INDIVIDUAL BUYER BEHAVIOUR

Learning objectives After reading this chapter, you should be able to: Define consumer buying behaviour. Define the consumer market and construct a simple model of consumer buying behaviour. Tell how culture, subculture and social class influence consumer buying behaviour. Describe how consumers’ personal characteristics and primary psychological factors affect buying decisions. Discuss how consumer decision making varies with the type of buying decision. Explain the stages of the buying decision and adoption processes.

Some key definitions Consumer buying behaviour: The buying behaviour of final consumers - individuals and households who buy goods and services for personal consumption. Consumer market – All the individuals and households who buy or acquire goods and services for personal consumption. Culture – The set of basic values, perceptions, wants and buhaviours learned by a member of society from family and other important institutions. Subculture – A group of people with shared value systems based on common life experiences and situations. Siocial classes – Relatively permanent and ordered divisions in a society whose members share similar values, interests and behaviours Membership groups – Groups that have a direct influence on a person’s behaviour and to which a person belongs. Reference groups – Groups that have a direct (face-to-face) or indirect influence on the person’s attitudes or behaviour. Aspiration group – A group to which an individual wishes to belong. Decision Making Unit – (DMU) –All the individuals who participate in, are influence, the consumer buying- decision process. Initiator – The person who first suggests or thinks of the idea of buying a particular product or service. Influencer – A person whose view or advice influences buying process. Decider – The person who ultimately makes a buying decision or any part of it – whether to buy, what to buy, how to buy, or where to buy. Buyer – The person who makes an actual purchase User – The person who consumes or uses a product or service. Role – The activities a person is expected to perform according to the people around him or her. Status- The general esteem given to a role by society. Family Life cycle – The stages through which families might pass as they mature over time. Lifestyle – A person’s pattern of living as expressed in his or her activities, interests and opinions. Psychographics – The technique of measuring lifestyles and developing lifestyle classifications; it involves measuring the chief ALO dimensions (activities, interests, opinions). INDIVIDUAL BUYER BEHAVIOUR

INDIVIDUAL BUYER BEHAVIOUR Some key definitions Personality: - A person’s distinguishing psychological characteristics that lead to relatively consistent and lasting responses to his or her own environment. Self-concept- Self-image, or the complex mental pictures that people have of themselves Motive drive) – A need that is sufficiently pressing to direct the person to seek satisfaction of the need. Perception – The process by which people select, organize and interpret information to form a meaningful picture of the world. Selective attention – The tendency of people to screen out most of the information to which they are exposed. Selective distortion – The tendency of people to adapt information to personal meanings. Selective retention- The tendency of people to retain only part of the information to which they are exposed, usually information that supports their attitudes or beliefs. Learning – Changes in an individual’s behaviour arising from experience. Belief – A descriptive thought that a person holds about something. Attitude – A person’s consistently favourable or unfavourable evaluations, feelings and tendencies towards an object or idea. Complex buying behaviour – Consumer buying behaviour in situations characterized by high consumer involvement in a purchase and significant perceived differences among brands. Dissonance-reducing buying behaviour – Consumer buying behaviour in situations characterized by high involvement but few perceived differences among brands.

INDIVIDUAL BUYER BEHAVIOUR Some key definitions Habitual buying behaviour - Consumer buying behaviour in situations characterized by low consumer involvement and few significant perceived brand differences. Variety-seeking buying behaviour – Consumer buying behaviour in situations characterized by low consumer involvement, but significant perceived brand differences. Need recognition – The first stage of the buying decision process in which the consumer recognizes a problem or need. Information search – The stage of the buyer decision process in which the consumer is aroused to search for more information; the consumer may simply have heightened attention or may go into active information search.

FACTORS INFLUENCING INDIVIDUAL BUYER BEHAVIOUR Personal/individual: income, age, gender, marital status. Psychological: Personality, Perception, Motivation, Attitude. Environmental: Political, economic, social, technological,& legal: Marketing mix : Product, price, place, promotion, people, physical evidence and process. Social: Culture, subculture, reference groups,

FACTORS INFLUENCING INDIVIDUAL BUYER BEHAVIOUR

Decision-making process: Problem recognition Information search Information evaluation/evaluation of alternatives Purchase decision Post-purchase evaluation Decision-making process