Determinants of consumer behavior/ Factors influencing the behavior of consumer
But in this article we are going to include the factors which influences consumer behavior the most and will read various theories and concept of these factors in detail.
The topics that we are going to cover are:
ATTITUDE
a) Models and theories of attitude
b) Change in attitude
PERSONALITY
a) Nature of personality
b) Theories of personality (Freudian, Jungian, Trait theory)
ATTITUDE
Attitude is a particular manner, feeling, perception regarding something or someone. Attitude depicts the way of thinking we have towards anything. We judge people on the basis of attitude they carry and categorize them as if they are rude or polite.
Typically attitude is “Learned predisposition to respond in a consistently favorable and unfavorable manner with respect to a given stimuli”.
Models of attitude
Scientists that study behavior of humans have realized with time that it is quite difficult to understand the consumer buying behavior by just looking at the person. Buying behavior can sometimes be influenced by other compelling factors as well.
To know more about it we will discuss the models of attitude
- 1. Tri-component attitude model
- 2. Attitude towards object model
- 3. Behavior intention model
- 4. Attitude towards Ad model
TRI-COMPONENT ATTITUDE
MODEL
As the name of this model suggests, this model comprises of 3 main components
1. Cognition component- When a child is small, he/she used to copy the behavior that their elders are having and this is not only about when a child is small, but this can happen anytime. A person can like/dislike something, that is a perception created on the mind of that person, it can either have a good impact or bad. This component depicts that it is a knowledge and perception acquired by people in the form of beliefs about the attributes of the attitude object.
2. Affect component- Anything can affect a person either positively or negatively and to know the affect it is important to study affect component, as it takes care of consumer’s feeling regarding any product or brand. This component brings out the favorable or unfavorable “feeling” the consumer might have as a part of the attitude.
3. Conation component- The third and final component of the model deals with the likelihood or the probability of the consumer to take a definite action with regard to the attitude object, which may be the actual behavior, this is marketing terminology and is called Buyers’ intention.
The interplay of these 3 components gives the idea about the actual attitude of a buyer.
Cognition component is based on belief, Affect component is based on the feeling, Conation component is based on behavior.
ATTITUDE TOWARDS
OBJECT MODEL
This model emphasis that a marketer is interested to find consumer’s attitude towards a product, brand or service, which is based on consumers’ belief in various attributes. This concept was developed by Fishbein in 1972.
Presence of certain product and brand specific attributes and consumer’s belief in those attributes form a positive attitude towards the object.
This model can be represented by :
A= n summation/ i-1 Bi *ai
Where A= attitude towards the object
B = Belief of finding the attribute in the object
a = Weight age (importance) applied by the consumer to each attribute.
I = number of samples of the object (there are n number of samples)
BEHAVIOR INTENTION
MODEL
The ultimate appeal of this model seems to correspond more intimately with the action behavior of the consumer. The model does not predict the behavior of the consumer but the intention to behave in a particular way.
Algebraically, the model can be represented as:
BI = W*A (A)+W*B (SN);
BI = Behavior intention
A = Attitude towards performing the behavior
SN = Subjective norm
W*A and W*B = Statistically determined weight
Further A = n summation K=1* NB k MC k
NB = “normative belief “ that the sample of people questioned, thinks that the consumer should not behave in a particular manner.
MC= Motivation to comply
n = sample size
BI model is found to be superior to ATO (Attitude towards object) model. However, calculating the BI model is difficult.
ATTITUDE TOWARDS AD MODEL
According to this model, as the consumer gets exposed to various ads, he is “affected” by them and starts reacting to the ad by feeling and applying the mind after seeing the ad.
It is very important to discriminate two types of effects, which go to formation of consumer attitude towards the brand.
1. Judgmental evaluation- As per this evaluation, the attitude of consumer is based on judgments after looking at the ads. They would feel as if the ad was informative, vague or holistic and based on their judgment they will make a decision whether to buy a product or not.
2. Feeling of the consumer after watching the ad- Whenever we watch an ad, there is a feeling which we get automatically after watching the ad. The customer can feel satisfied, happy, sad, annoyed, irritated, frustrated etc and depending on their feeling ,they made their choice of whether purchasing the product or not.
Studying the attitude of a customer is a very crucial factor for every marketer to grow its business. If a marketer is not able to find out the feeling of a customer so he will not be able to satisfy the customer and hence results in the failure of both customer retention and unfortunately in the growth of company. These models will help the marketer to strategize effectively to get great results.
PERSONALITY
Personality is the first thing that depicts the characteristics of the person. Personality of a person matters the most as it reflects how a person responds to environment. These traits of a person distinguish the person from other people. Different individuals have different behavioral pattern. Personality is an internal system which includes all those aspects of a person that are inherited and all those aspects that are learned. There are various sources that can influence the personality like it can inherited from parents, influenced by environment in which a person is brought up, owned individually.
Personality changes in response to events as part of maturing process. Personality is a factor that influences the buying decision of a customer the most so it is equally crucial to study various aspects of personality of customers.
Various scientists have discovered some theories to study personality in an efficient manner.
THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
- 1. Freudian theory ( Psychoanalytic)
- 2. Jungian theory of personality
- 3. Non Freudian of personality
- 4. The trait theory
- 5. Theory of self concept
FREUDIAN THEORY (PSYCHOANALYTIC)
This theory is given by SIGMUND FREUD. (He is known as the father of psychiatry)
Among his various accomplishments, the most far reaching personality schema in psychology “THE FREUDIAN THEORY OF PERSONALITY”
This theory depicts the importance of unconscious processes and childhood experiences. He ensures that most human suffering is determined during the childhood development.
Freud placed emphasis on the 5 stages of psychosexual development. These stages are:
1. ORAL (0-1.5 years of age) - This is the age where infants have an interaction with the outside world, a child is born and look at the beautiful world.
2. ANAL (1.5 to 3 years of age) - This is an age where child starts to develop some healthy habits like toilet habits which are the most important for a child to learn.
3. PHALLIC (3 to 5 years of age) - This is an age where child starts to discover sex organs. The development of healthy substitutes of the sexual attraction that the boys and girl have for the opposite sex.
4. LATENCY (5 to 12 years of age) – This is an age where child starts the development of healthy dormant sexual feelings for opposite sex.
5. GENITAL ( 12 to adulthood) – This is an age where all the tasks from the previous four stages are integrated into the mind of that child.
JUNGIAN THEORY OF PERSONALITY
Carl jung, developed the Jungian theory of personality.
Jung’s theory focuses on 4 psychological functions:
- 1. Extraversion and introversion
- 2. Sensation and intuition
- 3. Thinking and feeling
- 4. Judging and perceiving
ENTRAVERSION AND INTROVERSION – Extraversion shows that how learners interact with the outside world. Extrovert is a word belongs to a person who loves to interact with people around the world. Extroverted learners enjoy generating energy and ideas from the people.
Introversion shows that learners wants to keep their learning within them only. These learners enjoy generating energy from internal sources such a brainstorming etc.
SENSATION AND INTUITION – Sensation belongs to the learners who tend to be realistic and practical, preferring to rely on the information gained through experience.
Intuition belongs to the learners who like to do abstract thinking, daydreaming and imagining the future.
THINKING AND FEELING – Thinking belongs to the category of learners whose decision is based on personal experience or ideas of right, wrong, fairness and justice. These kind of learners are mostly interested in logics and patterns.
Feeling belongs to the category of learners who chooses their feeling style to manage the information based on initial feelings and emotions it generates.
JUDGING AND PERCIEVING – Judging shows the type of learners who tend to be very decisive. These group of people are very organized and structured people and they have strong opinions.
Perceiving belongs to the category of learners who change their decisions based on new information. These category of people tend to be very flexible and adaptable and sometimes creates trouble making decisions that can cause adverse effects also.
The learning styles based on Jung’s theory of personality represent just one way of thinking about how people learn .
NON- FREUDIAN THEORY
Unlike Freudian theory, which primarily laid an emphasis on the sexual instinct in human being and consider it as a prime factor for shaping one’s personality.
Non Freudian theory developed by “Alfred Adler” stresses on social relationship as the fundamental element which shapes ones’ personality.
According to Non Freudians 3 main categories of personality exists. They are;
1. Connected – This category of personality depicts the kind of individuals who have a tendency to align themselves with others.
They feel “connected” to others and absence of which will them tensed.
2. Aggressive – This category of personality depicts the kind of individuals who always wants to excel themselves, to achieve superiority and to achieve this they can be very rude and aggressive.
3. Detached – This category of personality depicts the kind of individuals who very often tend to move away from people. They do not want to interact with strangers or feel hesitated to have an interaction. They do not have confidence to face the world around.
THE TRAIT THEORY
This theory follows the objective on measuring the personality traits.
According to this theory it is very important to focus on various personality trait of a consumer to understand the behavior of consumer towards any product or service. The traits of our personality plays a relevant role in consumer behavior .
2 of the basic personality trait that can extremely be taken care of are;
1. Innovativeness – A person with strong innovative trait will not only like to try out new products but he gets equally affected to the old product as well. The scenario is dynamic nowadays and in a blink of an eye, the trend changes so the consumer like to change themselves as per the trend prevailing in the market.
2. Materialism – This is the second most strong personality trait of a consumer. In this trait a person is more attracted to materialistic things. For these kind of people values and ethics do not play a major part. If they find a product to be good, they will surely purchase it even if its harmful for health. For example- Tobacco – even if a consumer who is addicted to smoking or having tobacco knows that these things can cause severe harm to their lives but they still purchase it because they enjoy consuming consumer are more attracted to tangible products.
Personality of a person plays an integral role and therefore a marketer must strategize according to the theories of personality.