C H APT E R

ANALYZING CONSUMER
MARKETS

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INTRODUCTION
The chapter examines how the field of marketing is influenced by the actions of
consumers, and also how we as consumers are influenced by marketers. It also overviews
consumer behaviour as a discipline of enquiry, and describes some of the different
approaches that researchers use in order better to understand what makes consumers
behave as they do.
The field of consumer behaviour covers a lot of ground: it is 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. Consumers take many forms,
ranging from a 6-year-old child pleading with her mother for wine gums to an executive
in a large corporation deciding on an extremely expensive computer system. The items
that are consumed can include anything from tinned beans to a massage, democracy, rap
music, and even other people (the images of rock stars, for example). Needs and desires
to be satisfied range from hunger and thirst to love, status or even spiritual fulfilment.
There is a growing interest in consumer behaviour, not only in the field of marketing but
from the social sciences in general. This follows a growing awareness of the increasing
importance of consumption in our daily lives, in our organization of daily activities, in
our identity formation, in politics and economic development, and in the flows of global
culture, where consumer culture seems to spread, albeit in new forms, from North
America and Europe to other parts of the world. This spread of consumer culture via
marketing is not always well received by social critics and consumers, as we shall see in
subsequent chapters.4 Indeed, consumption can be regarded as playing such an important
role in our social, psychological, economic, political and cultural lives that today it
has become the vanguard of history.
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Essential Readings
1) Consumer Behaviour, A European Perspective, Michael Solomon, Gary Bamossy,
Sren Askegaard, Margaret K. Hogg, 3rd edition Prentice Hall
2) Lecture PowerPoint Presentation Slides Chapter 6

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After reading this chapter, students should:

Know how consumer characteristics influence buying behavior

Know what major psychological processes influence consumer responses to the
marketing program

Know how consumers make purchasing decisions

Know how marketers analyze consumer decision making

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CONSUMERS IMPACT ON MARKETING STRATEGY
Surfing websites or discussing products and brands can be a lot of fun almost as much
fun as actually making the purchases! But, on the more serious side, why should
managers, advertisers and other marketing professionals bother to learn about this field?
The answer is simple: understanding consumer behaviour is good business. A basic
marketing concept states that firms exist to satisfy consumers needs. These needs can
only be satisfied to the extent that marketers understand the people or organizations
that will use the products and services they offer, and that they do so better than their
competitors.
Consumer response may often be the ultimate test of whether or not a marketing
strategy will succeed. Thus, knowledge about consumers is incorporated into virtually
every facet of a successful marketing plan. Data about consumers help marketers to
define the market and to identify threats and opportunities in their own and other
countries that will affect how consumers receive the product. In every chapter, well see
how developments in consumer behaviour can be used as input to marketing strategies.
Boxes headed Marketing opportunity will highlight some of these possibilities. Sonys
introduction of the Walkman is one good example of how consumers initially turned
down the product when the concept was tested in the market.9 The product was launched
anyway and the Walkman was an immense success Sony revolutionized the mobile
music experience and sold almost 300 million Walkmans in the process. This does
not mean that Sony now eschews consumer research, as is demonstrated by these few
examples of marketing actions that resulted from studies focused on understanding
consumers.
Recent research found that todays teens see portable cassette players as dinosaurs.
Sonys advertising agency followed 125 teens to see how they use products in their
day-to-day lives. Now, even portable CD players seem obsolete and not cool with
the consumer movement to removable memory sticks instead of a CD player that can

work with MP3 files. The Walkman also needed a fresh message, so Sonys agency
decided to use an alien named Plato to appeal to teens. This character was chosen to
appeal to todays culturally ethnically diverse marketplace. As the account director
explained, An alien is no one, so an alien is everyone.10 In addition to the memory
stick players, the Apple iPod has also greatly changed the consumer music scene. The
designer of the iPod, Jonathan Ives, has himself become part of popular culture, and
in a recent poll was voted Most Influential Person in British Culture, beating author
J.K. Rowling and Ricky Gervais, star and creator of the popular television programme
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CONCLUSION
Consumer behavior is influenced by three factors: cultural (culture, subculture, and social
class); social (reference groups, family, and social roles and statuses); and personal (age, stage
in the life cycle, occupation, economic circumstances, lifestyle, personality, and self-concept).
Research into all these factors can provide marketers with clues to reach and serve consumers
more effectively.
Four main psychological processes affect consumer behavior: motivation, perception,
learning, and memory.
To understand how consumers actually make buying decisions, marketers must identify who
makes and has input into the buying decision; people can be initiators, influencers, deciders,
buyers, or users. Different marketing campaigns might be targeted to each type of person.
The typical buying process consists of the following sequence of events: problem recognition,
information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision, and postpurchase behavior.
The marketers job is to understand the behavior at each stage. The attitudes of others,
unanticipated situational factors, and perceived risk may all affect the decision to buy, as will
consumers levels of postpurchase product satisfaction, use, and disposal and actions on the
part of the company.
Consumers are constructive decision-makers and subject to many contextual influences.
Consumers often exhibit low involvement in their decisions, using many heuristics as a result.
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