consumption pioneers” and early adopters. Other
individuals adopt new products much later.
• People can be classified into the
adopter categories. after a slow start, an increasing
number of people adopt the new product.
The Buyer Decision Process for New Products

Figure 5.6 Adopter Categories Based on Relative Time

of Adoption of Innovations
 The five adopter groups have differing values :
1. Innovators : are venturesome —they try new ideas at
some risk.
2. Early adopters : are guided by respect—they are opinion
leaders in their communities and adopt new ideas early
but carefully.
3. Early mainstream: adopters are deliberate —although they
rarely are leaders, they adopt new ideas before the average
person.
4. Late mainstream : adopters are skeptical —they adopt an
innovation only after a majority of people have tried it.
5. lagging adopters : are tradition bound —they
are suspicious of changes and adopt the innovation only
when it has become something of a tradition itself.
• This adopter classification suggests that
an
innovating firm should research the
characteristics of innovators and early
adopters in their product categories and
direct initial marketing efforts toward them.