Description
A number of internal and external influences that can affect a consumer’s decision/behaviour with respect to a product
Factors Influencing Consumer
Behaviour:
Figure 4 Factors Influencing Consumer Behaviour
As we can see there are a number of internal and external influences that can affect a
consumer?s decision/behaviour with respect to a product. Discussing the above in detail would
give a holistic perspective on consumer behaviour.
Internal Influences
? Perception
? Motivation
? Learning
? Attitudes
? Personality
? Age Groups
? Lifestyle
Situational Influences
? Communication
Situation
? Purchase
Situation
? Usage Situation
? Disposal
Situation
Social Influences
? Culture
? Subculture
? Social Class
? Group
Memberships
? Opinion
Leaders
Decision
Process
Purchase!!
I nternal I nfluences
Figure 4 Internal Influences
? Motivation:
It is an internal state that drives us to satisfy needs. Motivation is the reason or
reasons for engaging in a particular behaviour, especially human behaviour as studied in
philosophy, conflict, economics, psychology, and neuropsychology. These reasons may
include basic needs such as food or a desired object, hobbies, goal, state of being, or ideal.
What it does is, it exerts a push towards action that satisfies a need, which in most of the
cases leads to a purchase.
The extent to which the consumer is motivated depends on the importance of the need
to him. The needs in order of their importance have been described by Abraham Maslow in
Motivation Perception Age
Attitudes Lifestyle Personality
1943in a paper called „A theory of Human Motivation? and is commonly known as
Maslow?s Hierarchy of Needs, represented as a pyramid with the more primitive needs at the
bottom. The higher needs in this hierarchy only come into focus when the lower needs in the
pyramid are satisfied. Once an individual has moved upwards to the next level, the needs in
the lower level will no longer be prioritized. If a lower set of needs is no longer being met,
the individual will temporarily re-prioritize those needs by focusing attention on the
unfulfilled needs, but will not permanently regress to the lower level. For instance, a
businessman at the esteem level who is diagnosed with cancer will spend a great deal of time
concentrating on his health (physiological needs), but will continue to value his work
performance (esteem needs) and will likely return to work during periods of remission.
Figure 5 Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
? Physiological needs:
These are the basic human needs for such things as sex, warmth, water,
and other bodily needs. If a person is hungry or thirsty or their body is chemically
unbalanced, all of their energies turn toward remedying these deficiencies and
other needs remain inactive.
? Safety Needs:
With their physical needs relatively satisfied, the individual's safety needs
take over and dominate their behaviour. These needs have to do with people's
yearning for a predictable, orderly world in which injustice and inconsistency are
under control, the familiar frequent and the unfamiliar rare. In the world of work,
safety needs manifest themselves in such things as a preference for job security,
grievance procedures for protecting the individual from unilateral authority,
savings accounts, insurance policies, and the like.
? Social Needs:
After physiological and safety needs are fulfilled, the third layer of human
needs is social. This psychological aspect of Maslow's hierarchy involves
emotionally-based relationships in general. Humans need to feel a sense of
belonging and acceptance, whether it comes from a large social group, such as
clubs, office culture, religious groups, professional organisations, sports teams,
gangs , or small social connections. They need to love and be loved (sexually and
non-sexually) by others. In the absence of these elements, many people become
susceptible to loneliness, social anxiety, and clinical depression. This need for
belonging can often overcome the physiological and security needs, depending on
the strength of the peer pressure; an anorexic, for example, ignores the need to eat
and the security of health for a feeling of control and belonging.
? Esteem Needs:
All humans have a need to be respected, to have self-esteem, self-respect,
and to respect others. People need to engage themselves to gain recognition and
have an activity or activities that give the person a sense of contribution, to feel
accepted and self-valued, be it in a profession or hobby.
? Self-Actualization:
When all of the foregoing needs are satisfied, then and only then are the
needs for self-actualization activated. Maslow describes self-actualization as a
person's need to be and do that which the person was "born to do." "A musician
must make music, an artist must paint, and a poet must write." These needs make
themselves felt in signs of restlessness. The person feels on edge, tense, lacking
something, in short, restless. If a person is hungry, unsafe, not loved or accepted,
or lacking self-esteem, it is very easy to know what the person is restless about. It
is not always clear what a person wants when there is a need for self-
actualization.
? Perception:
In psychology and the cognitive sciences, perception is the process of attaining
awareness or understanding of sensory information. For us it is the process by which
consumers select, organize, and interpret information regarding the product. The consumer is
first exposed to the product through various mediums used to grab his attention; the
consumer then interprets what?s been shown to him/her about the product and forms his view
or perception of the product.
Exposure Attention Interpretation
? Age Groups:
Consumer behaviour can vary on the basis of age as well; consumers from different
age groups might have different preferences. Consumers based on their ages can be
broadly classified as children, teens, young adults, middle aged and the elderly.
Consumers from different age groups might have different preferences even when it
comes to the same product e.g. T-shirts, a child would prefer something with a cartoon
character on it, a teenager on the other hand would prefer one with some rock band poster
on it, a young adult would prefer clever graffiti, a middle age or older consumer would
prefer something sober and plain.
Sometimes companies design products that are aimed at specific age groups e.g.
products like luxury cruises to exotic locales often target older consumers who are retired
and have the time and money for expensive travel, or products like gaming consoles
which target consumers from lower age groups. Related to age groups, our purchases also
depend on our current position in the family life cycle – stages through which family
members pass as they grow older.
? Attitude:
The term attitude is used here to denote the valuation of a concept or an object, i.e. to
which extent the object or concept is judged to be good or bad in a general global
meaning i.e. attitude is the amount of affect or feeling for or against a stimulus e.g. how
good would it be for Sweden to stay as a member in the European Union? How good is
the Indian nuclear power program? Attitude in this sense can be studied with the help of
one or a few judgment scales. The object or concept judged can be more general or
specific, but usually it is rather specific. In this way attitude is different from value which
is a judgment, similar to the one used in the measurement of attitudes, of a general or
abstract concept. Examples of such concepts are freedom and equality.
? Lifestyle is a term which can have at least three different meanings:
1. The values that a person expresses with reference to a limited number of basic
dimensions (freedom, justice, equality, etc).
2. A group or cluster of attitudes, opinions, interests and activities. In this case the
investigator usually includes a theoretical mixture of very different concepts
which are supposed to serve as a basis for classifying or segmenting a population.
The segmentation should in its turn be possible to use in marketing products or
influencing habits.
3. Actual „patterns of behaviour?, e.g., lifestyles characterized by substance abuse or
an active leisure time involving sports, work in political organisations, etc.
A lifestyle is a pattern of living that determines how people choose to spend their
time, money, and energy and reflects their status, values, tastes, and preferences expressed
through preferences for sports activities, music interests, and political opinions. It is obvious
that lifestyle is a very important factor when it comes to consumer behaviour and decision
making. There are many products that are based on consumers? lifestyle e.g. a person will
pay ten to fifteen times more to have an imported luxury sedan even though the same service
can be provided by a small car, another example, in a study of electricity consumption it was
found in a family which was extreme in its consumption of energy that the reason mainly was
that two teenage daughters spent several hours in the shower each day. It was therefore,
according to the researchers, the lifestyle which was the explanation of energy consumption
in this case.
Life values are believed to provide the motivation for buying. They are usually
characterized by a set of values, which differ in relative importance from person to person.
They tend to be abstract so their impact on consumer behaviour will be quite indirect. The
way in which consumers use product and services in a certain area to attain their life values
can also be called consumer lifestyle. What is important from a marketing point of view is
that different types of consumers have to be addressed in different ways. Lifestyle is thus a
useful tool for segmentation.
? Personality:
An individual?s personality relates to perceived personal characteristics that are
consistently exhibited, especially when one acts in the presence of others. In most, but not
all, cases the behaviour one projects in a situation is similar to the behaviour a person
exhibits in another situation. In this way personality is the sum of sensory experiences others
get from experiencing a person (i.e., how one talks, reacts, etc).
For marketers it is important to know that consumers make purchase decisions to
support their self concept. Using research techniques to identify how consumers view
themselves may give marketers insight into products and promotion options that are not
readily apparent. For example, when examining consumers a marketer may initially build
marketing strategy around more obvious clues to consumption behaviour, such as consumer?s
demographic indicators (e.g., age, occupation, income, etc). However, in-depth research may
yield information that shows consumers are purchasing products to fulfill self-concept
objectives that have little to do with the demographic category they fall into e.g., senior
citizen making purchases that make them feel younger. Appealing to the consumer?s self
concept needs could expand the market to which the product is targeted.
Situational Influences
Social Influences
The way we think, perceive and act depends a lot upon social factors. These factors were
analysed by a number of scientists such as W. J. Stanton, M. J. Etzel and B. J. Walker (1991).
They highlighted four social factors that influence consumer behaviour:
o Culture & Sub-Culture
o Social Class
o Group Behaviour and Reference Groups
o Opinion Leaders
According to the authors, “social factors influence consumer behaviour directly and
indirectly“. Indirect social factors act through psychological factors. This means that social
factors do influence the formation of psychological factors (consumer motivation, perception,
attitude, etc) that in turn influence consumer behaviour.
•This refers to the surrounding noise, effective communication
between the consumer and the vendor,wether the consumer
is alone or with a group.
Communication
Situation
•This refers to the condition of the consumer's environment
while purchasing, is he relaxed or is it an emergency, is he
alone or with others, where is he making the purchase, etc. Purchase Situation
•This is defined by the kind of usage which the product will
undergo. Is it going to be used indivisually or by a group,
wether it is for pleasure or for business, etc. Usage Situation
•Here the consumer regards the product with respect to trade-
ins before next purchase,or after the purchare, packaging is
anather issue here as it affects the ease of disposal and
storage.
Disposal Situation
? Culture and Subcultures:
Culture generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that
give such activities significance and importance. Cultures can be "understood as systems of
symbols and meanings that even their creators contest, that lack fixed boundaries, that are
constantly in flux, and that interact and compete with one another". Culture can be defined as all
the ways of life including arts, beliefs and institutions of a population that is passed down from
generation to generation. Culture has been called "the way of life for an entire society." As such,
it includes codes of manners, dress, language, religion, rituals, norms of behaviour such as law
and morality, and systems of belief as well as the art.
Culture is the values, beliefs, customs, and tastes produced and valued by a group of
people, whereas a subculture is a group coexisting with other groups in a larger culture whose
members share a distinctive set of beliefs or characteristics. In sociology, anthropology and
cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture (whether distinct or hidden)
which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.
For marketers it is very vital to know the culture to which particular consumers belong
before he gives out the product to the consumers. Culture is an important cog in the mechanism
of consumer behaviour and has to be noticed, e.g. when Mc Donald’s came to India they realized
that Indians do not eat beef as cow is considered holy in our culture, also that most Indians are
vegetarians, so what it did to counter these cultural barriers was to introduced Indianised
versions of burgers!
For better market penetration the subcultures of a society must be taken into account.
Acknowledging these subcultures can often be beneficial, e.g. various eateries and food outlets
offering ‘Jain Food’.
? Social Class:
Social class is the overall rank of people in a society. People in the same class tend to
have similar occupations, similar income levels, and share common tastes in clothes, decorating
styles, and leisure activities. They may share political and religious beliefs. Social class refers to
the hierarchical distinctions (or stratification) between individuals or groups in societies or
cultures. Usually individuals are grouped into classes based on their economic positions and
similar political and economic interests within the stratification system.
? Group Behaviour and Reference Groups:
Group behaviour in sociology refers to the situations where people interact in large or
small groups. The field of group dynamics deals with small groups that may reach consensus and
act in a coordinated way.
A question that comes to my mind here is; how can a group behaviour affect an
individual consumers’ behaviour?
Groups of a large number of people in a given area may act simultaneously to achieve a
goal that differs from what individuals would do acting alone (herd behaviour). A large group (a
crowd or mob) is likely to show examples of group behaviour when people gathered in a given
place and time act in a similar way—for example, joining a protest or march, participating in a
fight or acting patriotically, boycotting a product or coming out in support of a product, etc.
Reference group is a set of people a consumer wants to please or imitate. The “group”
can be composed of one person, a few people, or many people. They may be people you know or
don?t know.
– Conformity is at work when people change as a reaction to real or imagined group pressure.
E.g. in college if everyone wears Nike shoes you would also feel like wearing shoes of the same
brand so as to please your peers and group members and more importantly yourself as the shoes
give you a feeling of being „in? the group or a feeling of being at-par with other group members.
? Opinion Leaders:
The opinion leader is an agent who is an active media user and who interprets the
meaning of media messages or content for lower-end media users. Typically the opinion leader is
held in high esteem by those that accept his or her opinions. Opinion leadership tends to be
subject specific, that is, a person that is an opinion leader in one field may be a follower in
another field.
An example of an opinion leader in the field of computer technology might be a
neighborhood computer service technician. The technician has access to far more information on
this topic than the average consumer and has the requisite background to understand the
information. An opinion leader is hence a person who influences others? attitudes or behaviours
because they are perceived as possessing expertise about the product. They are usually the first
ones to buy a product when it enters the market. Marketers generally target these „opinion
leaders? and use them in marketing communications. Any knowledge about the product is
conveyed through these opinion leaders as they are heavy users of a wide range of information
sources; both getting and giving marketplace information.
doc_805017618.docx
A number of internal and external influences that can affect a consumer’s decision/behaviour with respect to a product
Factors Influencing Consumer
Behaviour:
Figure 4 Factors Influencing Consumer Behaviour
As we can see there are a number of internal and external influences that can affect a
consumer?s decision/behaviour with respect to a product. Discussing the above in detail would
give a holistic perspective on consumer behaviour.
Internal Influences
? Perception
? Motivation
? Learning
? Attitudes
? Personality
? Age Groups
? Lifestyle
Situational Influences
? Communication
Situation
? Purchase
Situation
? Usage Situation
? Disposal
Situation
Social Influences
? Culture
? Subculture
? Social Class
? Group
Memberships
? Opinion
Leaders
Decision
Process
Purchase!!
I nternal I nfluences
Figure 4 Internal Influences
? Motivation:
It is an internal state that drives us to satisfy needs. Motivation is the reason or
reasons for engaging in a particular behaviour, especially human behaviour as studied in
philosophy, conflict, economics, psychology, and neuropsychology. These reasons may
include basic needs such as food or a desired object, hobbies, goal, state of being, or ideal.
What it does is, it exerts a push towards action that satisfies a need, which in most of the
cases leads to a purchase.
The extent to which the consumer is motivated depends on the importance of the need
to him. The needs in order of their importance have been described by Abraham Maslow in
Motivation Perception Age
Attitudes Lifestyle Personality
1943in a paper called „A theory of Human Motivation? and is commonly known as
Maslow?s Hierarchy of Needs, represented as a pyramid with the more primitive needs at the
bottom. The higher needs in this hierarchy only come into focus when the lower needs in the
pyramid are satisfied. Once an individual has moved upwards to the next level, the needs in
the lower level will no longer be prioritized. If a lower set of needs is no longer being met,
the individual will temporarily re-prioritize those needs by focusing attention on the
unfulfilled needs, but will not permanently regress to the lower level. For instance, a
businessman at the esteem level who is diagnosed with cancer will spend a great deal of time
concentrating on his health (physiological needs), but will continue to value his work
performance (esteem needs) and will likely return to work during periods of remission.
Figure 5 Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
? Physiological needs:
These are the basic human needs for such things as sex, warmth, water,
and other bodily needs. If a person is hungry or thirsty or their body is chemically
unbalanced, all of their energies turn toward remedying these deficiencies and
other needs remain inactive.
? Safety Needs:
With their physical needs relatively satisfied, the individual's safety needs
take over and dominate their behaviour. These needs have to do with people's
yearning for a predictable, orderly world in which injustice and inconsistency are
under control, the familiar frequent and the unfamiliar rare. In the world of work,
safety needs manifest themselves in such things as a preference for job security,
grievance procedures for protecting the individual from unilateral authority,
savings accounts, insurance policies, and the like.
? Social Needs:
After physiological and safety needs are fulfilled, the third layer of human
needs is social. This psychological aspect of Maslow's hierarchy involves
emotionally-based relationships in general. Humans need to feel a sense of
belonging and acceptance, whether it comes from a large social group, such as
clubs, office culture, religious groups, professional organisations, sports teams,
gangs , or small social connections. They need to love and be loved (sexually and
non-sexually) by others. In the absence of these elements, many people become
susceptible to loneliness, social anxiety, and clinical depression. This need for
belonging can often overcome the physiological and security needs, depending on
the strength of the peer pressure; an anorexic, for example, ignores the need to eat
and the security of health for a feeling of control and belonging.
? Esteem Needs:
All humans have a need to be respected, to have self-esteem, self-respect,
and to respect others. People need to engage themselves to gain recognition and
have an activity or activities that give the person a sense of contribution, to feel
accepted and self-valued, be it in a profession or hobby.
? Self-Actualization:
When all of the foregoing needs are satisfied, then and only then are the
needs for self-actualization activated. Maslow describes self-actualization as a
person's need to be and do that which the person was "born to do." "A musician
must make music, an artist must paint, and a poet must write." These needs make
themselves felt in signs of restlessness. The person feels on edge, tense, lacking
something, in short, restless. If a person is hungry, unsafe, not loved or accepted,
or lacking self-esteem, it is very easy to know what the person is restless about. It
is not always clear what a person wants when there is a need for self-
actualization.
? Perception:
In psychology and the cognitive sciences, perception is the process of attaining
awareness or understanding of sensory information. For us it is the process by which
consumers select, organize, and interpret information regarding the product. The consumer is
first exposed to the product through various mediums used to grab his attention; the
consumer then interprets what?s been shown to him/her about the product and forms his view
or perception of the product.
Exposure Attention Interpretation
? Age Groups:
Consumer behaviour can vary on the basis of age as well; consumers from different
age groups might have different preferences. Consumers based on their ages can be
broadly classified as children, teens, young adults, middle aged and the elderly.
Consumers from different age groups might have different preferences even when it
comes to the same product e.g. T-shirts, a child would prefer something with a cartoon
character on it, a teenager on the other hand would prefer one with some rock band poster
on it, a young adult would prefer clever graffiti, a middle age or older consumer would
prefer something sober and plain.
Sometimes companies design products that are aimed at specific age groups e.g.
products like luxury cruises to exotic locales often target older consumers who are retired
and have the time and money for expensive travel, or products like gaming consoles
which target consumers from lower age groups. Related to age groups, our purchases also
depend on our current position in the family life cycle – stages through which family
members pass as they grow older.
? Attitude:
The term attitude is used here to denote the valuation of a concept or an object, i.e. to
which extent the object or concept is judged to be good or bad in a general global
meaning i.e. attitude is the amount of affect or feeling for or against a stimulus e.g. how
good would it be for Sweden to stay as a member in the European Union? How good is
the Indian nuclear power program? Attitude in this sense can be studied with the help of
one or a few judgment scales. The object or concept judged can be more general or
specific, but usually it is rather specific. In this way attitude is different from value which
is a judgment, similar to the one used in the measurement of attitudes, of a general or
abstract concept. Examples of such concepts are freedom and equality.
? Lifestyle is a term which can have at least three different meanings:
1. The values that a person expresses with reference to a limited number of basic
dimensions (freedom, justice, equality, etc).
2. A group or cluster of attitudes, opinions, interests and activities. In this case the
investigator usually includes a theoretical mixture of very different concepts
which are supposed to serve as a basis for classifying or segmenting a population.
The segmentation should in its turn be possible to use in marketing products or
influencing habits.
3. Actual „patterns of behaviour?, e.g., lifestyles characterized by substance abuse or
an active leisure time involving sports, work in political organisations, etc.
A lifestyle is a pattern of living that determines how people choose to spend their
time, money, and energy and reflects their status, values, tastes, and preferences expressed
through preferences for sports activities, music interests, and political opinions. It is obvious
that lifestyle is a very important factor when it comes to consumer behaviour and decision
making. There are many products that are based on consumers? lifestyle e.g. a person will
pay ten to fifteen times more to have an imported luxury sedan even though the same service
can be provided by a small car, another example, in a study of electricity consumption it was
found in a family which was extreme in its consumption of energy that the reason mainly was
that two teenage daughters spent several hours in the shower each day. It was therefore,
according to the researchers, the lifestyle which was the explanation of energy consumption
in this case.
Life values are believed to provide the motivation for buying. They are usually
characterized by a set of values, which differ in relative importance from person to person.
They tend to be abstract so their impact on consumer behaviour will be quite indirect. The
way in which consumers use product and services in a certain area to attain their life values
can also be called consumer lifestyle. What is important from a marketing point of view is
that different types of consumers have to be addressed in different ways. Lifestyle is thus a
useful tool for segmentation.
? Personality:
An individual?s personality relates to perceived personal characteristics that are
consistently exhibited, especially when one acts in the presence of others. In most, but not
all, cases the behaviour one projects in a situation is similar to the behaviour a person
exhibits in another situation. In this way personality is the sum of sensory experiences others
get from experiencing a person (i.e., how one talks, reacts, etc).
For marketers it is important to know that consumers make purchase decisions to
support their self concept. Using research techniques to identify how consumers view
themselves may give marketers insight into products and promotion options that are not
readily apparent. For example, when examining consumers a marketer may initially build
marketing strategy around more obvious clues to consumption behaviour, such as consumer?s
demographic indicators (e.g., age, occupation, income, etc). However, in-depth research may
yield information that shows consumers are purchasing products to fulfill self-concept
objectives that have little to do with the demographic category they fall into e.g., senior
citizen making purchases that make them feel younger. Appealing to the consumer?s self
concept needs could expand the market to which the product is targeted.
Situational Influences
Social Influences
The way we think, perceive and act depends a lot upon social factors. These factors were
analysed by a number of scientists such as W. J. Stanton, M. J. Etzel and B. J. Walker (1991).
They highlighted four social factors that influence consumer behaviour:
o Culture & Sub-Culture
o Social Class
o Group Behaviour and Reference Groups
o Opinion Leaders
According to the authors, “social factors influence consumer behaviour directly and
indirectly“. Indirect social factors act through psychological factors. This means that social
factors do influence the formation of psychological factors (consumer motivation, perception,
attitude, etc) that in turn influence consumer behaviour.
•This refers to the surrounding noise, effective communication
between the consumer and the vendor,wether the consumer
is alone or with a group.
Communication
Situation
•This refers to the condition of the consumer's environment
while purchasing, is he relaxed or is it an emergency, is he
alone or with others, where is he making the purchase, etc. Purchase Situation
•This is defined by the kind of usage which the product will
undergo. Is it going to be used indivisually or by a group,
wether it is for pleasure or for business, etc. Usage Situation
•Here the consumer regards the product with respect to trade-
ins before next purchase,or after the purchare, packaging is
anather issue here as it affects the ease of disposal and
storage.
Disposal Situation
? Culture and Subcultures:
Culture generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that
give such activities significance and importance. Cultures can be "understood as systems of
symbols and meanings that even their creators contest, that lack fixed boundaries, that are
constantly in flux, and that interact and compete with one another". Culture can be defined as all
the ways of life including arts, beliefs and institutions of a population that is passed down from
generation to generation. Culture has been called "the way of life for an entire society." As such,
it includes codes of manners, dress, language, religion, rituals, norms of behaviour such as law
and morality, and systems of belief as well as the art.
Culture is the values, beliefs, customs, and tastes produced and valued by a group of
people, whereas a subculture is a group coexisting with other groups in a larger culture whose
members share a distinctive set of beliefs or characteristics. In sociology, anthropology and
cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture (whether distinct or hidden)
which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.
For marketers it is very vital to know the culture to which particular consumers belong
before he gives out the product to the consumers. Culture is an important cog in the mechanism
of consumer behaviour and has to be noticed, e.g. when Mc Donald’s came to India they realized
that Indians do not eat beef as cow is considered holy in our culture, also that most Indians are
vegetarians, so what it did to counter these cultural barriers was to introduced Indianised
versions of burgers!
For better market penetration the subcultures of a society must be taken into account.
Acknowledging these subcultures can often be beneficial, e.g. various eateries and food outlets
offering ‘Jain Food’.
? Social Class:
Social class is the overall rank of people in a society. People in the same class tend to
have similar occupations, similar income levels, and share common tastes in clothes, decorating
styles, and leisure activities. They may share political and religious beliefs. Social class refers to
the hierarchical distinctions (or stratification) between individuals or groups in societies or
cultures. Usually individuals are grouped into classes based on their economic positions and
similar political and economic interests within the stratification system.
? Group Behaviour and Reference Groups:
Group behaviour in sociology refers to the situations where people interact in large or
small groups. The field of group dynamics deals with small groups that may reach consensus and
act in a coordinated way.
A question that comes to my mind here is; how can a group behaviour affect an
individual consumers’ behaviour?
Groups of a large number of people in a given area may act simultaneously to achieve a
goal that differs from what individuals would do acting alone (herd behaviour). A large group (a
crowd or mob) is likely to show examples of group behaviour when people gathered in a given
place and time act in a similar way—for example, joining a protest or march, participating in a
fight or acting patriotically, boycotting a product or coming out in support of a product, etc.
Reference group is a set of people a consumer wants to please or imitate. The “group”
can be composed of one person, a few people, or many people. They may be people you know or
don?t know.
– Conformity is at work when people change as a reaction to real or imagined group pressure.
E.g. in college if everyone wears Nike shoes you would also feel like wearing shoes of the same
brand so as to please your peers and group members and more importantly yourself as the shoes
give you a feeling of being „in? the group or a feeling of being at-par with other group members.
? Opinion Leaders:
The opinion leader is an agent who is an active media user and who interprets the
meaning of media messages or content for lower-end media users. Typically the opinion leader is
held in high esteem by those that accept his or her opinions. Opinion leadership tends to be
subject specific, that is, a person that is an opinion leader in one field may be a follower in
another field.
An example of an opinion leader in the field of computer technology might be a
neighborhood computer service technician. The technician has access to far more information on
this topic than the average consumer and has the requisite background to understand the
information. An opinion leader is hence a person who influences others? attitudes or behaviours
because they are perceived as possessing expertise about the product. They are usually the first
ones to buy a product when it enters the market. Marketers generally target these „opinion
leaders? and use them in marketing communications. Any knowledge about the product is
conveyed through these opinion leaders as they are heavy users of a wide range of information
sources; both getting and giving marketplace information.
doc_805017618.docx