Chapter 5 Understanding Buyer Behavior and the Communication Process 5-1

Describe the four stages of consumer decision making. Explain how consumers adapt their decision-making processes based on involvement and experience. Discuss how brand communication influences consumers’ psychological states and behavior. Describe the interaction of culture and advertising. Explain how sociological factors affect consumer behavior. Discuss how advertising transmits sociocultural meaning in order to sell things. 5-2

Consumers as Decision Makers Marketers need a keen understanding of their consumers as a basis for effective brand communication. This understanding begins with a view of consumers as systematic decision makers who follow a predictable process in making choices among products and brands. Stage 1—The process begins when consumers perceive a need (functional or emotional). Stage 2—It proceeds with a search for information (internal or external) that will help in making an informed choice through alternative evaluation (structured by the consideration set and by applying evaluative criteria). Stage 3—The search-and-evaluation stage is followed by purchase. Stage 4—Then, in postpurchase use and evaluation, cognitive dissonance can be encountered and customer satisfaction is ultimately determined. 5-3

Modes of Decision Making Some purchases are more important to people than others, a fact that adds complexity to consumer behavior. To accommodate this complexity, marketers think about the level of involvement that attends any given purchase. High or low involvement and experience with a product or service category determine the mode of consumer decision making: Extended problem solving—high involvement, low experience Limited problem solving—low involvement, low experience Habit or variety seeking—low involvement, high experience Brand loyalty—high involvement, high experience Experience refers to a consumer’s familiarity with a product of service. Involvement refers to the personal importance placed on the choice of product or service. 5-4

Key Psychological Processes Brand messages are developed to influence the way people think about products and brands, specifically their beliefs and brand attitudes. Marketers use multi-attribute attitude models (MAAMs) to help them ascertain the beliefs and attitudes of target consumers. A MAAMs analysis has four main components; the evaluative criteria, importance weights, consideration set, and beliefs. Executing a MAAMs analysis involves: Step 1—specify evaluative criteria for relevant brands Step 2—ask consumers to rate brands against criteria Step 3—identify salient beliefs Step 4—develop promotional response (correct misperceptions, increase importance of evaluative criteria, change product to satisfy evaluative criteria) Consumers in-turn employ perceptual defenses (cognitive consistency impetus, selective attention) to ignore or distort most of the commercial messages (advertising clutter) to which they are exposed. When consumers are not motivated to process an advertiser’s message thoughtfully, the marketer may need to feature peripheral cues as part of the message (Elaboration Likelihood Model or ELM). 5-5

Consuming in the Real World Culture and Advertising Advertisements are cultural products, and culture provides the context in which an ad will be interpreted. Marketers who overlook the influence of culture are bound to struggle in their attempt to communicate with the target audience. Culture is based on values, which are enduring beliefs that shape more-transitory psychological states, such as brand attitudes. Within a culture, individuals share patterns of behavior, or rituals. Violating cultural values and rituals is a sure way to squander advertising dollars. Advertising and other elements of the promotional mix turn products into brands when they wrap brands with cultural meaning. Brands with high cultural capital are worth more. In these ways, brands are co- created by consumers and marketers. 5-6

Consuming in the Real World, Continued Consumer behavior is an activity that each person undertakes before a broad audience of other consumers. Families (intergenerational effect, life stage), race and ethnicity, geopolitics, gender, and community (brand communities) are important influences on consumption. Who consumers are—their identity—is changeable; through what they buy and use, consumers can rapidly and frequently change aspects of who they are. Celebrities influencers are particularly important in this regard. 5-7

Advertising, Social Rift, and “Revolution” Consumers sometimes use their consumption choices to stake out a position in a “revolution” of some sort, such as youth culture or political-social movements. Marketers should remember that anytime there is a time of great change, many new opportunities are opened up. 5-8

How Ads Transmit Meaning Advertising transfers a desired meaning to the brand by placing the brand within a carefully constructed social world represented in an ad, or “slice of life.” Marketers paint a picture of the ideal social world, with all the meanings they want to impart to their brand. The brand is carefully placed in that picture, and the two (the constructed social world and the brand) rub off on each other, becoming a part of each other. Meaning is thus transferred from the ad’s constructed social world to the brand. Anthropologist Grant McCracken refers to this as the “movement of meaning” and created a model to illustrate the process. 5-9