INTERPERSONAL DETERMINANTS

OF
CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

• Consumer behavior Process through which

buyers make decisions.
• Marketers borrow extensively from psychology and sociology to better
understand consumer behavior.
• Consumer behavior is usually understood as a function of interpersonal
influences and personal factors.
INTERPERSONAL DETERMINANTS OF
CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

CULTURAL INFLUENCES
• Culture Values, beliefs, preferences, and tastes handed down from one generation
to the next.
• Culture is a broad environmental determinant of behavior.
International Perspective on Cultural Influences
• Successful strategies in one country may not extend to others.
• Example: McDonald’s discontinued plan to use the same packaging in
all 30,000 of its restaurants worldwide.
Subcultures
• Groups within a culture that have their own modes of behavior.
• In U.S. subcultures can differ by ethnicity, nationality, age, rural versus urban
location, religion, and geographic distribution.
• Population mix in U.S. is changing as the Hispanic, African American, and Asian
populations grow.
SOCIAL INFLUENCES
• Everyone belongs to multiple social groups: family, neighborhood, clubs,
and sports teams.
• Group membership influences buying decisions.
• Groups establish norms of behavior—values, attitudes, and behaviors that a
group deems appropriate for its members.
• Differences in status and roles within groups also influence behavior.
• Some Americans make purchases to enhance their status within social
groups, and others work to reduce their consumption dramatically.

The Asch Phenomenon

• Theory of psychologist S. E. Asch that individuals conform to majority
rule, even if that majority rule goes against their beliefs.
Reference Groups
• Reference groups People or institutions whose opinions are valued and to
whom a person looks for guidance in his or her own behavior, values, and
conduct, such as family, friends, or celebrities.
• Influence of reference group depends on two conditions:
• Purchased product must be seen and identifiable.
• Purchased product must be conspicuous, something not everybody
owns.

Social Classes
• Six classes: upper-upper, lower-upper, upper-middle, lower-middle,
working class, lower class.
• Income not always a primary factor.
• Individuals’ buying habits sometimes reflect the class to which they aspire.
Opinion Leaders
• Reference groups Trend- setters who
purchase new products before others in a
group and then influence others in their
purchases.
• Individuals tend to act as opinion leaders
for specific goods or services.
• Information sometimes flows from mass
media to opinion leaders to consumers;
sometimes flows directly to consumers.
FAMILY INFLUENCES
• Like other influences, families have norms of expected behavior, status
relationships, and roles.
• Family structure changing.
1900 Today
Percent of households headed by married couple 80 53
Percent of households that include extended family 50 10
Percnet of married women who work outside the home
6 60
FAMILY INFLUENCES
• Four roles of spouses:
• Autonomic role—partners independently make an equal number of
decisions.
• Husband-dominant role—husband usually makes certain buying
decisions, such as purchasing life insurance.
• Wife-dominant role—wife makes buying decisions, such as buying
children’s clothing.
• Syncratic role—buying decision made jointly.
• Increasing occurrence of two-income households increases likelihood of
spouses making joint buying decisions.
PERSONAL DETERMINANTS OF
CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
NEEDS AND MOTIVES
• Need Imbalance between a consumer’s actual and desired states.
• Motive Inner state that directs a person toward the goal of satisfying a
need.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

• Developed by psychologist Abraham H. Maslow
• Identifies five levels of human needs.
• Person must at least partially satisfy lower-level needs before higher-level
needs affect behavior.
PERCEPTIONS
• Perception Meaning that a person attributes to incoming stimuli gathered
through the five senses.
• Results from two types of factors:
• Stimulus factors—characteristics of the physical object such as size,
color, weight, and shape.
• Individual factors—unique characteristics of the individual, including
not only sensory processes but also experiences with similar inputs and
basic motivations and expectations.

Perceptual Screens
• Consumers are bombarded by commercial messages.
• Perceptual screens help people filter out some messages.
• Advertisers work to break through these screens such as through using
large ads, word-of-mouth advertising, and virtual reality.
Subliminal Perception
• Subconscious receipt of incoming information.
• Use is aimed at subverting perceptual screens.
• Unlikely to work in customers not already inclined to buy.
• Example: Retailers beaming commercials to individual customers in
specific areas of the store, such as the cereal aisle.

ATTITUDES
• Attitudes Person’s enduring favorable or unfavorable evaluations,
emotions, or action tendencies toward some object or idea.

Attitude Components
• Cognitive—individual’s knowledge about an object or concept.
• Affective—deals with feelings or emotional reactions.
• Behavioral—tendencies to act in a certain manner.
Changing Customer Attitudes
• Marketers have two choices for appealing to consumer
attitudes:
• Attempt to produce consumer attitudes that
will motivate purchase of a particular product.
• Evaluate existing consumer attitudes and
then make the product features appeal to them.
• Attitudes may not be unfavorable, just not motivating
the consumer toward a purchase.

Modifying the Components of Attitude

• Provide information about product benefits and correcting misconceptions.
• Engaging buyers in new behavior.
• New technologies can encourage changes in customers’ attitudes.
LEARNING
• Learning Knowledge or skill that is acquired as a result of experience,
which changes consumer behavior.
• Learning process:
• Drive—any strong stimulus that impels action.
• Cue—any object in the environment that determines the nature of the
consumer’s response to a drive.
• Response—an individual’s reaction to a set of cues and drives.
• Reinforcement—the reduction in drive that results from a proper
response; creates bond between the drive and the purchase of the
product.
Applying Learning Theory to Marketing Decisions
• Marketers use shaping, the process of applying a series of rewards and
reinforcements to permit more complex behavior to evolve.
• Product and promotional strategy work together in the shaping process.
• For example, customer receives a free sample that includes a substantial
discount for first purchase.
• Customer likes product and purchases it with little financial risk.
• Customer uses discount coupon to buy at moderate cost.
• Customer decided whether to buy the item at its true price.

SELF-CONCEPT THEORY
• Self-concept Person’s multifaceted picture of himself or herself.
• Four components—real self, self-image, looking-glass self, and ideal self—
influence purchasing decisions.
THE CONSUMER DECISION PROCESS
• High-involvement purchasing decisions include buying a car.
• Low-involvement purchasing decisions include buying a candy bar.
PROBLEM OR OPPORTUNITY RECOGNITION
• Consumer becomes aware of a significant discrepancy between the existing
situation and a desired situation.

SEARCH
• Consumer gathers information about the attainment of a desired state of
affairs.
• Evoked set Number of alternatives that a consumer actually considers in
making a purchase decision.

EVALUATION OF ALTERNATIVES
• Consumer accepts, distorts, or rejects information as they receive it.
• Evaluative criteria Features that a consumer considers in choosing among
alternatives.
PURCHASE DECISION AND PURCHASE ACT
• Consumer decides where or from whom to make the purchase.

POST-PURCHASE EVALUATION
• Buyer feels either satisfaction at the removal of the discrepancy between
the existing and desired states or dissatisfaction with the purchase.
• Cognitive dissonance Imbalance among knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes
that occurs after an action or decision, such as a purchase.
• Reasons dissonance may increase:
• The dollar value of a purchase increases.
• The rejected alternatives have desirable features that the chosen
alternatives do not provide
• The purchase decision has a major effect on the buyer.
CLASSIFYING CONSUMER PROBLEM-SOLVING
PROCESSES
• Results from two types of factors:

Routinized Response Behavior

• Consumer makes many purchases routinely by choosing a preferred brand
or one of a limited group of acceptable brands.

Limited Problem Solving

• Consumer has previously set evaluative criteria for a particular kind of
purchase but then encounters a new, unknown brand.

Extended Problem Solving

• Results when brands are difficult to categorize or evaluate.
• Typical of high-involvement purchases.