End of Chapter Questions: Chapter 1

This chapter states that people play different roles and that their consumption
behaviours may differ depending on the particular role they are playing. State
whether you agree or disagree with this perspective, giving examples from your
personal life. Try to construct a stage set for a role you playspecify the props,
costumes and script that you use to play a role (e.g. job interviewee,
conscientious student, party animal).

Some researchers believe that the field of consumer behaviour should be a pure
rather than an applied science. That is, research issues should be framed in terms
of their scientific interest rather than their applicability to immediate marketing
problems. Give your views on this issue.

Name some products or services that are widely used by your social group. State
whether you agree or disagree with the notion that these products help to form
group bonds, supporting your argument with examples from your list of products
used by the group.

Although demographic information on large numbers of consumers is used in

many marketing contexts, some people believe that the sale of data on customers
incomes, buying habits and so on constitutes an invasion of privacy and should be
stopped. Is Big Brother watching? Comment on this issue from both a consumers
and a marketers point of view.

List the three stages in the consumption process. Describe the issues that you
considered in each of these stages when you made a recent important purchase.

Some people ridicule the reference to marketing ethics and say its an
oxymoron. If you found yourself on the end of a negative comment about
marketing ethics, what would you say? Use the How to be ethical guide to

work out if youre a consequentialist or a non-consequentialist. The guide will

also help to improve your ethical sensitivity and prepare you for dealing with
ethical dilemmas in the future.
7

State the differences between the positivist and interpretivist approaches to

consumer research. For each type of inquiry, give examples of product
dimensions that would be more usefully explored using one type of research over
the other.

What aspects of consumer behaviour (age, social class, lifestyles, culture) are
likely to be of interest to a financial planner? To a university administrator? To a
graphic arts designer? To a social worker in a government agency? To a nursing
instructor?

Do marketers have the ability to control our desires or the power to create needs?
Is this situation changing as the Internet creates new ways to interact with
companies? If so, how?

10 Many university students share music by downloading clips from the Internet. Is
this stealing?
11 Go to YouTube and search out some anti-ads, in particular, check out the Tahoe
Anti-Ad < http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=4oNedC3j0e4>. If you were the
marketing manager for Chevrolet, how would you have responded to the negative
ads that spread across the internet when they gave consumers the opportunity to
make their own ads.