BUS203: Principles of Marketing

Each customer is to some degree a unique problem solving unit. Although they can be grouped into meaningful segments in order to fully appreciate the totality of the buying process, a marketer needs to examine the internal forces that influence consumers. They are learning/socialization, motivation and personality, and lifestyle.

Learning and Socialization

As a factor influencing a person's perceptions, learning may be defined as changes in behavior resulting from previous experiences. However, learning does not include behavior changes attributable to instinctive responses, growth, or temporary states of the organism, such as hunger, fatigue, or sleep. It is clear that learning is an ongoing process that is dynamic, adaptive, and subject to change. Also, learning is an experience and practice that actually brings about changes in behavior. For example, in order to learn how to play tennis, you might participate in it to gain experience, be exposed to the different skills required, the rules, and so forth. However, the experience does not have to be an actual, physical one. It could be a conceptualization of a potential experience. In other words, you could learn to play tennis by reading about how to play without actually doing it. This is called non experiential learning.

Non experiential learning is particularly relevant  in consumer behavior. For example, assume you are considering purchasing a bottle of Zinfandel wine. You ask the salesclerk what it tastes like. and he tells you it tastes like a strong ginger ale. Not liking the taste of ginger ale, you reject me purchase. Thus you have learned that you do not like Zinfandel wine without having a direct taste experience. A great deal of our learning is of this type. This may be one reason why marketers try to identify opinions leaders who in tum tell others in the market about the benefits of the product.

Another characteristic of learning is that the changes may be immediate or anticipated. In other words, just because we do not see immediate evidence that learning has taken place is no reason to assume that learning has not occurred. We can store our learning until it is needed, and frequently do this in terms of making purchase decisions. For example, we are willing to learn about many product attributes even though we do not expect to buy the product in the near future.

As new information is processed and stored overtime, consumer learning takes place There are several theories of learning: one of the most useful to marketers is that of socialization. Socialization refers co tile process by which persons acquire the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that make them more or less able members of their society. The assumption made is that behavior is acquired and modified over the person's lifecycle.

The social learning approach stresses sources of influence-"socialization agents" (i.e., other people)-that transmit cognitive and behavioral patterns to the learner. In the case of consumer socialization , this takes place in the course of the person's interaction with other individuals in various social settings. Socialization agents might include any person, organization, or information source that comes into contact with the consumer.

Consumers acquire this information from the other individuals through the processes of modeling, reinforcement, and social interaction Modeling involves imitation of the agent's behavior. For example, a teenager may acquire a brand name preference for !zod from friends. Marketers can make use of this concept by employing spokespersons to endorse their products and services who have strong credibility with their target consumers, as in the case of Bill Cosby (Jell-G). Reinforcement involves either a reward or a punishment mechanism used by the agent. A parent may be reinforced by good product performance, excellent post- purchase services, or some similar rewarding experience. The social interaction mechanism is less specific as to the type of learning involved; it may include a combination of mooeling and reinforcement. The social setting within which learning takes place can be defined in terms of variables such as social class, sex, and family size.

These variables can influence learning through their impact on the relationship between the consumer and others. It should be noted that an individual who promotes learning can be anyone-such as parent, friend, salesperson or television spokesperson.

Motivation Motivation is a concept that is difficult to define, in fact, the difficulty of defining motives and dealing with motivation in consumer research accounts for its limited application. For the most part, the research in motivation involves benefit segmentation and patronage motives. Patronage motives typically concern we consumer's reasons for shopping at a particular outlet. Consumers are classified, for example, as price-conscious, convenience-oriented, service-oriented, or in terms of some other motivating feature.

A motive is the inner drive or pressure to take action to satisfy a need. To be motivated is to be a goal-oriented individual. Some goal are positive, some are negative, some individuals have a high level of goal orientation, some have a very low level. In all cases, the need must be aroused or stimulated to a high enough level so that it can serve as a motive.

It is possible (and usual) to have needs that are latent (unstimulated) and that therefore do not serve as the motive of behavior. The sources of this arousal may be internal (people get hungry), environmental (you see an ad for a Big Mac), or psychological (just thinking about food can cause hunger). It is possible (and usual) to have needs that are latent (unstimulated) and that therefore do not serve as the motive of behavior.

For motivation to be useful in marketing practice, a marketing manager must under- stand what motives and behaviors are influenced by the specific situation in which consumers engage in goal-directed, problem-solving behavior.

Motivation flows from an unmet need, as does all consumer problem solving. Perhaps the best known theory dealing with individual motivation is provided in the work of A.H. Maslow. One of the most important parts of Maslow's theory is his development of a model consisting of several different levels of needs that exist in a human being and relate to each other via a "need hierarchy". Maslow has differentiated between five levels of needs. The first of these concerns itself with physiological needs ; that is, hunger, thirst, and other basic drives. All living beings, regardless of their level of maturity, possess physiological needs. Physiological needs are omnipresent and are of a recurrent nature.

Safety and security needs are second in Maslow's hierarchy. The difference between physiological needs and safety and security needs is somewhat hazy. Safety and security imply a continued fulfillment of physiological needs. This is an extension of the more basic needs.

Third in Maslow's hierarchy of needs are the love needs. These are the needs for belonging and friendship. They involve a person's interaction with others. The fourth level of needs in Maslow's hierarchy is the esteem needs. These are needs related to feeling good about oneself and having a positive self-image.

The fifth and highest level in Maslow's needs hierarchy is the need for self-actualization or self-fulfillment. This need can be defined as the need of a person to reach his full potential in terms of the application of his own abilities and interest in functioning in his environment.

It is important in discussing these levels of Maslow's hierarchy to point out two additional factors. First, Maslow has clearly indicated that these five levels of needs operate on an unconscious level. That is, the individual is probably not aware of concentration upon one particular need or one assortment of needs. One of the misunderstandings associated with Maslow's theory is that he believes the five needs to be mutually exclusive. That, in fact, is not the intent of Mas low. To the contrary, several of these needs may occur simultaneously for anyone individual; the relative importance of each need for anyone individual determines the hierarchy involved.

When we attempt to integrate Maslow's needs hierarchy with the concept of segmentation, we can see that a manager might find certain subgroups that fit together because of some homogeneity of needs. For example, a marketer may target a group with strong self-esteem needs in designing a promotional program for cosmetics. Appeals to higher-order needs are important for many products and services, even basic commodities.

Personality is used to summarize all the traits of a person that make him/her unique. No two people have the same traits, but several attempts have been made to classify people with similar traits. Perhaps the best-known personality types are those proposed by Carl Jung, as is a variation on the work of his teacher, Sigmund Freud. His personality categories are introvert and extrovert. The introvert is described as defensive, inner-directed, and withdrawn from others. The extrovert is outgoing, other-directed, and assertive. Several other more elaborate classifications have also been devised.

Various personality types, like people with various motives, are likely to respond in different ways to different market offerings. For example, an extrovert may enjoy the shopping experience and rely more on personal observation to secure information; thus, in-store promotion would become an important communication tool. Knowing the basic personality traits of target customers can be useful information for the manager in designing the marketing mix. Marketers have, however, found personality to be difficult to apply in developing marketing strategy. The primary reason for this is the lack of good ways to measure personality traits. Most available measures were developed to identify people with problems that needed medical attention. These have little value with consumers who are mentally healthy. As a result, most marketers have turned to lifestyle analysis.

Lifestyle one of the newer and increasingly important set of factors that is being used to understand consumer behavior is lifestyle. Lifestyle has been generally defined as the attitudes, interests, and opinions of the potential customer. Such variables as interest in hunting, attitude toward the role of women in society, and opinion on the importance of dressing well can be used to better understand the market and its behavior.

It is the multifaceted aspect of lifestyle research that makes it so useful in consumer analysis. A prominent lifestyle researcher, Joseph T. Plummer, summarizes the concept as follows:

A useful application of the lifestyle concept relates to consumer's shopping orientation. Different customers approach shopping in very different ways. They have different attitudes and opinions about shopping and different levels of interest in shopping. Once people know their alternatives, how do they evaluate and choose among them? In particular, how do people choose among brands of a product? Current description of this process emphasizes the role of attitudes. An attitude is an opinion of a person, idea, place, or thing. Attitudes range based on a continuum from very negative to very positive. Traditionally, an attitude is broken down into three components: cognitive, effective, and behavioral. That is, an attitude is first what we know/believe, followed by what we feel, and ending with an action. Thus, we have learned that a particular company has been polluting a local river; we feel very strongly that business shouldn't do this and feel very angry; and we boycott the product made by that company.

A great deal of marketing strategy is based on the idea that the cognitive, effective, and behavioral components of an attitude tend to be consistent. Thus, if it is possible to change what people believe about Yamaha CD players, their feelings and their actions may eventually change as well. However, this relationship among the three components of an attitude seems to be situation- or even product-specific. For example, attitudes tend to predict behavior better in high-involvement decisions. Thus, if someone has a strong attitude about wearing stylish clothes, then it is possible to predict that the person will restrict purchases to a particular set of brands. Furthermore, we do not react to products in isolation. The situation, or our attitude toward the situation, plays an important role in how well attitudes predict behavior. For example, assume that a consumer likes pizza but doesn't like Pizza Inn pizza. In a social setting where everyone wants to go to Pizza Inn for pizza, this person might eat this brand rather than not have pizza at all.

Despite limitations on the predictive power of attitudes, attitudes can help us understand how choices are made. However, we need to carefully assess the validity of the attitude-behavior relationships for each situation and product.

MARKETING CAPSULE

The following factors influence consumer behavior:

Given the hypothesis that attitudes influence buying behavior, how can a company bring its products and consumers' attitudes into a consistent state; that is, into a situation where consumers evaluate a given product or brand as satisfying their need? Marketers have two choices: either they can change consumers' attitudes to be consistent with their product, or they can change the product to match attitudes. It is easier to change the product than to change consumers' attitudes. Nevertheless, attitudes can sometimes be modified. Modifying attitudes might be the only reasonable choice, as when a firm is introducing a truly new product or an unusual new use for an existing one. Marketers should never the-less face the fact that it is extremely difficult to change consumers' attitudes. If there is to be change, it is most likely to occur when people are open-minded in their beliefs or when an existing attitude is of weak intensity; that is, when there is little information to support the attitude or very little ego involvement on the individual 's part. The stronger a person's loyalty to a certain brand, for example, the more difficult it is to change that attitude.