Why it Matters
Overview
Teacher resources for Unit 7 can be found on the next page.
Provided by: Lumen Learning. License: CC BY: Attribution
Why It Matters: Consumer Behavior
Resources for Unit 7: Consumer Behavior
Slide Deck - Module 7: Consumer Behavior
Discussion Assignments and Alignment: Customer Profile
Pacing
The Principles of Marketing textbook contains sixteen units—roughly one unit per week for a 16-week semester. If you need to modify the pace and cover the material more quickly, the following units work well together:
- Unit 1: What Is Marketing? and Unit 2: Marketing Function. Both are lighter, introductory units.
- Unit 15: Global Marketing and Unit 16: Marketing Plan. Unit 16 has more course review and synthesis information than new material per se.
- Unit 5: Ethics can be combined with any unit. You can also move it around without losing anything.
- Unit 8: Positioning and Unit 9: Branding. Companion modules that can be covered in a single week.
- Unit 6: Marketing Information & Research and Unit 7: Consumer Behavior. Companion units that can be covered in a single week.
We recommend NOT doubling up the following units, because they are long and especially challenging. Students will need more time for mastery and completion of assignments.
- Unit 4: Marketing Strategy
- Unit 10: Product Marketing
- Unit 13: Promotion: Integrated Marketing Communication
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Learning Outcomes
- Describe the stages of the buying process
- Explain the different buying processes for low-involvement and high-involvement products
- Describe the major factors that influence consumer purchasing decisions
- Explain the B2B buying process and key factors influencing B2B purchasing decisions
Why learn about consumer behavior?
Please welcome a new arrival
At 1:26 a.m. this morning, in Houston’s Memorial Hermann Hospital, a consumer was born. His name is Finnegan Henry James. By the time he goes home three days later, some of America’s biggest marketers will be pursuing him with samples, coupons, and assorted freebies. Proctor & Gamble hopes its Pampers brand will win the battle for Finn’s bottom, but retailer Target has a lower-priced contender. To welcome Finn’s family, Johnson & Johnson has already sent his mother a sample of its gentle baby wash. Bristol-Myers Squibb Company is sending a free, bulky box of Enfamil baby formula.
Like no generation before, Finn enters a consumer culture surrounded by logos, labels, and messages almost from the moment of birth. As an infant, he may wear Sesame Street diapers and a miniature NBA jersey. Right away, this little boy will begin influencing his parents’ purchasing decisions–that’s what spitting out spoonfuls of baby food is all about. By the time he is twenty months old, he will start to recognize some of the thousands of brands flashed in front of him each day. Around age four, Finn will begin making decisions about how to spend his own money. At age seven, if he is anything like the typical kid, he will see some forty thousand commercials a year.1 By the time he is twelve, he will have his own entry in the massive data banks of marketers.
Many forces are at work influencing Finn’s consumer choices from a very early age. Some of these forces are social: his parents, cousins, and play group. Some of these forces are cultural: Finn is a Texan and an American. As Finn grows and matures, his age, gender, education, economic status, life stage, and personality all play a role in his decisions as a consumer. Multiply Finn by millions of babies born in the U.S. every year, and you have new, increasingly marketing-savvy generations flooding the market.
This is Finn’s story. And if you’re living in the U.S. today, your story probably sounds a lot like his.
You Are the Target and the Hunter
Setting aside the ethics of marketing to children, the fact remains that you are a consumer living in a highly commercialized, modern society. Marketing artifacts are so woven into the fabric of our lives that many people hardly recognize them. Every year, companies and marketing organizations spend billions of dollars focused on one central goal: to influence consumers’ purchasing decisions.
As a consumer, hopefully your growing understanding of marketing is helping you see the world around you a little differently, with more and better information about the forces that are trying to influence you.
With your increasing skills as a marketer, you recognize how important it is to understand your customers if you are going to reach them effectively. Part of that is understanding the factors that influence their purchasing decisions. Once you’re educated about those influencing factors, they’ll be tools you can use to create effective marketing.
Licenses and Attributions
CC licensed content, Original
- Why It Matters: Consumer Behavior. Provided by: Lumen Learning. License: CC BY: Attribution
CC licensed content, Shared previously
- Chapter 4: Understanding Buyer Behavior, from Introducing Marketing. Authored by: John Burnett. Provided by: Global Marketing. Located at: http://solr.bccampus.ca:8001/bcc/file/ddbe3343-9796-4801-a0cb-7af7b02e3191/1/Core%20Concepts%20of%20Marketing.pdf. License: CC BY: Attribution
- He Has Got THE Hair. Authored by: Heather Williams. Located at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/photosavvy/2401643021/. License: CC BY-ND: Attribution-NoDerivatives