UNDERSTANDING CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

Understanding Consumer Behaviour

[Name of the Student]

[Name of the institute]

Understanding Consumer Behaviour

1a: Motivation

Motivation is what stimulates a human behavior to satisfying the need. The process of motivation is initiated by the tension created by an unsatisfied want. An individual makes effort to reduce that tension. The motives or needs are the root of the motivation process of various kinds. It includes the physiological needs like need for air, food, clothing, shelter and sex while the secondary needs which include the need for status,security, affection etc (Fishbein, 6).

The motivation could be negative or positive, hedonic or utilitarian, and the goals are formulated accordingly. A person may have many goals and a failure to satisfy these goals may create tension. An individual can deal with this by targeting related or substitute goals or by creating a defense mechanism like aggression, rationalization, withdrawal, to regression (Engel, 555). The positive motivation is a response which takes place when a person's performance is driven by a former reinforcing behavior. It creates an approach behavior. On the other hand, the negative motivation is creating avoidance behaviour due to the discrepancies between the need and the satisfaction of the need and an unfavourable experience. It is characterized by an improvement in performance out of fear due to lack of goof performance. Negative motivation decreases a person's self esteem and self confidence (Engel, 555).

1b: Theories of motivation and cola purchase decision

In explaining the cola buying behavior, the biogenic and psychogenic needs are at play. The biogenic needs are the ones necessary for maintaining life, whereas the psychogenic needs are culture related needs for example, the need for power, affiliation and status etc. people buy cola not to satisfy thirst, but to display a social status and a specific role in the society which has been created by cola drinking trend (Engel, 65).

There are three best known theories of motivation that carry implications for the consumer buying analysis and marketing strategy. They were presented by Sigmund Freud, Abraham Maslow, and Frederick Hertzberg. Freud's theory assumes that the psychological forces that shape people's behaviour are unconscious and that individual cannot fully understand their motivation. It is important to know that when a person analyses a specific brand he/she will react to the stated capabilities but also to less conscious cues like shape, size, with, material, brand name and colour. All can trigger certain associations and emotions'. In case of the cola buying behaviour, the unconscious motivation of the status and social esteem are the ones that a person gets through satisfying the social need (Engel, 65).

Secondly, theories of motivation helped the marketers in identifying how consumer's consumption is influenced by their needs. Abraham Maslow arranged the significant needs into the hierarchy of five levels depending on the relative significance to a person. The five levels are:

Physiological needs

Safety need

Social needs

Egoistic or self esteem needs

Self actualization needs

These needs play an important role in influencing the consumer behavior for instance; Maslow's theory explains why people are driven by specific needs at certain ...