Consumer Behaviour

Zubin Sethna, Jim Blythe

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781526471079
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Marketing

Informal yet academically rigorous in style, this fun textbook focuses on examples of international consumer behaviour in action, and provides open access online resources to encourage student engagement and understanding.

The book strikes a balance between sociological and psychological aspects of consumer behavior and features coverage of social media, digital consumption and up to date marketing practice.

New to this edition:

• Fully updated cases and global examples of consumer behaviour in industries including fashion, travel and technology
• A new feature exploring the experiential role of brands in consumers' lives today titled 'Brand Experiences'
• A brand new chapter on sustainable consumption for this era of climate change and sustainability challenges

Online resources complement the book, featuring a range of tools and resources for lecturers and students, including PowerPoint slides, an Instructor manual as well as selected videos to make the examples in each chapter come to life.

Suitable reading for undergraduate marketing students studying consumer behavior, international consumer behaviour and buyer behavior.

Part One Consumer Behaviour in Context

• 1 Understanding Consumer Behaviour 05
• 2 Decisions, Behaviours and Interactions 37
• 3 Innovation and Digital Technologies 83
• 4 Consumption in B2C vs. B2B 114
• 5 Consumer Journeys through the World of Technology 144

It has been over 10 years since the start of the global financial crisis in 2008, and although the environment within which business is conducted may have changed, ultimately, all business still depends on someone buying something. We buy things in order to meet our physical and emotional needs: business exists to create wealth, and to distribute it in ways that enable people to create relatively worthwhile lives for themselves.

If businesses are to succeed in this, they need to understand what it is that people need and want, and to ensure that it is available in the right place, at the right time and at a price consumers are willing to pay. This is the very foundation of all marketing – even businesses that sell only to other businesses rely, ultimately, on consumers buying products.

Apart from the obvious importance of understanding how people buy and consume, consumer behaviour is inherently interesting because it is about people (and we are all consumers, of course). Part One of this book looks at the basics of understanding consumer behaviour (Chapter 1). Chapter 2 then examines the deeper processes that consumers engage with when making decisions and, of course, this would not be complete without investigating the interaction that consumers have with brands. Chapter 3 then takes a look at one of the most important areas, currently, for marketers – innovation and digital technologies. Companies must always have new products coming to market if they are to stay ahead of the competition, but at the same time, innovation means taking a risk. Understanding how people relate to new products is an essential component of any company’s new product strategy. At this point, in Chapter 4 we’ll take a look at the differences between consumption patterns exhibited by individuals in B2C (business-to-consumer) and B2B (business-to-business) markets. The final chapter in Part One looks at what happens after purchase; consumers and technologicial trends. Apart from consuming the product/service, people make assessments of how much they liked (or disliked) it; and when this information is communicated, it sometimes becomes a trend. In the 21st century, service industries have become far more important than manufacturing industries on almost every measure. Technology has a big part to play in this transition; thus technological trends is a key issue that marketers must understand. The final chapter covers the consumer behaviour aspects of this phenomenon. These introductory chapters set the scene for the more detailed chapters that follow.

Chapter 1 Understanding Consumer Behaviour

Learning objectives

After reading this chapter you should be able to:

• Explain how the study of consumer behaviour has evolved.
• Show how consumer behaviour relates to marketing decision-making.
• Explain why relationships are harder to establish in business-to-consumer situations than in business-to-business situations.
• Describe the scope and nature of psychology and sociology.
• Describe the scope and nature of anthropology.
• Describe the relationship of economics with the study of consumer behaviour.
• Explain the role of exchange in improving people’s welfare.
• Explain how the terms ‘luxury’ and ‘necessity’ relate to consumer behaviour.

Chapter contents

• Introduction
• Defining consumer behaviour
• Consumer behaviour in context
• Consumer behaviour and the marketing mix
• Consumers, relationship marketing and marketing planning
• Antecedents of consumer behaviour
• Psychology
• Sociology
• Anthropology
• Economics
• Neuroscience
• Summary
• Key points
• How to impress your examiner
• Review questions
• Case study: From prehistoric to pre-Brexit times
• Further reading
• References

More Online: https://study.sagepub.com/sethnaandblythe4e

Introduction

Every day we buy things. We exchange our money for goods and services, for our own use and for the use of our families: occasionally we make impulse purchases (Fenton-O’Creevy et al., 2018), mostly we choose things we think will meet our needs on a day-to-day basis, and we intermittently make buying decisions that will affect our lives for years to come. At the same time, we make decisions about disposing of worn-out or used-up possessions. All these decisions and exchanges have implications for ourselves, our families, our friends, the environment, the businesses we buy from, the employees of those businesses, and so on.

The key concept of marketing is customer centrality: we cannot ignore customer decision-making. Understanding the processes involved in making those decisions is central to establishing policy.

Customer

Someone who makes the decision to buy a product

Consumer behaviour and industrial buyer behaviour have been studied by marketers since long before marketing became an academic subject. The academic subjects that preceded marketing include economics (the study of supply and demand), sociology (the study of group behaviour), psychology (the study of thought processes), neurology (the study of brain function) and anthropology (the study of what makes us human). Each of these disciplines has looked at the problem from a different angle, and each will be discussed in greater detail throughout the book.

Defining consumer behaviour

All of us are consumers: all of us behave in a particular way. This does not mean that all of our behaviour can be defined as consumer behaviour, of course. Specific consumer behaviour has been defined as follows:

Consumer

Someone who uses, consumes and/or enjoys the benefit of a product/service

Consumer behaviour is the activities people undertake when obtaining, consuming and disposing of products and services. (Blackwell et al., 2001)

This definition is widely used, but it still leaves some questions to answer. First, what do we mean by ‘obtaining’? This presumably includes all the activities that lead up to making a purchase, including searching for information about products and services, and evaluating the alternatives. ‘Obtaining’ may not involve an actual purchase, but most consumer behaviour researchers and writers ignore this angle: a child who promises to keep his room tidy in exchange for payment towards a new gaming app is clearly obtaining a product, but this is not usually regarded as part of a study of consumer behaviour. Likewise, presumably for ethical reasons, theft is usually ignored as an aspect of consumer behaviour, up until recently (Dootson et al., 2018).

Products

A bundle of benefits

App

Software designed to fulfil a particular purpose; an application, usually downloaded by a user onto a mobile device

Challenging the status quo

Dootson et al. (2018) talk about ‘deviant consumer behavior...