A Brief History of Consumer Behaviour

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Consumer Behaviour:
INTRODUCTION
History of consumer behavior seems to be highly intertwined with the history of marketing thought. Over the years, marketing has shifted its reliance on other disciplines as well as its focus of understanding. For example, the classical schools of marketing thought relied on the social sciences such as economics, sociology and anthropology and focused oil aggregate market behavior. This gave way to the managerial schools of marketing thought in which tire focus of attention and understanding shifted to the individual customers while social sciences disciplines continued to dominate marketing thinking. Eventually, marketing kept its focus on individual customers but began to borrow more and more from the behavioral sciences. This resulted in what I will call as the behavioral schools of marketing thought.

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Consumer Behaviour:

Define Consumer Behavior? The activities directly involved in obtaining, consuming, and disposing of products and services, including the decision processes that precede and follow these actions

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Consumer Behaviour:
Consumer Benefits People do not buy products or services, they buy benefits. We make purchases not for the products themselves, but for the problems they solve or the opportunities they offer. E.g., A watch offers different benefits to different people Tangible (attributes of the watch) and intangible (such as reputation of the brand)

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Consumer Behaviour:

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Consumer Behaviour:
Consumer Benefits and Product Positioning Product positioning is the means through which marketers seek the right fit between a product and desired benefits Three different ways of positioning products for targeted segments are: On perceived benefits or image Against competitors Combination of the above Repositioning: re-educating the consumer about changes in important product, price, distribution, and promotional and/or personal selling benefits.

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Consumer Behaviour:

The Consumer Decision-Making Process A consumer decision model is a means of describing the processes that consumers go through before, during, and after making a purchase. The EKB Model has been a standard in Consumer education.

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Consumer Behaviour:
The Consumer Decision - Making Process

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Consumer Behaviour:
How Companies Can Get Into Consumers Consideration Sets -: Ask to be in the set Adjust one of the 4Ps Encourage consumers to consider its brand and competitors brand Attraction effect: enhance odds of becoming consumer choice by adding an inferior product to the consideration set

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Consumer Behaviour:

What Can Attitudes tell us about Consumers? 1. Consumers who like sushi are likely to eat it 2. Consumers who like rich ice cream are likely to eat it 3. Consumers who like to eat healthy will be likely to eat things that are not high in calories.

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Consumer Behaviour:

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Consumer Behaviour:
Development of a consumer culture A consumer culture is one in which a high level of economic development is reflected in a high level of consumption of goods and services by a majority of its members macro-consumption . The goods often take on specific meanings or functions in society Consider the national epidemic of obesity . How have portions of foods changed over time? Study findings from National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Obesity Education Initiative Super Size Me .

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Consumer Behaviour:
The Effect of Consumption on the Quality of Life Consumers in higher income brackets own more material possessions than those in lower brackets Ownership of economic goods enhances subjective well being (an indicator of quality of life) Satisfaction with life was found to increase with income Life satisfaction was also found to be positively correlated with the possession of material things (but only for materialistic people)

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Consumer Behaviour:
MANAGERIAL MARKETING AND CONSUMER BEHAVIOR 'Fire classical schools of marketing thought with their emphasis oil descriptive market behavior gave way to the managerial schools of thought with their emphasis on controlling the market behavior. The managerial schools of marketing thought emerged in the early fifties soon after World War If and tire consequent unprecedented economic boom partly fueled up new product introductions. it generated such concepts as the four Ps of marketing, marketing mix, product differentiation in market segmentation. Tire managerial schools of marketing thought still relied on the social sciences but borrowed the more recent concepts and methodologies. For example, it eagerly borrowed Concepts and methods of the emerging field of managerial economics Which shifted focus away from demand theory to the theory of the firm, and especially the concepts of monopolistic competition and product differentiation. Similarly, it latched onto the diffusion of innovations traditions generated in economic anthropology.

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Consumer Behaviour:
BEHAVIORAL MARKETING AND CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

Consumer behavior began to borrow both concepts and methods from clinical, social and organizational psychology resulting in numerous theories of buying behavior, attitude research, family and organizational buying behavior as well as psychographics and life style research. Along with the substantive knowledge, consumer behavior also borrowed the research methods of t h e behavioral sciences. These included motivation research (focused group interviews, projective techniques), laboratory experiments especially With physiological behavioral measures such as pupil dilation and galvanic skin tests, and cross-sectional mail or telephone surveys appropriate for attitude and psychographic research. It is important to note that it is the behavioral schools of marketing which has been largely responsible for increasing the Scientific sophistication of consumer behavior With respect to both theory development and theory testing procedures. indeed, consumer behavior Matured significantly enough to assert its independence from marketing, and started the movement t a establish its own association (ACR) and its own journals JCR).

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Thank You
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