SOCIAL GROUPS AND CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

Social Groups and Consumer Behaviour

Social Groups and Consumer Behaviour

The study of how and why persons purchase goods and services is termed consumer buying behaviour. The period wrappings the decision-making processes from those that precede the purchase of goods or services to the last know-how of utilising the merchandise or service (Abdulsalami 2004). Models of consumer buying behaviour draw simultaneously the diverse leverages on, and the process of, the buying decision. They try to understand the proverbial 'blackbox' of what occurs inside the consumer between his or her exposure to marketing stimuli and the genuine decision to purchase.

Understanding the consumer decision processes (Kapferer and Laurent, 1985) that drives consumers towards choosing a specific product or brand has been a priority to the organization's top management. As both the size of organizations and markets are in continuous growth, so has the distance of interactions between the organizations and consumers, thus making the collection of information about the consumers' behavior that more challenging (Kotler et al, 2005), this information can help answer a number of critical questions that are specific to tailoring the brand towards the market needs (Orth et al, 2004; Kotler et al, 2005), in addition to addressing the market's needs; organizations can further utilize this information towards developing effective advertising, pricing and promotional programs (Orth et al, 2004;Kotler et al 2005).

In this chapter we shall review the literature on consumer brand behavior and the relationship between consumers' self-concept and brands, and that is to develop an overview that will serve as a foundation to compare and contrast our findings, after which we shall explore and discuss a number of different construals, namely the Brand engagement in self-concept (BESC) (Sprott et al, 2009) , Relational-interdependence self-construal (RISC) (Cross, 1997,1999,2000) and Susceptibility to normative influence (SNI) (Schmit et al, 1995; Brata et al, 2001; Breadan et al, 1989 ; Orth et al, 2008) examining the various dimensions and influences related to the aforementioned construal towards the consumers' brand choice according the empirical findings in the literature. Finally, we illustrate the implications relevant to the cultural difference and different aspects that are factored in influence the consumers' brand choice.

In the next reading, Kotler et al. (2004) succinctly interpret the 'black box' model; although Figure 4.1 displays the content and process engaged much clearer.

 

 

Four Major Factors That Influence Consumer Buyer Behaviour

A Consumers Buyer Behaviour Is Influenced By Four Major Factors; Cultural, Social, Personal, And Psychological consumers buyer behaviour is leveraged by four foremost factors; heritage, communal, individual, and psychological factors. These components origin consumers to evolve merchandise and emblem preferences (Shibutani 2005). Although numerous of these components will not be exactly controlled by marketers, understanding of their influence is absolutely crucial as marketing blend schemes can be evolved to apply to the preferences of the goal market. When purchasing any merchandise, a consumer proceeds through a decision process. This process consists of up to five stages: difficulty acknowledgement, data seek, evaluation of options, purchase decisions and mail ...