CHAPTER 1: Consumer Behavior

Nature Scope and Importance of Consumer behavior. :

Consumer behavior is defined as “The dynamic interaction of affect and
cognition, behavior and the environment b which human beings conduct the
exchange
aspects of lives”. IT means that the buying habits of the consumer are
greatly affected by
their thought process and their feelings experienced. Human beings are
greatly influenced
in their buying actions by various factors like opinion of others, marketing
stimuli like
product, advertising, packaging and product appearance.
Importance of Consumer behavior:
• Ever increasing intensifying competition.
• More aggressive competitors emerging with greater frequency.
• Changes basis of competition.
• Geographic sources of competition are becoming wider.
• Niche attacks are becoming frequent.
• Pace of innovation is rapid.
• Price competition becoming more aggressive
• Product differentiation is declining.
As a principal, the marketing concept involves understanding the needs of
the
consumers and translating these needs into products or services to satisfy
these needs.
The basic objective in marketing is to achieve the goal of profit making
through customer
satisfaction. To do this, an organization should understand the consumer and
be as close
to them as possible.
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Consumer behavior is Dynamic:
The feelings, thinking, perceptions and actions of the customer and the
society at
large keep changing frequently. For example number of working women is
on rise and
this has changed the concept of shopping. The dynamic nature of the
consumer behaviour
offers challenges to marketers and the task of creating marketing strategies
becomes
complex, and exciting. Strategies that work today may not work tomorrow.
Strategies
adopted in one market ma not work in another. The product life cycle are
becoming
shorter and create additional pressures on marketers to bring innovative
products and
concepts. The concept ‘value’ changes from time to time. Mahindra and
mahindra had to
come out with ‘Scorpio’ within launch of ‘Bolero’.
Consumer behaviour involves interactions:
Consumer behaviour involves interactions among peoples thinking, feelings,
and
actions and the environment. This forces marketer to understand three
things:
• What products and services mean to customers.
• What influences shopping, purchase, and consumption.
• What consumers need to do to purchase and consumer products and
services?
Consumer behaviour involves exchange:
Consumer behaviour involves exchanges between human beings. People
give up
something of value to others and receive something in return. Much of
consumer
behaviour involves people giving up money to obtain product and services,
that is,
exchanges consumers and sellers. The role of marketing in society is to help
create
exchange by formulating and implementing marketing strategies.
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2. Consumer Research:
Consumer research is the systematic collection and analysis of consumer
information for the purpose of important decision making for marketing.
Consumer
research plays an important role in marketing process, helps in consumer
measurement,
market potential, sales forecast, each element like product mix, distribution
mix, price,
effectiveness of an advertisement campaign, consumer acceptance of a
product. In
fiercely competitive situation, it is extremely critical for and organization to
monitor the
customer relationship on a regular basis.
Consumer research is used for two purposes:
• Routine problem analysis .i.e. product potential, sales forecasting.
• Non-routing problem analysis .i.e. new product launch, success of
promotional
schemes.
Needs for Consumer Research:
• How do consumers interpret information about marketing stimuli such as
products,
stores, and advertising?
• How do consumers choose from among alternative product classes,
products, and
brands?
• How do consumers form evaluation of products and brands?
• How does consumer interpret the benefits of market offerings?
• How do behaviour and environment affect consumer beliefs and attitudes?
• Why consumers are more interested or involved in some products or
brands than
others?
• How d marketing strategies influence consumer’s beliefs and attitudes?
Answers to such questions can only be obtained through consumer feedback
and
for this it is imperative to study Consumer Research and integrate it into the
overall
marketing function.
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Approaches to Consumer Research:
There are two main categories of research methods. Secondary research
uses
research that has already been done by someone else. For example,
marketers often find
information compiled by the U.S. Census very useful. However, in some
cases,
information specific enough to satisfy a firm’s needs is not publicly available.
For
example, a firm will have to run its own research to find out whether
consumers would
prefer that more vanilla taste be added to its soft drink brand. Original
research that a
firm does for itself is known as primary research.
There is no one perfect primary research method. Each has strengths and
weaknesses, and thus the appropriate method must be selected based on
research needs.
Surveys are useful for getting a great deal of specific information. Surveys
can contain
open-ended questions (e.g., "In which city and state were you born?
____________") or
closed-ended, where the respondent is asked to select answers from a brief
list (e.g.,
"__Male ___ Female.") Open ended questions have the advantage that the
respondent is
not limited to the options listed, and that the respondent is not being
influenced by seeing
a list of responses. However, open-ended questions are often skipped by
respondents, and
coding them can be quite a challenge. In general, for surveys to yield
meaningful
responses, sample sizes of over 100 are usually required because precision
is essential.
For example, if a market share of twenty percent would result in a loss while
thirty
percent would be profitable, a confidence interval of 20-35% is too wide to
be useful.
Surveys come in several different forms. Mail surveys are relatively
inexpensive,
but response rates are typically quite low—typically from 5-20%. Phone-
surveys get
somewhat higher response rates, but not many questions can be asked
because many
answer options have to be repeated and few people are willing to stay on the
phone for
more than five minutes. Mall intercepts are a convenient way to reach
consumers, but
respondents may be reluctant to discuss anything sensitive face-to-face with
an
interviewer.
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A survey, as any kind of research, is vulnerable to bias. The wording of a
question
can influence the outcome a great deal. For example, more people answered
no to the
question "Should speeches against democracy be allowed?" than answered
yes to "Should
speeches against democracy be forbidden?" For face-to-face interviews,
interviewer bias
is a danger, too. Interviewer bias occurs when the interviewer influences the
way the
respondent answers. For example, unconsciously an interviewer that works
for the firm
manufacturing the product in question may smile a little when something
good is being
said about the product and frown a little when something negative is being
said. The
respondent may catch on and say something more positive than his or her
real opinion.
Finally, a response bias may occur—if only part of the sample responds to a
survey, the
respondents’ answers may not be representative of the population.
The case of "The Pentagon Declares War on Rush Limbaugh" illustrated that
biased surveys are often taken at face value. It was reported in the national
media,
without question of the validity of the research, that only 3.8% of listeners to
the Armed
Forces Network wanted to listen to Rush Limbaugh. It turned out, however,
that this
inference was based on the question "What single thing can we do to
improve
programming?" Only if a respondent wrote in an answer mentioning Rush
Limbaugh
were he or she counted as wanting to listen to Rush.
Experiments are used when the researcher wants to rule out all but one
explanation for a particular observation. Suppose, for example, that we
observe that sales
of our brand increase when we send out coupons. However, retailers may
also give us
better shelf space when the coupon is out; thus, we can’t tell if it was the
coupon or the
shelf-placement that caused sales to increase—the two variables are
confounded. In an
experiment, we carefully control what varies. In this case, we invite in one
hundred
people and ask them to shop in a simulated store. Half of the respondents
are randomly
selected and get a coupon; the others do not. Since the only difference here
was whether
the subjects got a coupon or not, we can be more confident that differences
in brand
choice were due to the coupon. Experiments do, however, have a serious
drawback in
that the consumer is removed from his or her natural surroundings. For
example, if we
pay some consumers to come into a lab and watch TV "as you normally
would," these
consumers, figuring that they are being paid, may give more attention to the
advertisements than they would at home.
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Focus groups involve getting a group of 6-12 consumers together to discuss
product usage. Focus groups are especially useful if we do not have specific
questions to
ask yet, since we don’t know what consumers’ concerns might be. We start
out talking
broadly about the need that a product might serve, and only gradually move
toward the
product itself. For example, a firm considering the marketing of sugar free
cookies might
start out its group talking about snacks—why people consume them and the
benefits they
expect. Gradually, we then move toward concerns people have about
snacks. Eventually,
we address sugar content and concerns that consumers have about that.
Only toward the
end of the session do we show consumers the actual product we are
considering and ask
for feedback. We postpone our consideration of the actual product toward
the end
because we want to be sure that we find out about the consumer’s needs
and desires
rather than what he or she thinks about the specific product we have on the
drawing board
right now (that product can be changed, and it can be repositioned).
Drawbacks of focus
groups include high costs and the fact that generalization toward the entire
population is
difficult for such small sample sizes. The fact that focus groups involve social
interaction
also means that participants may say what they think will make themselves
look good
rather than what they really believe (the social desirability bias).
Personal interviews involve in-depth questioning of an individual about his or
her
interest in or experiences with a product. The benefit here is that we can get
really into
depth (when the respondent says something interesting, we can ask him or
her to
elaborate), but this method of research is costly and can be extremely
vulnerable to
interviewer bias.
Projective techniques are used when a consumer may feel embarrassed to
admit to
certain opinions, feelings, or preferences. For example, many older
executives may not be
comfortable admitting to being intimidated by computers. It has been found
that in such
cases, people will tend to respond more openly about "someone else." Thus,
we may ask
them to explain reasons why a friend has not yet bought a computer, or to
tell a story
about a person in a picture who is or is not using a product. The main
problem with this
method is that it is difficult to analyze responses.
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Observation of consumers is often a powerful tool. Looking at how
consumers
select products may yield insights into how they make decisions and what
they look for.
For example, some American manufacturers were concerned about low sales
of their
products in Japan. Observing Japanese consumers, it was found that many of
these
Japanese consumers scrutinized packages looking for a name of a major
manufacturer—
the product specific-brands that are common in the U.S.(e.g., Tide) were not
impressive
to the Japanese, who wanted a name of a major firm like Mitsubishi or
Proctor &
Gamble. Observation may help us determine how much time consumers
spend comparing
prices, or whether nutritional labels are being consulted. Physiological
measures are
occasionally used to examine consumer response. For example, advertisers
may want to
measure a consumer’s level of arousal during various parts of an
advertisement.
Types of Data:
Primary Data: Data collected at first hand either by the researcher or by
someone
especially for the purpose of the study are known as primary data.
Secondary Data: Data which have been collected earlier for some other
purpose are
secondary data in hands of marketing researcher.
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3. Consumer Learning:
Learning is defined as a permanent change in the behaviour of a consumer
as a result of
past experience.
The characteristic features of learning are as under:
• Learning involves a change in behaviour. This change may or may not be
an important
over previous behaviour.
• Learning is a process, which continuously evolves and changes as a result
of newly
acquired knowledge.
• Learning can occur by increase in knowledge through reading books,
articles,
observation, thinking, and through discussions.
• The behaviour change is based on some form of practice or exception.
Thus we see that learning is based on two vital aspects that are behaviour
and
experience. Learning can be either intentional or incidental. Intentional
learning occurs
when the individual is deliberately searching for the information on the
feature, benefits
etc of the product before a purchase. Incidental learning occurs when the
information
comes to him on its own either through the print or electronic media,
exhibitions etc.
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4. Consumer Perception:
It is selection, organization, and interpretation of marketing and
environmental
stimuli into a cohesive picture. Following are the some feature of perception,
which are
as under:
• Perception is a mental process, whereby an individual selects data or
information from
the environment, organizes it and draws significance or meaning from it.
• Perception is a basically a cognitive or thinking process and an individual’s
activities,
emotions, feelings etc. are based on his perception of his perception of his
surroundings
or environment.
• Perception being an intellectual and cognitive process will be subjective in
nature. This
means that different people may perceive the same environment differently
based on the
effect of the environment.
Characteristics Affecting Perception:
Characteristic effecting perception can be divided into sensory elements and
structural
elements.
Colour:
Colour has important sensory connotations. Evidence suggests that red is
regarded as warm, sensual and not intimidating. Blue is seen as conforming
and is
regarded to be colour that attempts to convey friendlier image. Pepsi
attempt to cash on
the blue colour of the Indian cricket team during the recent World Cup
cricket matches
has received a similar response. Many retailers in Mumbai call it ‘Ghaslet
Pepsi’. This is
because Indians are more used to identify blue with kerosene and their long
term
association with blue colour of kerosene led to call blue Pepsi as Ghaslet
Pepsi.
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Taste:
Taste is another sensory factor that will condition consumers brand
perceptions.
The importance of taste is illustrated by P&G blunder when it first introduced
Pringles
potato chips. The chips were packed in an easy-to-stack cylindrical can to
avoid breakage
of chips. The consumers responded by saying that the packaging resembles
a tennis ball
can. Further consumers felt that the chips tasted like tennis ball.
Smell:
Smell is important for food products and cosmetics products. In one study,
two
fragrances were added to the same facial tissue. Consumers perceived one
facial issue as
elegant and expensive and the other as a product to use in the kitchen.
Sound:
Sound is another important sensory stimulus. Advertisers have traditionally
used
accent to convey status and authority. Even in case of serials, voice is being
used to
create an impact on the masses. The ‘Binaca geetmala’ was characterised by
the voice of
Amin Sayani.s
Feel:
The feel of certain products will also influence consumer’s perceptions.
Softness
is considered a desirable attribute in many paper products. Feel is also a
means of
determining quality. Consumer often use of a textile fabric, clothing,
carpeting, or
furniture to evaluate quality. For example, a smooth, velvety feel in textile
fabrics is
considered an indication of quality.
Structural Elements:
Intensity and Size: The brighter and advertisement and larger the size, more
it is
able to attract the attention of potential consumers. Such large
advertisements can be in
the form of full page advertisements in newspapers or in the form of large
hoardings on
the road.
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Position:
Attraction towards and advertisement depends largely on the place where it
is
positioned. Positioning includes the page of a newspaper. Similarly, the
placement of
product for display on shelves at the retail outlet plays an important role in
attracting the
attention of the consumers.
Contrast:
A black and white advertisement with a small spot used by Jet Airways is
likely
to attract attention. A quite commercial after a loud program can attract
attention like the
advertisement of ‘De Beers’ diamond after listening to a frantic rock show.
Novelty:
It is observed that anything which is different from what is normally
expected
tends to attract attention like an unusual bottle shape or different packaging
material. For
e.g. ‘Frooti’ was the first to introduce the soft drink in tetra pack or when
Pepsi and Coke
were launched in small cans.
Repetition:
Advertisements are repeated often to enable consumers to brand recall as
well as
stimulate them and create a strong desire for interest in the purchase of the
product.
Repetition is particularly important in case of low involvement convenience
goods like
soaps, toothpastes.
Consumer Characteristics Affecting Perception:
Stimulus Discrimination:
One of the basic questions regarding the effect of marketing stimuli. The
ability to
discriminate among stimuli is learned. Generally, frequent users of a product
are better
able to notice small difference in product characteristic between brands.
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Threshold levels:
The ability of consumer to detect the various in sensory elements is
determined
by their threshold level. Some consumers are more sensitive to these stimuli
than others.
This will be quite clear from the fact tea and coffee companies employ
persons called tea
or coffee ‘tasters’.
Just Noticeable difference:
It is based on the differential threshold of a consumer. A consumer will not
be
able to detect any change in stimulus below his threshold. For e.g. If an
unbranded
detergent cost 5 percent less that consumer is regular brand, the consumer
ma not notice
the difference. However, if the same unbranded product costs less than 30
percent less
than he is definitely going to notice the difference.
Weber’s Law:
It states that the stronger the stimulus, the greater the change required for
the
stimulus to be seen as different. The most important application of this law is
in price.
One critical implication is that the higher the original price of an item, the
greater the
markdown required to increase sales. For e.g. If price of a Mercedes Benz S
class is
reduced by 25000/-, it will not have any impact on sales because the basic
price is in
several Lakhs that a difference of Rs25000/- may not be noticeable for
consumers. On the
other hand a price reduction of even Rs5000/- for a maruti 800 is seen to
push sales
substantially because of its low original price.
Absolute Threshold:
It is stimulus below which consumers cannot detect the stimulus at all. It is
also
referred to as subliminal perception .i.e. perception of stimulus below the
conscious level.
One of the major controversies regarding consumer perceptions is whether
consumers
can actually perceive marketing stimuli below their absolute level.
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Adaptation law:
It is the level at which consumer’s no longer notice a frequently repeated
stimulus. An individual walking into an air-conditioned room, kitchen full of
fragrance,
or a noisy party will notice these stimuli after a period of time. Consumer
differs in their
level of adaptation. Some tune out more quickly then others. Novelty,
humour, contrast,
and movement are all stimulus effects that may gain consumer’s attention
and reduce
their attention and reduce their adaptation.
Price and Quality Perceptions:
Price perceptions directly influence consumer’s perceptions of brand quality
and
determine their purchasing behaviour. For e.g. Parker pens were positioned
as expensive,
hand finished pens. In order to achieve large volume of growth and to share
a pie of the
explosive growing ballpoints, Parker entered this market for cheap pens
moving away
from its traditional positioning. The results were disastrous because
company’s image
was not consistent with its price. In the late eighties, it moved back to its
strength, high
priced fountain pens, with an ad campaign featuring style and luxury. This
shift made the
company profitable again.
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5. Consumer Involvement:
Involvement:
A consumer is said to have a high involvement in purchase, when he
considers the
product be important and strongly identifies with it.
Conditions for involvement:
A consumer is likely to be more involved with a product when:
• The consumer’s self image is tied to the product e.g. aggressive youth
craving for power
identify themselves with the Enfield Bullet. Khadi is preferred by politicians
and budding
politicians. Similarly, we find politician preferring a multi-utility vehicle like
Scorpio or
Tata Safari.
• Product has a symbolic meaning tied to consumer values e.g. ownership of
a BMW car,
a cross pen, Rolex watches have s symbolic value of the affluent class.
• Product is expensive .e.g. Jewellery, real estate etc.
• It has some important functional value e.g. fuel efficiency of a vehicle,
cricket gear for a
cricketer.
• Product has an emotional appeal e.g. buying of a gift article, buying of
articles for
religious purpose.
• Product is continually of interest to the consumer .e.g. fashion-conscious
customer has
continuous appeal in clothing and apparel.
• Product entails significant risk e.g. buying a technology complex product,
buying a
house.
• Product is identified with the norms of the group. E.g. School children
buying
‘Pokemans’ articles.
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Type of Involvement:
Situational Involvement:
It is one that occurs only in specific situations and is temporary. For e.g. a
person
buying suit for marriage. Formal dressing for the marriage is a necessary and
hence a person not very fashion-conscious about clothes gets involved
temporary for his
marriage in a piece of suit. Enduring Involvement: It indicates an ongoing
interest in the
product category. For example,
Attitudes:
Consumer attitudes are a composite of a consumer’s (1) beliefs about, (2)
feelings
about, (3) and behavioral intentions toward some object--within the context
of marketing,
usually a brand or retail store. These components are viewed together since
they are
highly interdependent and together represent forces that influence how the
consumer will
react to the object.
Beliefs .
The first component is beliefs. A consumer may hold both positive beliefs
toward
an object (e.g., coffee tastes good) as well as negative beliefs (e.g., coffee is
easily spilled
and stains papers). In addition, some beliefs may be neutral (coffee is black),
and some
may be differ in valance depending on the person or the situation (e.g.,
coffee is hot and
stimulates--good on a cold morning, but not good on a hot summer evening
when one
wants to sleep). Note also that the beliefs that consumers hold need not be
accurate (e.g.,
that pork contains little fat), and some beliefs may, upon closer examination,
be
contradictory (e.g., that a historical figure was a good person but also owned
slaves).
Affect .
Consumers also hold certain feelings toward brands or other objects.
Sometimes
these feelings are based on the beliefs (e.g., a person feels nauseated when
thinking about
a hamburger because of the tremendous amount of fat it contains), but there
may also be
feelings which are relatively independent of beliefs. For example, an extreme
environmentalist may believe that cutting down trees is morally wrong, but
may have
positive affect toward Christmas trees because he or she unconsciously
associates these
trees with the experience that he or she had at Christmas as a child.
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Behavioral intention.
The behavioral intention is what the consumer plans to do with respect to
the
object (e.g., buy or not buy the brand). As with affect, this is sometimes a
logical
consequence of beliefs (or affect), but may sometimes reflect other
circumstances--e.g.,
although a consumer does not really like a restaurant, he or she will go there
because it is
a hangout for his or her friends.
Attitude-Behavior Consistency .
Consumers often do not behave consistently with their attitudes for several
reasons:
o Ability.
He or she may be unable to do so. Although junior high school student likes
pickup
trucks and would like to buy one, she may lack a driver’s license.
o Competing demands for resources.
Although the above student would like to buy a pickup truck on her sixteenth
birthday, she would rather have a computer, and has money for only one of
the two.
o Social influence.
A student thinks that smoking is really cool, but since his friends think it’s
disgusting, he does not smoke.
o Measurement problems.
Measuring attitudes is difficult. In many situations, consumers do not
consciously
set out to enumerate how positively or negatively they feel about mopeds,
and when a
market researcher asks them about their beliefs about mopeds, how
important these beliefs are, and their evaluation of the performance of
mopeds with
respect to these beliefs, consumers often do not give very reliable answers.
Thus, the
consumers may act consistently with their true attitudes, which were never
uncovered
because an erroneous measurement was made.
o Attitude Change Strategies.
Changing attitudes is generally very difficult, particularly when consumers
suspect that the marketer has a self-serving agenda in bringing about this
change (e.g., to
get the consumer to buy more or to switch brands).
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o Changing affect.
One approach is to try to change affect, which may or may not involve
getting
consumers to change their beliefs. One strategy uses the approach of
classical
conditioning try to "pair" the product with a liked stimulus. For example, we
"pair" a car
with a beautiful woman. Alternatively, we can try to get people to like the
advertisement
and hope that this liking will "spill over" into the purchase of a product. For
example, the
Pillsbury Doughboy does not really emphasize the conveyance of much
information to
the consumer; instead, it attempts to create a warm, fuzzy image. Although
Energizer
Bunny ads try to get people to believe that their batteries last longer, the
main emphasis is
on the likeable bunny. Finally, products which are better known, through the
mere
exposure effect, tend to be better liked--that is, the more a product is
advertised and seen
in stores, the more it will generally be liked, even if consumers to do not
develop any
specific beliefs about the product.
o Changing behavior.
People like to believe that their behavior is rational; thus, once they use our
products, chances are that they will continue unless someone is able to get
them to
switch. One way to get people to switch to our brand is to use temporary
price discounts
and coupons; however, when consumers buy a product on deal, they may
justify the
purchase based on that deal (i.e., the low price) and may then switch to
other brands on
deal later. A better way to get people to switch to our brand is to at least
temporarily
obtain better shelf space so that the product is more convenient. Consumers
are less likely
to use this availability as a rationale for their purchase and may continue to
buy the
product even when the product is less conveniently located. (Notice, by the
way, that this
represents a case of shaping).
o Changing beliefs.
Although attempting to change beliefs is the obvious way to attempt attitude
change, particularly when consumers hold unfavorable or inaccurate ones,
this is often
difficult to achieve because consumers tend to resist. Several approaches to
belief change
exist:
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o Change currently held beliefs.
It is generally very difficult to attempt to change beliefs that people hold,
particularly those that are strongly held, even if they are inaccurate. For
example, the
petroleum industry advertised for a long time that its profits were lower than
were
commonly believed, and provided extensive factual evidence in its
advertising to support
this reality. Consumers were suspicious and rejected this information,
however.
o Change the importance of beliefs.
Although the sugar manufacturers would undoubtedly like to decrease the
importance of healthy teeth, it is usually not feasible to make beliefs less
important--
consumers are likely to reason, why, then, would you bother bringing them
up in the first
place? However, it may be possible to strengthen beliefs that favour us--e.g.,
a vitamin
supplement manufacturer may advertise that it is extremely important for
women to
replace iron lost through menstruation. Most consumers already agree with
this, but the
belief can be made stronger.
o Add beliefs.
Consumers are less likely to resist the addition of beliefs so long as they do
not
conflict with existing beliefs. Thus, the beef industry has added beliefs that
beef (1) is
convenient and (2) can be used to make a number of creative dishes.
Vitamin
manufacturers attempt to add the belief that stress causes vitamin
depletion, which
sounds quite plausible to most people.
o Change ideal.
It usually difficult, and very risky, to attempt to change ideals, and only few
firms
succeed. For example, Hard Candy may have attempted to change the ideal
away from
traditional beauty toward more unique self expression.
o One-sided vs. two-sided appeals.
Attitude research has shown that consumers often tend to react more
favorably to
advertisements which either (1) admit something negative about the
sponsoring brand
(e.g., the Volvo is a clumsy car, but very safe) or (2) admits something
positive about a
competing brand (e.g., a competing supermarket has slightly lower prices,
but offers less
service and selection). Two-sided appeals must, contain overriding
arguments why the
sponsoring brand is ultimately superior--that is, in the above examples, the
"but" part
must be emphasized.
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o Appeal approaches.
Several approaches to appeal may be used. The use of affect to induce
empathy
with advertising characters may increase attraction to a product, but may
backfire if
consumers believe that people’s feelings are being exploited. Fear appeals
appear to work
only if (1) an optimal level of fear is evoked--not so much that people tune it
out, but
enough to scare people into action and (2) a way to avoid the feared
stimulus is explicitly
indicated--e.g., gingivitis and tooth loss can be avoided by using this mouth
wash. Humor
appears to be effective in gaining attention, but does not appear to increase
persuasion in
practice. In addition, a more favorable attitude toward the advertisement
may be created
by humorous advertising, which may in turn result in increased sales.
Comparative
advertising, which is illegal in many countries, often increases sales for the
sponsoring
brand, but may backfire in certain cultures.
o Culture:
Culture is part of the external influences that impact the consumer. That is,
culture
represents influences that are imposed on the consumer by other
individuals.
The definition of culture offered in the text is "That complex whole which
includes
knowledge, belief, art, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits
acquired by
man person as a member of society." From this definition, we make the
following
observations:
• Culture, as a "complex whole," is a system of interdependent
components.
• Knowledge and beliefs are important parts.
In the U.S., we know and believe that a person who is skilled and works hard
will
get ahead. In other countries, it may be believed that differences in outcome
result more
from luck. "Chunking," the name for China in Chinese literally means "The
Middle
Kingdom." The belief among ancient Chinese that they were in the centre of
the universe
greatly influenced their thinking.