消费者需求研究.docx

第三章 消费者需求研究

教学目的：通过对消费者市场和购买行为的相关知识的讲授，使学生掌握关于“研究消费者市场和购买行为”对营销决策的重要性。
教学重点：消费者行为；影响消费者行为的内在因素；影响消费者行为的外在因素；消费者购买行为的主要类型；消费者购买决策过程的主要步骤。
教学难点：分析消费者购买行为。
教学时数：6（讲授、实践、讨论）
教学内容与步骤：
消费者创造了人类的财富
科特勒论营销：最重要的事情是预测顾客的行踪，并且能走在他们的前面。
杨洪涛论营销：消费者购买的是需求，而非产品。

本章主要内容
􀂄 购买者需求的特性以及怎样影响购买行为？
􀂄 购买者是怎样做出购买决策的？

Chapter3 Analyzing Consumer Markets and Buyer Behavior

Kotler on Marketing
The most important thing is to forecast where customers are moving, and be in front of them.
Chapter Objectives
§ In this chapter, we focus on two questions:
1. How do the buyers’ characteristics – cultural, social, personal, and psychological – influence buying behavior?
2. How does the buyer make purchasing decisions?

Influencing buyer behavior
The starting point for understanding buyer behavior is the stimulus-response model shown in Figure 7.1. Marketing and environmental stimuli enter the buyer's consciousness. The buyer's characteristics and decision processes lead to certain purchase decisions. The marketer's task is to understand what happens in the buyer's consciousness between the arrival of outside stimuli and the purchase decisions.
A consumer's buying behavior is influenced by cultural, social, personal, and psychological factors. Cultural factors exert the broadest and deepest influence.
Cultural factors
Culture, subculture, and social class are particularly important in buying behavior. Culture is the fundamental determinant of a person's wants and behavior. The growing child acquires a set of values, perceptions, preferences, and behaviors through his or her family and other key institutions. A child growing up in the United States is exposed to the following values: achievement and success, activity, efficiency and practicality, progress, material comfort, individualism, freedom, external comfort, humanitarianism, and youthfulness.
Each culture consists of smaller subcultures that provide more specific identification and socialization for their members. Subcultures include nationalities, religions, racial groups, and geographic regions. When subcultures grow large and affluent enough, companies often design specialized marketing programs to serve them. Such programs are known as diversity marketing, a practice which was pioneered during the 1980s by large companies like AT&T, Sears Roebuck, and Coca-Cola. Diversity marketing grew out of careful marketing research, which revealed that different ethnic and demographic niches did not always respond favorably to mass-market advertising. (See "Marketing Insight: Marketing to Latinos, African Americans, and seniors.")
Virtually all-human societies exhibit social stratification. Stratification sometimes takes the form of a caste system where the members of different castes are reared for certain roles and cannot change their caste membership. More frequently, it takes the form of social classes, relatively homogeneous and enduring divisions in a society, which are hierarchically ordered and whose members share similar values, interests, and behavior.
Social classes reflect not only income, but also other indicators such as occupation, education, and area of residence: Social classes differ in dress, speech patterns, recreational preferences, and many other characteristics. Table 7.1 describes the seven U.S. social classes identified by social scientists. Social classes have several characteristics. First, those within each class tend to behave more alike than persons from two different social classes. Second, persons are perceived as occupying inferior or superior positions according to social class. Third, social class is indicated by a cluster of variables---for example, occupation, income, wealth, education, and value orientation--rather than by any single variable. Fourth, individuals can move up or down the social-class ladder during their lifetimes. The extent of this mobility varies according to how rigid the social stratification is in a given society.
Social classes show distinct product and brand preferences in many areas, including clothing, home furnishings, leisure activities, and automobiles. Social classes differ in media preferences, with upper-class consumers preferring magazines and books and lower-class consumers preferring television. Even within a media category such as TV, upper-class consumers prefer news and drama, and lower-class consumers prefer soap operas and sports programs. There are also language differences among the social classes. Advertising copy and dialogue must ring true to the targeted social class.
Social factors
In addition to cultural factors, a consumer's behavior is influenced by such social factors as reference groups, family, and social roles and statuses.
REFERENCE GROUPS A person s reference groups consist of all the groups that have a direct (face-to-face) or indirect influence on the person's attitudes or behavior. Groups having a direct influence on a person are called membership groups.
FAMILY the family is the most important consumer-buying organization in society and family members constitute the most influential primary reference group. The family has been researched extensively. We can distinguish between two families in that buyer's life. The family of orientation consists of parents and siblings. From parents person acquires an orientation toward religion, politics, and economics and a sense personal ambition, self-worth, and love? Even if the buyer no longer interacts very much with his or her parents, their influence on the buyer's behavior can be significant. In countries where parents live with grown children, their influence can be substantial. A more direct influence on everyday buying behavior is the family of procreation namely, one's spouse and children.
ROLES AN D STATUSES A person participates in many groups--family, clubs, organizations. The person's position in each group can be defined in terms of r61e and status. A role consists of the activities a person is expected to perform. Each role carries a status.
Personal factors
A buyer's decisions are also influenced by personal characteristics. These include the buyer's age and stage in the life cycle, occupation, economic circumstances, lifestyle, and personality and self-concept.
AGE AND STAGE IN THE LIFE CYCLE People buy different goods and services over a lifetime. They eat baby food in the early years, most foods in the growing and mature years, and special diets in the later years. Taste in clothes, furniture, and recreation is also age related.

OCCUPATION AND ECONOMIC CIRCUMSTANCES Occupation also influences consumption patterns. A blue-collar worker will buy work clothes, work shoes, and lunchboxes. A company president will buy expensive suits, air travel, and country club membership. Marketers try to identify the occupational groups that have above-average interest in their products and services. A company can even tailor its products for certain occupational groups: Computer software companies, for example, design different products for brand managers, engineers, lawyers, and physicians.
LIFESTYLE People from the same subculture, social class, and occupation may lead quite different lifestyles. A lifestyle is a person's pattern of living in the world as expressed in activities, interests, and opinions. Lifestyle portrays the "whole person" interacting with his or her environment. Marketers search for relationships between their products and lifestyle groups. For example, a computer manufacturer might find that most computer buyers are achievement-oriented. The marketer may then aim the brand more clearly at the achiever lifestyle.
Psychographics is the science of using psychology and demographics to better understand consumers. One of the most popular commercially available classification systems based on psychographics measurements is SRI Consulting Business Intelligence's (SRIC-BI) VALSTM framework. VALS classifies all U.S. adults into eight primary groups based on psychological attributes and key demographics. The segmentation system is based on responses to a questionnaire featuring 4 demographic and 35 attitudinal questions. The VALS system is continually updated with new data from more then 80,000 surveys per year.
The major tendencies of the four groups with high resources are:
1. Actualizes: Successful, sophisticated, active, "take-charge" people. Purchases often reflect cultivated tastes for relatively upscale, niche-oriented products.
2. Fulfilled: Mature, satisfied, comfortable, and reflective. Favor durability, functionality, and value in products.
3. Achievers: Successful, career- and work-oriented. Favor established, prestige products that demonstrate success to their peers.
4. Experiences: Young, vital, enthusiastic, impulsive, and rebellious. Spend a comparatively high proportion of income on clothing, fast food, music, movies, and video.
The major tendencies of the four groups with lower resources are:
1. Believers: Conservative, conventional, and traditional. Favor familiar products and established brands.
2. Strivers: Uncertain, insecure, approval-seeking, resource constrained. Favor stylish products that emulate the purchases of those with greater material wealth.
3. Makers: Practical, self-sufficient, traditional, family-oriented. Favor only products with a practical or functional purpose such as tools, utility vehicles, fishing equipment.
4. Strugglers: Elderly, resigned, passive, concerned, resource constrained cautious consumers who are loyal to favorite brands.
PERSONALITY AND SELF-CONCEPT Each person has personality characteristics that influence his or her buying behavior. By personality, we mean a set of distinguishing human psychological traits that lead to relatively consistent and enduring responses to environmental stimuli. Personality is often described in terms of such traits as self- confidence, dominance, autonomy, deference, sociability, defensiveness, and adaptability. Personality can be useful variable in analyzing consumer brand choices. The idea is that brands also have personalities, and that consumers are likely to choose brands whose personalities match their own. We define brand personality as the specific mix of human traits that may be attributed to a particular brand.
Psychological factors
A person's buying choices are influenced by four major psychological factors--motivation, perception, learning, and beliefs and attitudes.
M OTIVAII 0 N A person has many needs at any given time. Some needs are bioorganic; they arise from physiological states of tension such as hunger, thirst, or discomfort. Other needs are psychogenesis; they arise from psychological states of tension such as the need for recognition, esteem, or belonging. A need becomes a motive when it is aroused to a sufficient level of intensity. A motive is a need that is sufficiently pressing to drive the person to act.
The buying decision process
Buying roles
Buying behavior
COMPLEX BUYING BEHAVIOR Complex buying behavior involves a three-step process. First, the buyer develops beliefs about the product. Second, he or she develops attitudes about the product. Third, he or she makes a thoughtful choice. Consumers engage in complex buying behavior when they are highly involved in a purchase and aware of significant differences among brands. This is usually the case when the product is expensive, bought infrequently, risky, and highly self-expressive, like an automobile.
The marketer of a high-involvement product must understand consumers' information gathering and evaluation behavior. The marketer needs to develop strategies that assist the buyer in learning about the product's attributes and their relative importance, and which call attention to the high standing of the company's brand on the more important attributes. The marketer needs to differentiate the brand's features, use print media to describe the brand's benefits, and motivate sales personnel and the buyer's acquaintances to influence the final brand choice. DISSONANCE-REDUCING BUYER BEHAVIOR sometimes the consumer is highly involved in a purchase but sees little difference in brands. The high involvement is based on the fact that the purchase is expensive, infrequent, and risky. In this case, the buyer will shop around to learn what is available. If the consumer finds quality differences in the brands, he or she might go for the higher price. If the consumer finds little difference, he or she might simply buy on price or convenience.
After the purchase, the consumer might experience dissonance that stems from noticing certain disquieting features or hearing favorable things about other brands, and will be alert to information that supports his or her decision. In this example, the consumer first acted, and then acquired new beliefs, then ended up with a set of attitudes; Marketing communications should supply beliefs and evaluations that help the consumer feel good about his or her brand choice.
HABITUAL BUYIN6 BEHAVIOR Many products are bought under conditions of low involvement and the absence of significant brand differences. Consider salt. Consumers have little involvement in this product category. They go to the store and reach for the brand. If they keep reaching for the same brand, it is out of habit, not strong brand loyalty. There is good evidence that consumers have low involvement with most low-cost, frequently purchased products.
VARIETY-SEEKING BUYING BEHAVIOR some buying situations are characterized by low involvement but significant brand differences. Here consumers often do a lot of brand switching. Think about cookies. The consumer has some beliefs about cookies, chooses a brand of cookies without much evaluation, and evaluates the product during consumption. Next time, the consumer may reach for another brand out of a wish for a different taste. Brand switching occurs for the sake of variety rather than dissatisfaction.

The market leader and the minor brands in this product category have different marketing strategies. The market leader will try to encourage habitual buying behavior by dominating the shelf space, avoiding out-of-stock conditions, and sponsoring frequent reminder advertising. Challenger firms will encourage variety seeking by offering lower prices, deals, coupons, free samples, and advertising that presents reasons for trying something new.
Stages of the buying decision process
Smart companies will immerse themselves in trying to understand the customer's overall experience in learning about a product, making a brand choice, using the product, and even disposing of it. Honda engineers took videos of shoppers loading groceries into car trunks to observe their frustrations and generate possible design solutions, Intuit, the maker of Quicken financial software, watched first-time buyers try to lea