1. CHAPTER 1

2. THE DEFINITION & SCOPE OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
The consumer behavior is defined as the behavior that consumers display in searching for, purchasing, using, evaluating and disposing of products and services that they expect will satisfy their needs.
Consumer behavior focuses on how individuals make decisions to spend their available resources (time, money, effort) on consumption-related items.

3. ORGANIZATIONAL CONSUMER
CONSUMING ENTITIES
PERSONAL CONSUMER
ORGANIZATIONAL CONSUMER

4. DEVELOPMENT OF MARKETING CONCEPT & THE DISCIPLINE OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
The field of consumer behavior is rooted in the marketing concept, a business orientation that evolved through several alternative approaches toward doing business –
Production concept
Product concept
Selling concept

5. The Marketing Concept
To be successful, a company must determine the needs and wants of specific target markets and deliver the desired satisfactions better than the competition.
A marketer should make what it can sell, instead of trying to sell what it has made.

6. Segmentation, Targeting, and positioning
Market segmentation is the process of dividing a market into subsets of consumers with common needs or characteristics.
Market targeting is selecting one or more of the segments identified for the company to pursue.
Positioning is developing a distinct image for the product or service in the mind of the consumer that will differentiate the offering from competing ones.

7. The Marketing Mix
The marketing mix consists of a company’s offerings to consumers and the methods and tools it selects to accomplish the exchange.
Product
Price
Place
Promotion

8. CUSTOMER VALUE, SATISFACTION AND RETENTION
Providing Customer Value
Customer Value is defined as the ratio between the customer’s perceived benefits and the resources used to obtain those benefits.

9. Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is the individual’s perception of the performance of the product or service in relation to his or her expectations.
A study, that linked levels of customer satisfaction with customer behavior, identified several types of customers.

10. Loyalists The companies should retain them
Apostles The companies should strive to create these customers
Defectors The company should raise the satisfaction of defectors and turn them into loyalists
Terrorists
The companies should avoid these
Hostages customers
Mercenaries The companies should reduce the number of these customers

11. Customer Retention
The overall objective of providing value to customers continuously and more effectively than the competition is to have highly satisfied customers.
It is more expensive, sometimes impossible, to win new customers than to keep existing one.

12. Small reductions in customer defections produce significant increases in profits because –
Loyal customers buy more products
They are less price sensitive
They pay less attention to competitors’ advertising
They spread positive word of mouth and refer other customers
Servicing existing customers is cheaper

13. Customer profitability-focused marketing tracks costs and revenues of individual customers and then categorize them into tiers (customer pyramid) based on consumption behavior.
Platinum tier (more profitable)
Gold tier (profitable)
Iron tier (less profitable)
Lead tier (loss customers)

14. MARKETING ETHICS & SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
The marketers should fulfill the needs of target markets in ways that improve societies as a whole, while fulfilling the objectives of the organizations.
Ethical and socially responsible activities improve the company image among customers, stockholders, the financial community and other publics.