Why Study Consumer Behaviour

The understanding of the reason why we study consumer behaviour cannot be over emphasis. Some of these however, include; Firstly, Consumer behaviour is significant in our Daily lives. The most important reason for studying consumer behaviour from a general Sense is the role it plays in our lives.

Much of our time is spent directly in the market place and shopping amongst others. Secondly, consumer behaviour is indispensable in decision making. Consumers are often study because certain decisions are significantly affected by their behaviour or expected actions.

Applications of Consumer Behaviour Knowledge :

From the marketing point of view, understanding consumer behaviour is crucial to successful delivery of firms offerings in the market place. Some of the marketing application areas of consumer behaviour knowledge include;

Market-Opportunity Analysis, this involves examining trends and conditions in the marketplace to identify consumers needs and wants that are not being fully satisfied. Target- Market Selection, this has to do with identifying distinct groupings of consumers who have unique wants and needs and the selection of segment that matches the firms strength and offer better opportunities.

Marketing- Mix Determination, this involves developing and implementing a strategy for delivering an effective combination of want-satisfying features to consumers within target market. The marketing mix is made up of four components; product, price, promotion and place.

Marketing strategy, understanding of consumer behaviour is needed in strategic marketing activities. This is because marketing strategies and tactics are based on explicit or implicit beliefs about consumer behaviour. Effective Regulatory policy in terms of marketing practices requires an extensive knowledge of consumer behaviour.

Social marketing also require an in depth understanding of consumers and their behaviours or attitudes. Social marketing is the application of marketing strategies and tactics to alter or create behaviours that have positive effect on the target individuals and or society as a whole.

Social marketing has been used in attempts to reduce smoking, to increase the percentage of children receiving their vaccinations in a timely manner, to encourage environmentally sound behaviours, to reduce behaviours potentially leading to AIDS, to enhance support of charities, to reduce drug use, and many other important courses.

Marketing Strategy and Consumer Behaviour To survive in a competitive environment, a marketer must provide target customers more value than is provided by its competitors. Customer Value is the difference between all the benefits derived from a total product and all the cost of acquiring those benefits.

Providing superior customer value requires the organization to do better job of anticipating and reacting to customer needs than the competitors does. An understanding of customer behaviour is the basis for strategic marketing formulation.

Consumers reactions to this marketing strategy determine the organizations success or failure. However, these reactions also determine the success of the consumers in meeting their needs, and they have significant impacts on the larger society in which they occur. Marketing strategy is conceptually very simple.

It begins with an analysis of the target market which includes company, conditions, competitors, and consumers. Next, Market segmentation: This involves identifying product-related need sets, grouping customers with similar need sets, describing each group and selecting an attractive segment to serve.

Third stage is marketing strategy and it involves manipulation of marketing mix. The marketing mix includes the product, price, communications, distribution, and services provided to the target market. The final stage Outcomes involves analysis of firms product position and customer satisfaction resulting from implementation of the Strategy.

 Best Answer - Chosen by Asker A perspective of marketing is about making a consumer realise that they want your product, even though initially they might not. Therefore it is important for marketers to understand how consumers behave when they are exposed to particular advertising methods and messages.

 For example. Consumer behavioural theories such as the process of innovation diffusion is vital for marketers as it allows us to understand how different market segments, which have different purchasing and thinking characteristics might decide whether or not to buy a product. For

 example - for a consumer in a relatively high social status earning reasonable money, a purchase of a laptop might not be such as high involvement purchase since they have the disposable income to afford it plus, if they are young to middle age, the chances are they know exactly what they want to get out of the product since they have been brought up in a generations where computers run our every day lives.

 On the other hand, if the laptop was to be marketed at a OAP, their consumer behaviour to such product will change the overall marketing effort to persuade such consumers that they want the product. OAP for example may not know exactly what a laptop can do for them, and if they are living on a pension, such product may seem very expensive and carries high amounts of purchasing 'risk'

 since they might not fully understand whether the product can solve their initial need to buy the product. If we relate back to the innovation diffusion model and general purchasing decision making process theories, marketers may then have to increase the amount of information within their marketing campaign in order to communicate exactly what the laptop can do for them and how the price justifies they benefit.

 If you look at consumer behaviour in another perspective, many marketers and marketing campaigns rely on people buying their product due to the self concept theories of consumer behaviour. Products such as Sony laptops rely on people wanting to spend the extra money on their laptops rather than a competitor such as del who may have the same spec for a far lower price because people buy into brands like Sony to show off their image / status.

 If you see someone on a train with a dell laptop, you may not take a second look. Meanwhile, someone using a Sony laptop; people may think Wow, thats pretty cool and may start associating the user as successful and wealthy. Therefore, the Sony laptop user has may have spent the extra money on Sony rather than dell in order to portray this reaction and create a positive self image for himself. Look up a theory called the looking glass self theory (Cooley 1902 or 1922).

 If brands can understand such form of consumer behaviour, it works hand in hand with brand management and product positioning since once the marketers have generated a positive, prestige image about their products, they then rely on other consumers buying into this form of 'quality' and portraying their positive self image from using this product to other consumer who then may think ... 'that guy looked cool... i want to buy one'....

 Another very important consumer behaviour concept for marketers is how consumers learn about a product. Does a marketing campaign want to use cognitive learning approaches in its advertising i.e. whereby our product will be associated with a band or a type of music or do we want to use a form of instrumental or behavioural learning approaches - A market needs to think what type of consumers they are targeting, look at their general characteristic and then work out what is the best approach to generate their overall campaign objectives

 For example, cognitive learning approaches are used (by theory) on more educated consumers as theorists believe they have more ability to make a cognition between i.e a song and a product - Check out some Sony adverts - For example, every time people heard that Jose Gonzalez tune back in 2005, people immediately thought of thousands of coloured balls rolling down a hill in San Francisco then they thought of Sony So there you go - thats a few reasons why consumer behaviour is vital to understand - because it is the basis of how you are going to target your prime target audience.