1. Chapter 1 Consumers Rule
By Michael R. Solomon
Consumer Behavior
Buying, Having, and Being
Sixth Edition

2. Opening Vignette: Gail
What useful ways can marketers categorize Gail as a consumer?
How do others influence Gail’s purchase decisions?
What role did brand play in Gail’s surfing habits?
What other factors influence Gail’s evaluation of products?

3. What is Consumer Behavior?
The study of the processes involved when individuals or groups select, purchase, use, or dispose of products, services ideas, or experiences to satisfy needs and desires
Role Theory:
Identifies consumers as actors on the marketplace stage
Consumer Behavior is a Process:
Exchange: A transaction in which two or more organizations give and receive something of value

4. Some Issues That Arise During Stages in the Consumption Process
Figure 1.1

5. Consumer Behavior Involves Many Different Actors
A person who identifies a need or desire, makes a purchase, and then disposes of the product
Many people may be involved in this sequence of events.
Purchaser / User / Influencer
Consumers may take the form of organizations or groups.

6. Consumers’ Impact on Marketing Strategy
Market Segmentation:
Identifies groups of consumers who are similar to one another in one or more ways and then devises marketing strategies that appeal to one or more groups
Demographics:
Statistics that measure observable aspects of a population
Ex.: Age, Gender, Family Structure, Social Class and Income, Race and Ethnicity, Lifestyle, and Geography

7. A Lesson Learned
Nike was forced to pull this advertisement for a running shoe after disabilities rights groups claimed the ads were offensive.
How could Nike have done a better job of getting its message across without offending a powerful demographic?

8. Market Segmentation Finely-tuned marketing segmentation strategies
allow marketers to
reach only those
consumers likely to be
interested in buying
their products.

9. Consumers’ Impact on Marketing Strategy (cont.)
Relationship Marketing: Building Bonds with Consumers
Relationship marketing:
The strategic perspective that stresses the long-term, human side of buyer-seller interactions
Database marketing:
Tracking consumers’ buying habits very closely, and then crafting products and messages tailored precisely to people’s wants and needs based on this information

10. Marketing’s Impact on Consumers
Marketing and Culture:
Popular Culture:
Music, movies, sports, books, celebrities, and other forms of entertainment consumed by the mass market.
Marketers play a significant role in our view of the world and how we live in it.

11. Popular Culture Companies often create product icons to develop an
identity for their products. Many made-up creatures and
personalities, such as Mr. Clean, the Michelin tire man and
the Pillsbury Doughboy, are widely recognized figures in
popular culture.

12. Marketing’s Impact on Consumers: The Meaning of Consumption
People often buy products not for what they do, but for what they mean.
Types of relationships a person may have with a product:
Self-concept attachment
Nostalgic attachment
Interdependence
Love

13. Discussion Question
What kind of statement does the Nike Swoosh make?

14. Marketing’s Impact on Consumers: The Meaning of Consumption (cont.)
Consumption includes intangible experiences, ideas and services in addition to tangible objects.
Four types of Consumption Activities:
Consuming as experience
Consuming as integration
Consuming as classification
Consuming as play

15. Marketing’s Impact on Consumers: The Global Consumer
By 2006, the majority of people on earth will live in urban centers.
Sophisticated marketing strategies contribute to a global consumer culture.
Even smaller companies look to expand overseas.
Globalization has resulted in varied perceptions of the United States (both positive and negative).

16. The Global Consumer American products like Levi jeans are in
demand around the world.

17. Marketing’s Impact on Consumers: Virtual Consumption
The Digital Revolution is one of the most significant influences on consumer behavior.
Electronic marketing increases convenience by breaking down the barriers of time and location.
U-commerce:
The use of ubiquitous networks that will slowly but surely become part of us (i.e., wearable computers, customized advertisements beamed to cell phones, etc.)
Cyberspace has created a revolution in C2C (consumer-to-consumer) activity.

18. Virtual Brand Communities

19. Blurred Boundaries Marketing and Reality
Marketers and consumers coexist in a complicated two-way relationship.
It’s increasingly difficult for consumers to discern the boundary between the fabricated world and reality.
Marketing influences both popular culture and consumer perceptions of reality.

20. Blurred Boundaries Marketing managers often borrow imagery
from other forms of
popular culture to
connect with an
audience. This line of
syrups adapts the “look”
of a pulp detective
novel.

21. Marketing Ethics and Public Policy
Business Ethics:
Rules of conduct that guide actions in the marketplace
The standards against which most people in the culture judge what is right and what is wrong, good or bad
Notions of right and wrong differ among people, organizations, and cultures.

22. Needs and Wants: Do Marketers Manipulate Consumers?
Consumerspace
Do marketers create artificial needs?
Need: A basic biological motive
Want: One way that society has taught us that need can be satisfied
Are advertising and marketing necessary?
Economics of information perspective: Advertising is an important source of consumer information.
Do marketers promise miracles?
Advertisers simply don’t know enough to manipulate people.

23. Discussion Question
This ad was created by the American Association of Advertising Agencies to counter charges that ads create artificial needs.
Do you agree with the premise of the ad? Why or why not?

24. Public Policy and Consumerism
Consumer efforts in the U.S. have contributed to the establishment of federal agencies to oversee consumer-related activities.
Department of Agriculture
Federal Trade Commission
Food and Drug Administration
Securities and Exchange Commission
Environmental Protection Agency
Culture Jamming:
A strategy to disrupt efforts by the corporate world to dominate our cultural landscape

25. The Consumer Product Safety Commission

26. Culture Jamming
Adbusters Quarterly is a Canadian magazine devoted to culture jamming. This mock ad skewers Benetton.

27. Consumerism and Consumer Research
Kennedy’s “Declaration of Consumer Rights” (1962)
Green Marketing:
When a firm chooses to protect or enhance the natural environment as it goes about its activities
Reducing wasteful packaging
Donations to charity
Social Marketing:
Using marketing techniques to encourage positive activities (e.g. literacy) and to discourage negative activities (e.g. drunk driving)

28. Consumer Related Issues
UNICEF sponsored this advertising campaign against child labor. The field of consumer behavior plays a role in addressing important consumer issues such as child exploitation.

29. The Dark Side of Consumer Behavior
Consumer Terrorism:
An example: Susceptibility of the nation’s food supply to bioterrorism
Addictive Consumption:
Consumer addiction:
A physiological and/or psychological dependency on products or services
Compulsive Consumption:
Repetitive shopping as an antidote to tension, anxiety, depression, or boredom

30. The Dark Side of Consumer Behavior (cont.)
Consumed Consumers:
People who are used or exploited, willingly or not, for commercial gain in the marketplace
Illegal Activities:
Consumer Theft:
Shrinkage: The industry term for inventory and cash losses from shoplifting and employee theft
Anticonsumption:
Events in which products and services are deliberately defaced or mutilated

31. Consumer Behavior As a Field of Study
Consumer behavior only recently a formal field of study
Interdisciplinary influences on the study of consumer behavior
Consumer behavior studied by researchers from diverse backgrounds
Consumer phenomena can be studied in different ways and on different levels

32. Journal of Consumer Research

33. The Pyramid of Consumer Behavior
Figure 1.2

34. Consumer Behavior Disciplines
The Issue of Strategic Focus
Should CB have a strategic focus or be studied as a pure social science?
The Issue of Two Perspectives on Consumer Research
Positivism (modernism):
Paradigm that emphasizes the supremacy of human reason and the objective search for truth through science
Interpretivism (postmodernism):
Paradigm that emphasizes the importance of symbolic, subjective experience and meaning is in the mind of the person

35. Positivist vs. Interpretivist Approaches to CB

36. Taking it From Here: The Plan of the Book
Section I – Consumer Behavior
Section II – Consumers as Individuals
Section III – Consumers as Decision Makers
Section IV – Consumers and Subcultures
Section V – Consumers and Culture

37. The Wheel of Consumer Behavior
Figure 1.3