Consumer Behaviour in Marketing - Essay Example

?Consumer Behaviour Marketing is the art of communicating the value of products to consumers to influence their choices. Primary and secondary research strategies are essential for understanding the psychology of consumers and how their immediate surroundings influence behaviour. Consumers are readily motivated to purchase products that are extensively advertised. The impact of persuasion is dependent on the way in which marketers deliver information concerning the quality of products. The main impact of marketing towards consumers is motivation. The essay below discusses the role of marketing in enhancing consumer motivation through application of consumer behaviour models. Marketing links the societal product requirements to the economic responsive strategies. Marketing can be viewed as an organisational function that creates, delivers and communicates value to consumers while managing customer relationships in strategies that are beneficial to the organisation. Most marketing strategies are geared towards understanding the consumer behaviour and providing superior customer value. Consumer behaviour is defined as the buying culture of consumers. Consumer behaviour is affected both intrinsic and extrinsic factors such as perception, the self, motivation, learning and memory, attitudes, group influence and culture. According to Solomon et al (2006: 6), consumer behaviour involves focus on the processes involved when individuals choose, buy, use and dispose products, or services to satisfy their needs or desires. Marketing is a chain of various market components that are interconnected. The components supplements and overlap with each other. Effective marketing entails taking into account the consumer opinion and behaviour that enables manufacturing of goods that suits their needs. Marketers should be able to discern what prompts a consumer to act and what stops them from purchasing products. The aim of studying consumer behaviour is to understand the buyer and make a customer out of them. The study focuses on the processes used to choose, secure, apply and dispose products, experiences, services and ideas in a bid to satisfy consumer needs. The problem remains pertinent even with the modern efforts geared towards improving the motivating aspect of marketing strategies. The buyer is a highly complex entity in the discussions involving consumer behaviour and motivation; their needs are innumerable. Some of the needs are latent, manifest or highly dominant. The marketer should understand that consumers have their own ideas on the mechanisms applied in realising needs and desires. Understanding the need-structure and priorities of the buyer will require the marketer to develop a market relationship with the consumer. Consumer behaviour is applied in the formulation of the marketing strategy, public regulations and social marketing. Focus on consumer behaviour leads to the establishment of improved marketing strategies aimed at improving the worth of marketing campaigns and attracting new consumers (Biernat and Sesko, 2012: 138-143). Marketing managers should take into account the psychological aspects of the consumers in identifying the most perfect time for conducting marketing operations in relation to their perceptions on time. Few consumers accept products when newly introduced in the market but they later embrace their use as they penetrate deeper into the markets. This implies that organisations should be well financed to ensure that their products stay afloat when newly introduced in the markets. Focus on few numbers of consumers enables them to understand consumer behaviour which they can harness in influencing high numbers of consumers. Marketing strategies such as social marketing does not only aim at promoting products but also enables the companies become acquainted with consumer behavioural peculiarities and apply them in production. Motivation compels individuals to action. It can be defined as the stimulation of any desire or emotion that occurs in response to a consumer’s will and prompts them to action (Whiteley, 2002). Motivation studies focuses on all the innate processes in an individual that enables them to perceive a need and pursue a definite action to fulfil the need. Motivation studies can also be linked to wants and goals, in addition to needs. According to Vohs, Baumeister and Schmeichel (2012: 943-947) human needs are the foundation of all marketing strategies and the studies related to consumer behaviour. A business enterprise’s growth, profitability and survival are dependent on its capability to identify and satisfy the unfulfilled consumer needs before competition. Every individual has needs. These needs can either be primary e.g. food, water, air and clothing or secondary e.g. culture, society and environment. The dynamic nature of motivation is that needs are never fully satisfied; they are recurrent as new ones emerge even with the satisfaction of the old needs. Additionally, those who achieve goals yearn for higher goals. Krisanic and Rodgers, (2008) posits that the failure to satisfy needs leads to the development negative states such as rationalisation, aggression, regression and withdrawal). Rationalisation results from the behaviour of consumers of justifying the situation and excusing themselves. Aggression is exhibited through anger, frustration or resorting into unsocial actions. Consumers can also settle without and try out something or withdraw altogether. Wants are additional requirements to the needs. For instance, clothing is a basic need but the variety is a want. Goals are desires that ought to be fulfilled. Goals are either generic or product specific. Generic goals are desires of the general nature while product specific goals are related to a certain product or service. Motivation can be both negative and positive. Motivation can either be positive and negative. Positive motivation is characterised by enjoyment and optimism on the tasks being carried out. Positive motivation leads to increased purchases and products references. This emanates from the provision of better rewards and quality products through reduced prices or superior products. Negative behaviour is hardly applicable in consumer behaviour as it is based on compulsion and coercion which can only act to scare away consumers (Elliot and Dweck, 2005). Most of the negative motivation strategies are related to the premise that if a consumer does not fulfil certain obligations, undesirable outcomes might befall them. This makes the consumer behaviours to be characterised by feelings of fear and intimidation. The process of motivation commences when the consumer perceives a certain need that creates a state of tension with their minds. This will compel the person to adopt the behaviour meant to frustrate the desire. The nature of the behaviour adopted is dependent on people’s perception, knowledge, reasoning, attitudes, group Influence and Culture. Diagram 1: Process of Motivation < http://consumerbehaviour4vtu.blogspot.com/2009/03/motivation.html > The approach to the concept of motivation can be exemplified with the focus on Maslow’s theory of need hierarchy The theory, formulated by Dr. Abraham Maslow, is based on the notion of the universal hierarchy of human needs. The theory recognises five levels of human needs that are ranked from biogenic (lower level) to psychogenic (higher level) (Boone, 2003). The lower level needs are satisfied as the first priority before the higher level needs. Noel (2009) posits that successful satisfaction of the lower level needs motivates the consumer behaviour. This is promotes positive consumer behaviour. The theory portends that consumers are motivated by dissatisfaction and not satisfaction. Marketers should understand the needs level through studying the needs hierarchy and enacting the necessary strategies for ensuring that the hierarchy is maintained. Diagram 2: Abraham Maslow’s “Need Hierarchy Theory” < http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/maslow.html> Physiological needs are basic needs that sustain the human life such as food, warmth and shelter. Security needs are related to the freedom from the physical danger that includes protection. Social needs are related to the urge of people to feel appreciated or appreciated by other people. Esteem needs is the urge of the people to achieve prestige, power and self-confidence. This includes both internal self esteem factors such as self-respect and achievements and external esteem factors such as attention and recognition (Boone, 2003). The need for self actualisation is the highest in the hierarchy. This involves maximizing someone’s potential to accomplish a goal. Marketers apply Maslow’s hierarchy of needs motivators in promoting marketing through advertisement. Biological and physiological needs can be addressed through strategies such as offering social security benefits and readily-used help lines. Safety needs can be addressed through home security products such as alarms. Belongingness and love needs can be addressed through services such as chat lines and matchmaking services. Esteem needs can be satisfied through the development of products such as home improvements, and lifestyle products. Self-actualisation is exhibited by a small percentage of the population. These needs can be addressed through development of an Open University. Knowing customer motivations is necessary in predicting the consumer requirements. This enables production of goods and services that satisfy these requirements this motivate consumers. The marketing strategies normally capitalise on the subconscious mind of people in attracting their interest towards a product. The social nature of consumers makes their actions to be influenced by those of their reference groups. For instance, consumers spend on secondary needs as an act of creation of identity whereby every purchase made brings the consumer close to the intended class of people (Evans, Jamal and Foxall, 2009). Motivation can also be determined by perception. Perception can be defined as the mode in which an individual organises and interprets various coherent picture of the world. Consumers see things events and ideas on a different perspective which makes them hold different opinions and views. Marketers capitalise on consumer behaviours to identify motivating strategies that enhances marketing. Some of the elements that characterise perception include sensation that applies the action of sensory organs in responding to the stimuli. Such organs include eyes, ears, nose and tongue. Markets capitalise on sensation through creation of products and marketing strategies that totally arrests the consumers’ perception. Motivation strategies based on consumer’s perception are highly effective because the personal choice will be dependent on them. Understanding the consumer perception enables marketers to formulate efficient strategies that promote consumption among consumers. Consumer behaviour and models focus on internal antecedents and external factors that affect the customer choice. Internal antecedents of behaviour include attitudes, intentions and values while external factors include norms of incentives. Promotion of consumer behaviour requires multidimensional strategy that incorporates all these factors. Marketers view consumers as rational decision makers who are normally concerned with self gain (Schiffman and Kanuk, 2007). This can be derived from reference to utility theory which proposes that consumers make their own decisions based on the expected outcomes. Effective marketing strategies focus on alternate models of man which are linked to emphasis on various variables. These variables include economic man, psychodynamic, behaviourist, cognitive and humanistic. According to Richarme (2007), economic approach regards consumers as exclusively rational and selfish characters. This applies the aspect of the self in motivating consumers and winning their interest. The decisions they make are variably based on the ability to benefit maximally from the utility while expending the least minimum effort to do it. For the consumer to behave in an economic sense as the approach suggests, they should be made aware of the available options of the product use to enable them make independent decisions. This is the opportunity that marketing strategies utilise in motivating consumers. Marketing is even more crucial in promoting consumption as many customers’ choices are readily determined by social relationships and values. Herbert Simons Satisficing theory (Simon, 1997) attributes consumers to be seekers of satisfaction rather than quantity optimizers that embrace rationality. Therefore, any motivative marketing strategy should fulfil the value or quality needs of the consumer. Psychodynamic approach view asserts that consumer behaviour is a product of biological influence caused by instinctive forces that act out of the conscious thought. Psychodynamic approach enables marketers to conduct research on the consumers’ biological attributes to modify products that satisfies their tastes and preferences. However, the psychodynamic approach is less feasible currently due to focus on consumer behaviour i.e. the behaviourist approach. Behaviourist approach regards behaviour as actions, thoughts and feelings of consumers towards certain products or services. The behaviourist approach is a product of a range of philosophies affirming that behaviour is determined by external events. Marketing through the utilisation of this aspect takes advantage of the external stimuli that affects their decision making (Betsch and Haberstroh, 2005). The marketing strategies condition the consumer environment in a logical positivism mode to shift their loyalty and attract their attention towards products. The marketing aspects are characterised by features that act as the stimuli that arrest the consumer loyalty and direct their behaviour towards buying. Cognitive approach links the observed behaviour to intrapersonal cognition with the self being viewed as an information processor. The external stimuli affecting the consumer behaviour is perceived as the inputs that only aids in decision making (Eysenck and Keane, 2000). The approach relates information processing to stimuli and concept. Success in marketing requires marketers to identify such stimuli and concepts driving consumer behaviours and capitalise on them to determine their decision making mode and their unique motivation determinants (Moital, 2007). There are two recognised cognitive models of consumer behaviour; analytical and prescriptive. The analytical models provide a frame work for the key elements viewed as explaining the consumer behaviour. Schiffman and Kanuk (2007) asserts that the models follow the traditional five step classification; problem recognition, search for information, alterative evaluation and choice, and outcome evaluation in the evaluation of the consumer decision processes. The most widely applied analytical models are theory of buyer behaviour and consumer decision models (Blackwell et al, 2001). The prescriptive models provide guidelines on the structural configuration of the consumer behaviour. The models outline the order in which consumer actions should appear in reference to marketing conditions. Marketers acts as practitioners who determine the stimuli that should be modified or improved to attract a predefined customer response. Diagram 3: Cognitive Consumer Behaviour Models Consumer decision model is created around a seven point decision strategy; need recognition, information search, and evaluation of the alternatives, purchase, post purchase reflection and divestment. These consumer behaviours are influenced by two prominent factors; the stimuli is received and processed by the consumer in reference to the previous experiences and the decisions are dependent on environmental influences or individual diversity. According to Blackwell (2001), the environmental influences include social class, culture, personal influence, family and situation. The individual influences include consumer resource, knowledge, attitudes, personality, motivation and involvement, values and lifestyle. Diagram 4: Consumer Decision Model < http://tutor2u.net/business/marketing/buying_decision_process.asp> The theory of buyer behaviour integrates a diverse range of social, psychological and marketing factors that integrates consumer choices into a defined sequence of information integration. Marketers subject buyers to various input variables that are communicated through various stimuli. Application of significative stimuli involves the focus on elements of brands and products that are relayed to the buyer. Symbolic stimuli involve the presentation of products and brands through advertisement and influence the consumer behaviour indirectly. Social stimuli involve the focus on family issues and constructs that affect the consumer behaviour and decision making. Diagram 5: The Theory of Buyer Behaviour < http://www.tutor2u.net/business/marketing/buying_stimulus_model.asp> Theory of reasoned action (TRA) model links the source of behaviour to the behavioural intention that is derived from a combination of behavioural attitudes and the subjective norms related to the behaviour. According to Solomon Hale, Householder and Greene (2003: 259–286), the theory acknowledges the impact of the society in shaping the consumer behaviour. Diagram 6: Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) < http://www.google.co.ke/imgres?imgurl=http://www.justrobmurray.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/tra.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.justrobmurray.com/%3Fp%3D90&usg=__-5GPxhu8m-dXKl8XSFky1-bv5Uk=&h=328&w=389&sz=67&hl=en&start=2&zoom=1&tbnid=8HPJFBVyy4jmnM:&tbnh=104&tbnw=123&ei=-d6-ULmKKsaM0AXayIGoBw&itbs=1> Theory of planned behaviour perceives behavioural control as a product of the combination of the perceived factors that facilitates or impedes the performance of the behaviour and the influence of each of the behaviours. Although the actual consumer behaviour is derived from behavioural intention, it is mediated to some extent by the perceived behavioural control (Ajzen, 2006). Diagram 7: Theory of Planned Behaviour Humanistic approach focuses on the role of the concept of the human emotion and volition concept in determination of the marketing behaviour capable of positively influencing or motivating the consumer behaviour. The Theory of trying asserts that the intention to try is the precursor to the art of trying. The model asserts that the intention to try is determined by subjective norms, attitude towards the process of trying and expectations of failure or success. The past behaviours influence the consumer choice. However, Bagozzi et al (2002), posits that most consumers possess behavioural goals rather than intentions which they aggressively expend their effort in fulfilling their needs. Effective marketing strategies should be based on identification of consumer goals and applying favourable measures that can utilize the customer goals to promote sales (Leone, 2004: 1945-1973). Diagram 8: The Theory of Trying The model of goal directed behaviour model is related variably to the theory of the planned behaviour. However, disparity occurs due to the addition of the variables of the past behaviour i.e. recency, frequency and emotions (Perugini and Bagozzi, 2001: 79-98). This model can be applied in the prediction of the consumer behaviour, applied in the development of the marketing strategies. Diagram 9: The Model of Goal Directed Behaviour Conclusion Consumer is variably controlled by marketing that offers a form of motivation to the customer towards products. The stipulated models impacting consumer decisions affirms the complexity of the consumer choices and points at the different processes that causes behaviour. Although the models may not have addressed all the factors affecting the consumer behaviour, most of the stipulated can be applied by marketers in influencing the consumer behaviour for their own advantage. Most of the stipulated models ignore the impact of ethics, social responsibility and altruism in impacting the consumer behaviour. This implies that further studies should be conducted in the inclusion of the stated factors in promoting marketing. References Bagozzi, R.P., Gurhan-Canli, Z. & Priester, J.R. 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