Category: Consumer Behavior
Attitude
The attitude of consumers is the way they feel about a product, or their beliefs and/or intentions directed towards the product. It can be a decisive factor in the outcome of consumers' interaction with a product and thus it is important that marketing teams pay close attention to it.
Basics
An in depth examination of the basic principles and ideas that marketing specialists use to study consumer behavior. Marketers observe consumer responses and actions related to the purchase, consumption, and disposal of products. This information is used to formulate patterns in order to predict future consumer behavior and adjust marketing strategies accordingly.
Culture & Subculture
Market researchers have observed that consumers are affected by their cultures. Also, subcultures are smaller groups within a culture with different views and behaviors that marketing professionals need to look out for.
Decision Process
Studying the process consumers use to decide whether or not to purchase a product is useful for market research. Marketing professionals can use this data to find ways to amend their products to better cater to the consumers' wants.
Family
Family plays an important role in the development of people's character. So it follows that the way they consume products and services is shaped by their family as well. This branch of consumer behavior studies these effects and how to utilize them in marketing strategies.
Learning
Unique to Humankind, is the ability to recall the past and contemplate, or analyze it. Consumers adapt their responses to different products and services based on past experiences. The consumer response is affected by the perception they had when they encountered the product in the past, and conclusions they made based on their perception. Marketers use data collected from consumer learning research to find ways to enhance consumers’ perception, to skew the response in their favor.
Models
Several models have been proposed to predict consumer behavior. There are many, some traditional, some are modern. Marketing professionals study several types and decide which model to use according to their business type, target consumers and various other factors.
Socialization
This branch of consumer behavior studies the effects of consumers' social environment, especially during adolescence. A number of social factors have been shown to affect the way people consume goods - such as peer pressure and mass media. Some research goes as far as to suggest these effects go on to adulthood as well.
Theories
Marketers pay special attention to the complex psychological processes that consumers undergo regarding products that are available to them. There are several widely accepted theories that professional marketers use to piece together the psychology behind consumer behavior. The most well known theories are based on experiments and scientific analysis of the results.