UNIT 1 CUSTOMER BUYING BEHAVIOUR IN RETAIL
* TOPICS IN THIS CHAPTER :-
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1.1 Introduction
1.2 Definition of Consumer Behaviour
1.3 Decision Making of Consumers in the Product Category
1.3.1 When the Consumer go for High Level of Pre-purchase Search
1.3.2 High Involvement versus Low Involvement Consumer Behaviour
1.3.3 Marketing Implications for High and Low Involvement Product Categories
1.3.4 Strategies for Improving Consumer Involvement
1.4 Hierarchy of Social Influences on Consumer Behaviour
1.5 Influence of Demographics – Lifestyle – Stage in Life-Cycle
1.6 Influence of Perception and Memory
1.7 Influence of Needs and Attitude on a Product Category
1.8 Summary of this Chapter
1.9 Very Very Important Questions
1.1 INTRODUCTION:-
- How many times during the daytime do public make product decisions? If you prevent to imagine about it, numerous product decisions are made every day, some without much consideration.
- What should I be dressed in? What should I consume? What am I going to perform nowadays? Many product decisions are answered regularly on a daily basis and they help shift the economy of cities, countries and ultimately the world.
- Indian consumers are showing greater flexibility to the inflation and consuming like never before.
- As a consumer you have to decide on what to buy, how much to buy, from where to buy, why to buy, and when to buy.
- Product decisions also outline life for the consumer.
- How can straightforward decisions be so significant? Why do marketers pay out millions of rupees to discover the cause at the back of these decisions? Consumer behaviour can be described as the study of consumers and the processes they utilize to decide use (consume), and dispose of products and services.
- A more in depth definition will also include how that process impacts the world.
- Consumer behaviour incorporates ideas from quite a few sciences including psychology, biology, chemistry and economics.
1.2 DEFINITION OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR:-
- Study of consumer behaviour is both a science and an art.
- It is a science because one can decipher certain patterns in consumer decision making and work with certain logic and models for reaching a decision or understanding the patterns and trends.
- You need to answer these questions whenever you decide to buy a product.
- You must be aware that for some of the products you make a thoughtful and conscious decision, while for many routine purchases the decision happens automatically and unconsciously due to a set pattern of answers already stored in your memory for a given type of product.
- Thus it becomes important to understand these patterns of buying behaviours for different product types and different buying situations.
- One buys the product either individually or along with family or friends.
- Some time the product is bought as an urgent need or as part of the regular buy, or at other times for prestige or comfort.
- There are different options and substitutes available as a consumer to us to satisfy our needs or wants.
- The final purchase decision will depend on our value system, self attitude, knowledge, self perception or image, our socio-cultural background, stage in our lifecycle, self motivation, and other environmental factors.
- It is an art because many decisions of consumers sometime cannot be deciphered through scientific models as these are based on individual choices, self image and personality traits.
- For example buying decisions that go beyond needs and wants, i.e. for luxury brands, entertainments etc.
- For better understanding of consumer behaviour it is necessary to:
● Identify the underlying mechanism of decision making process for different product categories.
● Identify factors that influence the decision making for different product in different circumstances.
● Understand the ever changing retail environment and formats.
- In order to decide on suitable marketing response, it is necessary that the retailer makes serious effort to understand the dynamics of consumer behaviour.
- The consumer behaviour may be understood through the study of secondary research work as well as through first hand interaction with consumers on the floor of the store.
1.3 DECISION MAKING OF CONSUMERS IN THE PRODUCT CATEGORY:-
- It is necessary to understand the exact purchasing habit of the consumer vis-Ã -vis the concerned product category.
- We can divide the product categories based on the consumers’ level of involvement while making purchase of the concerned category and their extent of decision making as explained in the Table 1.1.
| Consumers’ Decision Making Process | Extent of Involvement in the Product Category | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| High | Low | ||
| Level of Decision making involved while selecting the item/s within a Product category | Extended search or evaluation of alternative brands/ items or options of sources of purchase | Complex decision making, while buying high value products like Electronic Products, Furniture, Homes, Designer Apparel, Health Products, etc. Here it is obvious the risk involved in making wrong decision is high to very high. | Limited decision making involved as the purchasing may be done out of impulse or need of the moment or for the sake of variety, based on familiarity or comparing brand within the store. For e.g. T-shirt or medium to low priced products like chocolates, select groceries. The risk involved is low for making a wrong decision. |
| Routine purchases done due to habits or routine usages not much search is involved, may go for a select brand or option due to prior experience | Brand Loyal, normally the consumers go for their selected brands or source of purchase (like a familiar convenience store or a mall), for example, cologne, deodorants, high priced lingerie’s & innerwear’s, soaps, shampoos, hair-oil, Food products etc. | Inertia, usually low value items purchased out |
|
1.3.1 High Level of Pre-purchase Search:-
- Normally it is seen that consumers go for extended search when the following factors are present:- The above mentioned figure throws the light on Pre-purchase search from the consumer’s end and highlight certain factors.
i. Factors related with product:
- There are certain factors related to product
- (a) when there are frequent changes in fashion or other product features and a consumer has to purchase a Jeans.
- He/She would like to know the various options that are available in the market before making the final decision;
- (b) when there are frequent changes in pricing, the customer will make enquiries on the present prices of the product like in case of food products or groceries or to check on special offers from any of the stores;
- (c) when there is long gap between the repeat purchase; and the volume of purchase is high;
- (d) when there are many brands available in the market offering varied combination of features or benefits; or when the unit price is high.
ii. Circumstantial or Situational Factors:
- There are situational factors as follows which also causes the consumer to go for extended search:
a. Experience with the product:
- If the consumer had an unsatisfactory past experience with a particular item or brand in a product category.
- In such case, the consumer would definitely like to do better search on the product availability and the beneficial features of various brands/items in the given category.
- This also happens when the consumer has no past experience or is a first time user of the product category.
b. Social acceptability:
- When purchase is a lifestyle based which is visible in a social settings like party or get-togethers then the consumer wants to ensure that his/her purchase is seen as contemporary or trendy.
- In such cases, the consumer would like to see different options available to him/her.
- The consumer also becomes conscious about his/her choice when he/she has to buy the item as a gift.
c. Conflicting views:
- When there are options which have both the desirable and undesirable features, there is no agreement on the best alternative among the decision making group or the users of the product.
- When product is a discretionary purchase rather than a necessity, there are ecological and economic considerations, and the information available on the product category is a conflicting one.
- In all such situations the buyer of the category is forced to look at many aspect of the category before he/she decides on one.
iii. Personal Factors:
- Personal factors definitely have influence over the level of pre-purchase search undertaken by a consumer.
- These factors are as follow:
a. Demographic profile of the consumer:
- When the consumer belongs to a well educated, high income group and socially well placed background, and below 55 years of age group then due to the peer or social pressure needs to ensure that his choices are seen as the right ones.
b. Personality characteristics:
- Certain characteristics of the consumer also contribute to increase in level of search for decision making.
- For example, open minded consumers and the ones with low risk taking profile naturally would like to go for an extended search before making a choice.
- Similarly, consumers with a liking for shopping and search with high involvement flavour of certain product category would also go in for extended search.
1.3.2 High Involvement versus Low Involvement Consumer Behaviour:-
- Generally following characteristics will be observed for consumers with high involvement with a product category.
● These kinds of consumers are information seekers and processors; they will actively look out for more details on the product feature or other salient features, availability etc.
- They may seek information either on the net or through their friends or social circles.
- They usually look at product advertisements very carefully for finding out useful details.
● Consumers will do proper evaluation before deciding on their purchase.
● They would like to maximize their satisfaction level through inter brand comparison and identify the one with most benefits related to their needs.
● They are more conscious about their lifestyle needs and social standing and hence more appropriate to seek products that help enhance their social acceptability and belief system.
- All the clothing in the shop is hand made in India.
- From the above figure, it is clear that a socialite would like to buy his/her clothing from a well known branded fashion store like Fabindia rather than any street outlet, which may also be selling similar products/brands.
- These types of consumers always seek the opinions of their reference groups or friends before they decide to opt for an outlet or brand, or any other product features.
- Generally it is seen that consumers go through a problem solving process involving five steps, as shown in Figure 1.5, when purchasing high involvement products or services.
- These consumers will not seek out information or do systematic processing of information.
- They will receive the information passively and may file it in their memory.
- For example seeing an advertisement for Britannia Toast, the consumer neither evaluates it nor tries to make a meaning out of it but simply file it away in his memory.
- Later when the consumer visits a convenience store and sees the brand on the shelf he either out of curiosity or just because he has a need for the toast will just pick up the package of the said brand.
- The above action on the part of the consumer is more due to the familiarity generated, exposure to advertisement or through word of mouth publicity rather than a strong or positive association with the brand.
- The consumer may decide after the consumption of toasts whether the product is really good or ordinary, which in turn will determine his future decision on purchase of the said brand.
- Hence, you have noticed that the product evaluation happens only after usage or purchase of the product or brand.
- Thus the decision making process is different as compared to the complex decision making process, where the evaluation happens in advance before the product is purchased.
- Low involvement consumers are a passive audience for advertisement.
- Consumers want to gain reasonable level of satisfaction on few key attributes.
- The purchase is generally done on the basis of familiarity either through advertisement or word of mouth publicity.
- The products in the low interest category are normally non lifestyle or non personality based, and hence their purchases are not influenced by consumer’s self belief or identity.
- Purchases of these products are not influenced by the reference or social groups as they have nothing to do with social norms or traditions.
- As shown in Table 2.1, there are two types of low involvement buying behaviours.
- First, inertia, which indicates that consumers out of sheer habit or through a random decision to buy a product.
- There are no differences amongst the available brands in a category and the risk of making wrong decision being low, decides to go for a certain brand.
- Second, impulse buying, when a consumer decides to buy a different product/item/ brand for the sake of variety, just for the sake of change and not due to dissonance with their current brand/product.
1.3.3 Marketing Implications for High and Low Involvement Product Categories:-
- You have learnt that there are specific differences between the high and low involvement consumer behaviours.- Thus, you need to adopt different marketing programs for marketing of the products falling under the high and low involvement categories.
- The implications of these differences on the marketing mix elements are discussed as below:
a) Product Features and Positioning:
- For both low and high involvement product categories it is utmost important to ensure that the brand or items in the given product category have features that differ to certain extent while offering standard benefits.
- This will help in creating a good choice for the consumer while making a final decision.
- It is also important that on key product features the consumer should not face any problem.
- The reason why he/she makes a choice in the first place, so as to maximize his/her experience with the item or brand chosen from the given category.
- A store has the option to provide a positioning as suitable for the category and the store image.
- For e.g. Big Bazaar and Future Bazaar which is an online store of Big Bazaar, may position most of its product categories on the feature of “Isse sasta aur achchha kahin nahin” (cheap and best products, Nowhere else).
- The stores are large (15,000-20,000 sq ft), well-planned and designed to make shopping a pleasure.
- The in-store experience is backed by robust after-sales service.
b) Advertising and Promotion:
- In case of low involvement products the consumers do not seek information but he/she only gathers the information, passively.
- Thus it is important that the advertisement message should be directed to few important key features of the said brand/category which should help create positive association and familiarity with the brand/category while having high recall value.
- For e.g. a distinctive colour in the advertising frame or specific packaging colours highlighted innovatively will help in better recall and familiarity with the brand.
- Generally TV advertising is considered good for creating passive learning, and hence would be useful in case of low involvement product categories.
- It offers innovative, differentiated and demonstrative retail experiences on TV and internet and has emerged as the largest multimedia retailer in India.
- It has a user base of 2.5 million.
- For high involvement product categories, as the consumers actively seek information it would be better to advertise through print media.
- In high involvement categories the emphasis is not only on providing information on the features but also to build a positive lifestyle image which goes well with its target consumer group.
c) Pricing:
- The main Unique Selling Proposition (USP) for many of the low involvement products is their comparative low prices.
- Hence, many of the Food and Grocery products sellers as well as the medium to low priced garment sellers, try to gain the trial of their products through special price offers.
- If the consumers do not face any problem with the brand/product and are able to have a positive association with the brand /product then he/she is likely to continue with the same brand/product out of sheer inertia.
- He/She may continue this until there is another competitor offering further lower prices.
- In case of high involvement products, price is related to quality and features as well as the lifestyle image the product category is able to establish in consumers’ mind.
d) Availability/Distribution:
- One of the reasons for the success of many of the FMCG products is their wide distribution network and availability of products at every possible corner.
- Hence, extensive distribution and availability of low involvement products help in gaining quick confidence of the consumers as well as high recall.
- For the high involvement categories it is necessary to have select distribution and availability points so as to create an exclusivity and lifestyle image of the category.
- For example the distribution and retail-shop network of most of the electronics product like TVs, Refrigerators, Washing Machines, Air Conditioners, etc. by companies like Sony, LG, Samsung, Godrej, Philips, Hitachi and many more.
1.3.4 Strategies for Improving Consumer Involvement:-
- Particularly for low involvement product categories it makes sense to make efforts for increasing consumer involvement with the said category.- This can be achieved through many innovative ideas like starting a loyalty program for the consumers based on achievement of purchase target within a certain period of time.
- For example offering attractive gift coupons or benefits on achieving the given purchase value; or offering bonus points.
- Thus, it would be visualised that many large format stores have very attractive loyalty programs both to encourage shopping of categories as well as to build loyalty towards the concerned stores.
- Some other ideas could be summarized through the following concepts;
- The product category is linked to some involving issue, as when a cereal product category is linked to a health benefit due to some special certification by a health organization.
- For example Colgate and Pepsodent claim to have special health benefits as certified by Indian Medical Council.
- The Saffola brand, owned by Marico Industries, retails a portfolio of products like salt and flour.
- You should note that the brand name is popularly associated with its core product—cooking oil.
- In the cooking oil segment, the brand has garnered tremendous trust and is practically a generic name among homemakers.
- The brand has been very successful in promoting health as a central theme throughout its messaging—especially on its website, where a diverse selection of products is featured.
- Based on the URL http://www.campaignindia.in, it had been observed that Saffola gifts reader’s free copies of Times of India (TOI) to celebrate World Heart Day.
- Continuing with its Saffolalife initiative, Saffola has rolled out their latest Total Video Converter (TVC), and print innovation on World Heart Day. TVC, which has been created by McCann Erickson, Saffola has brought together media houses in India to further the cause of preventive heart care.
- Television actors from STAR Plus, Colors and Zee TV feature in a TVC which further promotes Saffolalife’s ‘Heart Age Finder tool’ and raises awareness about the fact that even though we celebrate the birthday of our favorite stars, we often forget the one who is the most important; our heart.
- In addition, Saffola has gifted readers in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore a free copy of the Times of India for their heart.
- Every page of the newspaper has a gift for readers and as one goes through the paper, gifts are discovered in the form of different ways to take care of your heart.
- The FrontPage of the paper has an advertisement which urges readers to blow out the candles before they can unwrap the gift.
- Readers have to place the advertisement in front and log on to ww.isurprise.com from a mobile phone in order to blow the candles and discover the age of their heart 1 .
- The product category can be tied to a personally involving situation, may be aiding in faster or tasty cooking, as being advertised for ‘Pilsburry’ flours or special spices and additives by ‘Ramdev’ Masala; or ‘Fair & Lovely’ skin cream for improving skin tone.
- Or advertising might draw on lifestyle or social values, as is the case with many Apparel brands or lifestyle product categories like Watches, Jewellery, Tea, Coffee, Breakfast foods, etc.
- Or adding an important new feature to the product category, thus drawing new set of consumers to the category, may be like adding imported food products/brands to the Food and Grocery category or imported fruits and vegetables to the Fruits & Vegetables category.
1.4 SOCIAL INFLUENCES ON CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR:-
- Normally social pressures of people around us or those with whom we constantly come in contact or interact with influence our needs, wants, evaluations, and product or brand choices.
- You may see social influence when you have to buy high involvement and socially visible goods or services.
- The social influences affecting consumers’ purchase decisions are culture, subculture, social class, reference groups, and family.
- You need to consider hierarchy of major social influences (as shown in Figure 1.9) affecting consumer behaviour in order to gain better understanding of the consumers thinking.
- Thereby you may develop marketing strategies for the benefit of the concerned product categories.
- From the above model you may realize that understanding consumer behaviour is very important as it leads us through appropriate stages in our analysis.
- Thus you are able to meet consumer need appropriately as well as design the communication and promotion strategies appropriately.
- Let us have a brief look at each aspect of social influence on consumer behaviour:
1. Culture and Sub-culture
- These are generally the customs or traditions followed by the consumers within their social group or communities to which they belong.
- Hence, certain set of beliefs, attitudes and behavioural patterns get shared among a particular social group and these are transmitted to the next generation over a period of time.
- Thus they may take roots with the new generation too.
- Sub-cultures are sub groups within the main cultural group, which share either common geographical or ethnic or racial or religious backgrounds.
- For example within Maharashtrian culture there could be sub-cultural groups belonging to certain specific territories like western Maharashtra region, Vidarbha region or Konkan region which will follow a certain set of beliefs and behavioural patterns of their own.
- Cultural differences among countries and regions offer tremendous opportunities to retailers of all types to cash on them, particularly for such products as food, clothes, and personal care items.
- Sub-cultural differences offer opportunities at local level to retail outlets located in specific locations by stocking and differentiating product categories as per the dominant sub-cultural group’s preferences.
2. Influence of social class – reference group – family
- These are basically social groups which generally influence consumers’ buying pattern of items in a product category or the choice of product category.
- Generally, groups belonging to the same income class, educational background and occupation will have close similarity in their purchase pattern.
- The reference group is normally the group which has influence on the normative behaviour (as with the friend circle or college group), when social acceptance is important; or influence of the importance or value given to a particular product or category (like for certain brands or items in a category; for e.g. if there is a practice of using Basmati rice
- It also helps to assess the merits of a given product/ service.
- Family is the primary social group which has the basic influence on many of the consumers’ product choices, as it is the first training ground for a consumer for acquiring skills, knowledge, and attitudes towards its role as a consumer (this is the reason why many consumers will stay with the same brands or product categories as their childhood ones even when they are grown up).
- Therefore, family has a great and lasting influence on its younger members’ attitudes and preferences toward various brands and stores.
1.5 INFLUENCE OF DEMOGRAPHICS– LIFESTYLE STAGE IN LIFE-CYCLE:-
- Elly Kog, Director Human Potential, KBC states that human resources departments have to take into account demographical trends. (URL http://www.thefifthconference. com/topic/people/influence-demographics-human-resources More and more).
- Elly Kog explains: “We have investigated how the labour market evolves, and we have figures about how many graduates are entering the market and how many baby boomers are retiring.
- We know how many people we need and we try to predict how many of them we can attract. For this purpose we use internal data like the age of our employees, but also external data like demographic statistics.”
- If you look at all these statistics, you can see that KBC (as well as other companies) will have problems attracting enough people.
- Elly also stresses that the baby boomers are leaving the labour market between 2010 and 2020. At the same time, the influx of graduates should remain stable from 2010 to 2015.
- Demographically speaking, the real problem starts from 2015 on, when the influx of graduates will decrease substantially.
- So within next ten years, employees will become a scarce good: all companies will be fishing in the same increasingly small pool of graduates
a) Influence of Demographics:
- Demographical attributes like age-groups, sexual influences, education, occupational groups, and socio-economic groups definitely influence the consumers.
- These attributes influence their choices – nature of their demands – their ability to buy these products in order to satisfy their needs – and the perceived importance of various attributes or criteria used to evaluate the alternative items or brands in a product category.
- For example, older-age consumers may be much more concerned and interested about health-care products, insurance schemes, saving schemes etc.
- They may be less concerned about buying new home furnishing, clothing, and beauty-care products than the younger age groups.
b) Influence of Life-styles:
- You may find that persons belonging to two different lifestyles will have different set of choices within the same product/ sub product category even when they belong to same income, education, occupation and age group.
- This happens due to difference in activities, interest and opinions; which result in differences in buying pattern, purpose, as well as product usage.
- For example, two families belonging to same demographics will buy their breakfast foods differently due to differences in their life-styles.
- You may buy refined flour and other ingredients to make parantha, while the other may buy bread and butter or cornflakes.
- In the Indian Urban context you can clearly identify two well-to-do groups with different life-styles and thereby needs viz.
- Traditionally rich (the group which belongs to rich class due to its inheritance of property rights and richness) and the Neoriche (which has newly acquired property and richness with their efforts).
- The traditionally rich group have all their habits and preferences coming from their family usage of products and inheritance.
- The neo-rich will either try to imitate the habits of traditionally rich or develop new habits based on their newly acquired knowledge, information and travel to international cities.
- This inherent difference reflects in the way each group will respond to advertisement of a new luxury brand or product.
c) Stage in Life-cycle:
- Stages in family-life-cycle also greatly influence the product choices.
- For example, the young newly married couple will be more concerned about buying a new house and prefer to spend more on house-hold related items like utensils, furnishing, furniture etc.
- The middle-aged couple will be more concerned with their kids’ needs and wants, educational products for children etc.
1.6 INFLUENCE OF PERCEPTION AND MEMORY:-
- You have learnt about demographics and now in this head the influence of memory and perception is taken into consideration.
- This is all about what things look like; it’s what you call them etc.
a) Perception:
- Through perception the consumer identifies, organizes, and interprets information.
- A consumer may pass through the process of exposure to information, say through an advertisement on TV, and then a repeat exposure may draw his attention, which may lead to comprehension and then to final retention in the memory.
- After the consumer has fully perceived and understood the information, he/she uses the same to evaluate different product categories/ brands and make a final decision on purchase of the product.
- In case of low involvement categories, the perception process is different as the consumer will not make effort to comprehend the information but may just store it in his/her memory.
- A repeat exposure may cause to retain the information, which may generate familiarity with the brand when they come across it in a store.
- For high involvement purchase, the consumer pay particular attention to information about the product or brands in a category and the needs it will satisfy for making a good decision.
- Consumers need to be selective in perceiving information in order to cope with the clutter of messages received from different sources.
- This selectivity occurs at each of the four stages in the perception process – exposure, attention, comprehension, and retention.
- Consumers tend to retain that information which supports what they believe and are interested in or relevant at a given point in time.
- Thus selectivity and organization are the two important features of a perceptual process, which explain why two different consumers will perceive the same information differently.
b) Memory:
- The human memory has its limitation.
- The consumers can retain only small portion of the information perceived by them.
- There are two types of memories– short term and long term. Normally information from the surrounding is initially processed by the short term memory but is forgotten in less than 30 seconds because of flow of new information or inattention.
- Certain information perceived to be important consciously or sub consciously get transferred to the long term memory.
- The information stored in the long term memory can be retrieved later.
- Thus for many product categories or brands, the information may be technical and complex nature, and needs careful understanding by the consumer.
- This may be the case with most of the high involvement product categories, then print media is considered to be the most suitable medium for communicating the useful details to the consumers.
- TV is preferred when certain key information, like brand name, product features and symbols, needs to be highlighted as in case of low involvement products, and then repeated frequently for retention in memory.
- Another mental factor that determines the amount of information the consumer remembers about a product and uses, is the way in which the said information is organized mentally.
- This organization of information happens through the process of categorization and integration.
- Categorization helps consumer to process the known information quickly and efficiently.
- For instance consumer’s experience with a particular kind of characteristic of a product, for example say, a taste of juice with soyabean ingredient will determine his/her reaction to an advertisement for a product with similar ingredient.
- Integration means that consumers perceive separate pieces of related information as an organized whole.
- For example, consumer will integrate various pieces of information such as a brand Advertisement, its price, and the retail store’s ambience and its location that carries the brand to create an overall impression about the brand.
1.7 INFLUENCE OF NEEDS AND ATTITUDE ON A PRODUCT CATEGORY:-
- An attitude is a positive or negative feeling about an object (say for a brand or product category) that predisposes a person to behave in a particular way towards that object. (Boyd, walker, carreine, 2012)
- Attitudes are based on the assessment of the consumer about a certain brand or product category if it provides the required benefits thereby fulfilling the consumer’s specific need.
- The evaluation is done on multi-attributes, each attribute of differing weightage or importance.
- Consumers use different ways to evaluate alternative brands based on the strength of their needs, their involvement with the product category, and the risk they associate with the purchase. (Amyostom and Daron lacobucci, 1995).
- There are compensatory and non compensatory models to assess brands on multiple attributes.
- A model is called compensatory when it determines the preference for a brand among competitive brands, based on overall sum of the weighted ratings on all the relevant attributes for each of the brands.
- It is called compensatory because a poor evaluation on one attribute may be compensated by a strong evaluation on another one.
- A Non-compensatory attitude model is based on one single attribute which is most important or relevant at a given time or in a situation.
- For instance, in a low involvement product - consumer may adopt a simple approach of evaluating competing brands on a single attribute at a time.
- It is non-compensatory because a poor evaluation on one cannot be compensated by a strong evaluation on another one.
- These models provide clues for designing marketing programs that address the specific concerns of consumers.
- The multi-attribute model shows consumers’ ideal combination of product/service attributes, and relative importance of each of these attributes.
- Through clustering of group of consumers on the similar set of attributes one can identify the important parameters on which these set of consumers differ from each other.
- This may help to formulate marketing mix to attract the larger groups among these sets to the product category.
- The analysis also help in identifying the relative position of brands (within a category) with respect to the “ideal attributes” chosen by the largest segment of the consumers.
- These models certainly help in finalizing marketing programs pertaining to product features, pricing, and advertising.
- Some of the actions taken by the marketers of product categories to change the consumers’ attitude favorably towards their product category or brand vis-Ã -vis other competing categories or brands are as follows:
a) Changing attitude toward the product class or type to increase the total market:
- Here the manufacturer or retailer may attempt to develop a primary need or modify the current need to channelise it to its stores.
- For example when Big Bazaar made a start as a hyper store, in order to create a demand for the grocery and food products, it ensured very competitive pricing.
- In some items even substantially keeping lower than those available in general market, just to attract the customers and gain their trust (vis-Ã -vis the ‘bhaiyaa’ or kirana shop from which they usually buy their daily needs).
b) Giving more importance to attributes as desired by consumers:
- This can be clearly seen by many supermarket retailers highlighting the brands and products providing health benefits; particularly the cooking oil category with display of many brands offering cholesterol reducing benefits.
c) Adding a salient product characteristic to the existing ones:
- This can be seen in many of the FMCG products which keep on introducing one new benefit, after a gap of some months, in their existing brand in order to renew its presence and sale.
- For example ‘Tide’ detergent brand introduced a new characteristic of fragrance along with the other attributes.
- Such dramatic changes are seen in many durable products which with the help of their R&D is able to come up with some brilliant product characteristics.
- You may see the Refrigerators with double compartments and water dispenser facility, latest models of cellular phones, etc.
e) Lowering the ratings of the salient product characteristics of competing brands:
- This is seen in comparative advertisings done by some brands either through direct or indirect comparison, particularly those in the food and health categories.
- For example Complan and Bournvita brands for their health based chocolate flavoured drinks.
- Attitudes may also be changed for a new brand with the help of a substantial reduction in price; or through the celebrity backing to a product, for e.g. Shahrukh Khan promoting Fair & Handsome fairness cream for men; or through free product trials.
- The figure mentioned above gives a close overview about handsome fairness cream for men
Fair and Handsome:
- Emami, in collaboration with Activor Corp, USA, herbalists and dermatologists from India has created a unique fairness cream for Men with a breakthrough.
- This is Five Power Fairness System to make skin fair and handsome in 4 weeks.
- It also helps in relieving stress and fatigue signs - gives men’s tough skin a firmer look.
- Emami Fair and Handsome World’s No.1 fairness cream protects men’s face from sun’s UV Rays.
1.8 SUMMARY OF THIS CHAPTER:-
● Consumers’ decision making processes can mainly be classified on the basis of high versus low involvement with the product and the extensiveness of the search for information before making an actual purchase.
● In order to reduce psychological or financial risk in purchase of a high involvement product, consumer is generally involved in a complex decision making process.
● Consumers generally go for high level of pre- search information when following factors are present: Factors related with products; Circumstantial or situational factors; and Personal factors.
● There are definite characteristics that differentiate between the high and low involvement consumer behaviour.
● We have to adopt different marketing programs for marketing of the products falling under the high and low involvement categories. The marketing mix that needs to be worked upon are: Product features and Positioning; Advertising and Promotion; Pricing and Availability/Distribution.
● Particularly for low involvement product categories, it makes sense to make efforts for increasing consumer involvement with the said category.
● Normally social pressures of people around us or those with whom we constantly come in contact or interact with influence our needs, wants, evaluations, and product or brand choices.
● One can see social influence when one has to buy high involvement and socially visible goods or services. The social influences affecting consumers’ purchase decisions are culture, subculture, social class, reference groups, and family.
● It is observed that demographics, lifestyle, and stages in life-cycle definitely have influence on the purchase decisions and preference of product types by a consumer.
● Through perception the consumer identifies, organizes, and interprets information. After the consumer has fully perceived and understood the information, he/she uses the same to evaluate different product categories/ brands and make a final decision on purchase of the product.
● The human memory has its limitation. The consumers can retain only small portion of the information perceived by them. There are two types of memories – short term and long term.
● An attitude is a positive or negative feeling about an object (say for a brand or product category) that predisposes a person to behave in a particular way towards that object.
● There are compensatory and non compensatory models to assess brands on multiple attributes. These models provide clues to designing marketing programs that address the specific concerns of consumers.
● Marketers can take many important actions to change the consumers’ attitude favorably towards their brand or product category vis-Ã -vis other competing brands and product categories.
1.9 VERY VERY IMPORTANT QUESTIONS:-
1. Acquaint with the impact of decision making and involvement of consumers in the product category.
2. Explore the mentality of the consumer towards the high level of pre-purchase search.
3. Compare between the high involvement versus low involvement consumer behaviour.
4. Identify certain ways and strategies for improving consumer involvement.
5. Explain different hierarchy of social influences on consumer behaviour.
6. Understand the influence of demographics, lifestyle etc.
7. Identify the control of needs and attitude on a product category.
8. Describe the concept of high and low involvement consumer behaviour.
9. When does the consumer go for high level of pre-purchase search?
10. What are the characteristics of consumer with low involvement with a product category?
11. Explain the marketing implications for high and low involvement product categories.
12. Discuss strategies to be adopted for improving consumer involvement?
13. Explain with diagram the concept of hierarchy of social influence on consumer behaviour.
14. How do culture and sub-cultures influence consumer behaviour?
15. Why are family and reference groups important in making a purchase decision?
16. How do demographics, life-style and stages in life-cycle influence consumers’ decision making?
17. Explain the concept of perception in influencing consumer behaviour.
18. Discuss the role of memory in consumer’s decision making process.
19. Explain the compensatory and non-compensatory models in the consumers’ decision making process for evaluating brands on multiple attributes.
20. Explain the actions to be asked by the marketer for changing the attitude favourably towards its brand.
