CONSUMER PROFILING, INVOLVEMENT AND DECISION MAKING

PROFILING CONSUMERS AND UNDERSTANDING THEIR NEEDS Consumers are valuable assets of an organization. Organization must know who its consumers are. Consumer profiles are descriptive consumer characteristics. A consumer profile is a way of describing the consumers categorically. It is description of consumers that includes Geographic , Demographic , Psychographic and Behavioural Profiles

GEOGRAPHIC PROFILE Dividing the market in to different geographical units Such as nations, states, regions, cities and neighbourhoods. Consumers living in different geographical locations have different climatic conditions, socio-cultural factors, so their needs are different. Eg. Clothes, newspapers.

DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE Age Gender Income, Education and occupation. Size of the family and family life – cycle stage.

PSYCHOGRAPHIC PROFILE Social class: Influences their buying habit, product preferences , attitude and values. Social class plays an important role in consumers preferences for cars, clothes, home furnishing. Lifestyle: Lifestyle involves classifying consumers according to their values, belief, interests and opinion. VALS Value and interests is one of the most used psychographics profiling systems.

VALS FRAMEWORK Primary motivation. (horizontal dimension) Resources (vertical dimension) Eight segments of adult consumers Innovators Thinkers Believers Achievers Strivers Experiencers Makers Survivors

Personality Match brand personality with consumer personality Create relationship between brands and consumers Personality incudes personal characteristics, mental abilities, knowledge, belief etc. Eg. Raymonds “The complete man”

BEHAVIOURAL PROFLILE Occasions Benefits User rate User status Brand loyalty status Buyer readiness stage

CONSUMER INVOLVEMENT Consumer involvement is a motivational state that drives and directs the behaviour of consumers when making decisions. - Peter and Olson

CONSUMER INVOLVEMENT How interested the consumer is in the product? A desire to think and look of various options before making a purchase. Amount of physical and mental effort put in by consumer. Level of personal importance created within consumer. Interest and importance consumer attaches to acquire a product. Differs along persons, products , purchase situations and time availability

Application of consumer behaviour knowledge in marketing Analysing the environment. Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning. Designing the marketing strategies. Designing the marketing mix – 4 P’s. Application in Goverenmental and non-profit organizationsnand social marketing

MARKET SEGMENTATION The process of dividing the market into distinct sub markets of consumers with common needs and characteristics. Helps in identifying a clear market that is underserved. Demographic segmentation. Psychographic segmentation. Geographic segmentation. Behavioural segmentation.

POSITIONING Development of a distinct image for the product or services in the minds of the consumers. Kellogs – Breakfast food Maggi- Instant food cooked in 2 mins. WHEEL detergent – economic washing powder