Understanding the Consumer Tentamen

Chapter 1
B2C e-commerce business selling to consumers C2C e-commerce consumer to consumer Consumer behaviour the process when consumers select, purchase, use or dispose products, services, ideas or experiences to satisfy needs and desires Consumer policy Consumer society surrounded by consumer society Database marketing tracking consumers buying habits by computer and crafting products and information tailored precisely to peoples wants and needs Demographics Statistics that measure observable aspects of a population, such as birth rate, age distribution or income Exchange - two or more organizations or people give and receive something of value, is and integral part of marketing Global consumer culture people are united by their common devotion to brand-name consumer goods, film stars and rock stars Interpretivism proponents of this perspective argue that our society places too much emphasis on science and technology Market segmentation segments whose members are similar to one another in one or more characteristics and different from members of other segments Paradigm one general way to classify consumer research is in terms of the fundamental assumptions. This set of believes Positivism the basic set of assumptions underlying the current dominant paradigm Psychographics differences in consumers personalities and tastes which cant be measured objectively Relationship marketing making an effort to keep in touch with their customers on a regular basis, and are giving them reasons to maintain a bond with the company over time RFID tag is a computer chip and a tiny antenna that lets the chip communicate with a network Role theory each consumer has lines, props and costumes that are necessary to a good performance Social marketing encourage positive behaviours as increased literacy and to discourage negative activities such as drinking U-commerce the use of ubiquitous networks that will slowly but surely become a part of us, whether in the form of wearable computers or customized advertisements beamed to us on our cell phones

Chapter 2
Affluenza negative sides of a society over-focused on its consumption Brand it refers to those strategic processes whereby managers try to create and sustain meanings attached to products, services, organizations etc. Brand communities consumers organize communities based on their consumption of and attachment to particular brands Compulsive buying is a physiological dependency on products or services Consumer culture the central role of consumption in our daily activities and also the basic relationship between market forces, consumption processes and the basic characteristics of what we normally understand by a culture Consumer society the current type of social organization in the economically developed world Corporate social responsibility (CSR) addresses two kinds of commercial responsibility: commercial and social responsibility. Cultural categories these categories correspond to the basic ways we characterize the world Emic perspective - explain a culture based on the cultural categories and experiences of the insiders Etic perspective focuses on commonalities, general categories and measurements which are valid for all cultures under consideration Experience economy the competition among different markets has driven producers to differentiating the experience that comes along with buying the product Globalization consumer culture is becoming increasingly globalized, and brands have becomes signs of a global ideology of culture value and power Glocalization all global phenomena exist and become meaningful in a local context Hyperreality the spreading of simulations and the making real of what was just fantasy Meaning one fundamental premises of consumer behaviour is that people often buy products, not for what they do, but for what they mean Pastiche when something is pastiche, it is a thinly veiled copy Pluralism indicating the co-existence of various truths, styles and fashions Political consumer uses their buying pattern as a weapon against companies they dont like and in support of the companies that reflect values similar to the consumers own Popular culture the music, films, sports, books and other forms of entertainment consumed by the mass market, is both a product of and an inspiration for marketers Postmodernism the period we live in where the modern order, with its shared beliefs in certain central values of modernism and industrialism, is breaking up

Risk society where our ways of manufacturing goods are increasingly producing just as many and even more bads or risks, that a consumer will have to take into account in their decision making Transitional economies where the economic system is still neither fish nor fowl and governments ranging from Vietnam to Romania struggle with the difficult adaption from a controlled, centralized economy to a free market system

Chapter 4
Absolute threshold refers to the minimum amount of stimulation that can be detected on a sensory channel Adaptation - the degree to which consumers continue to notice a stimulus over time Attention the degree to which consumer focus on stimuli within their range of exposure Differential threshold refers to the ability of a sensory system to detect changes or differences between two stimuli Exposure is the degree to which people notice a stimulus that is within range of their sensory receptors Figure-ground principle one part of the stimulus will dominate while other parts recede into the background Gestalt psychology a school of thought maintaining that people derive meaning from the totality of a set of stimuli, rather than from any individual stimulus Hedonic consumption the multi sensory, fantasy and emotional aspects of consumers interactions with products Hyperreality refers to the becoming real of what is initially simulation or hype Icon is a sign that resembles the product in some way Index is a sign that is connected to a product because they share some property Interpretant is the meaning derived Interpretation refers to the meaning that people assign to sensory stimuli JND the minimum change in a stimulus that can be detected Object the object would be the product that is the focus of the message Perception the process by which these stimuli are selected, organized and interpreted Perceptual map a very useful positioning tool (P.120) Perceptual selectivity means that people attend to only a small portion of stimuli to which they are exposed Priming consumers assign meaning to stimuli based on the schema or set of beliefs, to which the stimulus is assigned Principle of closure implies that consumers tend to perceive an incomplete picture as complete

Principle of similarity consumers tend to group together objects that share similar physical characteristics Psychophysics the science that focuses on how the physical environment is integrated into our personal, subjective world Schema organized collections of beliefs and feelings Semiotics examines the correspondence between signs and symbols and their role in the assignment of meaning Sensation refers to the immediate response of our sensory receptors, eyes / ears / nose / mouth / fingers, to such basic stimuli as light, colour and sound Sign is the sensory imagery that represents the intended meanings of the object Stimulus ambiguity occurs when a stimulus is not clearly perceived or when it conveys a number of meanings Symbol is a sign that is related to a product through purely conventional associations Webers law the stronger the initial stimulus, the greater the change must be for it to be noticed

Chapter 5
Actual self refers to our more realistic appraisal of the qualities we have or lack Agentic goals control males, which stress self-assertion and mastery Androgyny refers to the possession of both masculine and feminine traits Avatars realistic versions of themselves or tricked out versions with exaggerated physical characteristics or winged dragons or superheroes Body cathexis a persons feelings about their body Body image refers to a consumers subjective evaluation of their physical self Communal goals taught to value by females, such as affiliation and the fostering of harmonious relations Extended self comprise the external objects that we consider a part of us Fantasy is a self-induced shift in consciousness, which is sometimes a way of compensating for a lack of external stimulation or of escaping from problems in the real world Ideal of beauty is a particular model, or exemplar or appearance, which include physical features (big breasts, bulging muscles) Ideal self is a persons conception of how they would like to be Impression management where we work hard to manage what others think of us by strategically choosing and others cues that will put us in a good light Looking-glass self the process of imagining the reaction of others towards us is known as taking the role of the other Masculinism the male image and the complex cultural meanings of masculinity

Metrosexual a straight, urban male who is keenly interested in fashion, home design, gourmet cooking and personal care Self-concept refers to the beliefs a person holds about their attributes, and how they evaluate these qualities Self-image congruence models predict that products will be chosen when their attributes match some aspects of the self Sex-typed traits characteristics that are stereotypically associated with one sex or the other Symbolic interactionism people exist in a symbolic environment, and the meaning attached to any situation or object is determined by the interpretation of these symbols Symbolic self-completion theory predicts that people who have an incomplete self-definition tend to complete this identity by acquiring and displaying symbols associated with it Virtual identities second life on the world wide web