MBA Distance education learning /Consumer Impact

 Management Tutorial Q : A) Explain the ways by which understanding of consumer behavior can help in designing marketing strategies?

Ans: Analyze how targeted consumer needs, wants, and desires change as marketplace marketing variables are adjusted according to cultural and structural lifestyle constraints.

Evaluate cultural and lifestyle influences on consumer Impact, and design targeted messages to create awareness, interest, and guided action.

Examine motivation, personality and emotion and how these factors directly influence consumer behavior.

Synthesize information taken from secondary data courses and design effective primary data gathering efforts.

Analyze situational influences impacting motivation, personality, and emotional responses in groups.

Evaluate the consumer buying behavior to determine how problems are identified and evaluated, and how products/services are selected to resolve the problem state.

Analyze port purchase processes, consumer satisfaction, and metrics to evaluate customer commitment.

Evaluate business to business buying behavior and segment these organizational behaviors into actionable groups with appropriate performance metrics.

Evaluate strategies to address pre- and post-purchase behavior including outlet selections and information requirements of targeted segments.

B) Throw light on different factors constituting ‘culture’. Also discuss how marketers frame up potential offering of consumer goods or services by using their cultural meaning?

Ans: Culture is part of the external Impact that influences the customer. That is, culture represents effect that is put on the consumer by other individuals.

The definition of culture includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, custom, and any other system received as a member of society

Culture, as a "complex whole," is a system of interdependent components.

Culture has several important characteristics:

(1) Culture is comprehensive. This means that all parts must fit together in some logical fashion. For example, bowing and a strong desire to avoid the loss of face are unified in their manifestation of the importance of respect.

(2) Culture is learned rather than being something we are born with. We will consider the mechanics of learning later in the course.

(3) Culture is manifested within boundaries of acceptable behavior. For example, in American society, one cannot show up to class naked, but wearing anything from a suit and tie to shorts and a T-shirt would usually be acceptable. Failure to behave within the prescribed norms may lead to sanctions, ranging from being hauled off by the police for indecent exposure to being laughed at by others for wearing a suit at the beach.

(4) Conscious awareness of cultural standards is limited. One American spy was intercepted by the Germans during World War II simply because of the way he held his knife and fork while eating.

(5) Cultures fall somewhere on a continuum between static and dynamic depending on how quickly they accept change.

Management Tutorial Q. a) Are all products purchase driven by self-image congruence? Discuss the importance of this phenomenon?

Ans: Self-Image:
Self-image is the configuration of beliefs related to the self.
The relationships between consumers and the products that they buy own a sports car? attractive and outgoing

Forms of Self-Image

Actual self-image (or private self): it involves those images that one has of oneself about which one feels protective—how consumers see themselves
the self-consistency motive: doing things that are consistent with one’s own self-image

Ideal self-image: how consumer would like to be
By acquiring products consistent with their ideal self-image, consumers may boost their self-esteem

Social self-image: how we believe people think of us, and how we like people to think of us
The social consistency motive uses of products to try to create a self image that is appropriate for a given social situation.

Self-Image Congruence

Self-image congruity: when a consumer’s self-image matches brand-user image
Actual self-congruity: brand user image is matching with the consumer’s actual self-image
Ideal self-congruity: brand user image is matching the consumer’s ideal self-image
Social self-congruity: brand user image is matching the consumer’s social self-mage
Ideal social self-congruity: brand user image is matching the consumer’s ideal social self-image

Gender Roles and Self-Image
Men’s vs. women’s products
Gender typed products may be matched with consumers’ gender-role orientation:
Masculinity—independence, toughness, aggressiveness, competitiveness, achievement, rebelliousness
Femininity—tenderness, sensitivity, dependence, compliance, cooperation
Androgyny—both masculine and feminine characteristics

b) How general personality traits influence consumer behavior? Explain.

Ans: Personality
It refers to an individual’s consistent response tendencies across situations and over time – general trends
State approach to personality—understanding the individual in the context of the whole
It allows us to predict what a person will do in a particular situation
Trait approach to personality—understanding personality traits (consistent tendencies to respond to a given situation in certain ways)
General traits vs. consumption-specific personality traits

Do General Personality Traits Influence Consumer Behavior
Impulsiveness
It is measured using 12 adjectives*: impulsive, careless, self-controlled (RC**), extravagant, farsighted (RC), responsible (RC), restrained (RC), easily tempted, rational (RC), methodical (RC), enjoy spending, and planner (RC).

Specific Personality Traits and Consumer Behavior
* The market maven consumer—the kind of consumer who has information about many kinds of products, places to shop, and other aspects of the marketplace.
* Has early awareness of new products
* Exhibits high levels of specific information provision to others
* Demonstrates a high level of general market information
* Demonstrates a high level of market interest
* Tends to read much of direct mail advertising
* Implications for the marketing of new products

Management Tutorial Q.a) Highlight the advantages of using lifestyle concept on marketing plan development, creative strategy formulation and product positioning?

Ans: Lifestyle

Lifestyle is a mode of living that is identified by:

How a person spends time and resources

What a person considers important in the environment?

What a person thinks of self and the world?

Psycho-graphics is the analysis of consumer lifestyle helps to segment and target consumers for new and existing products.

 b) Does buying the same purchase again and again always mean that customers are loyal to it? Discuss factors influencing Brand loyalty in detail?

Ans: Factors Influencing Brand Loyalty

It has been suggested that loyalty includes some degree of pre-dis-positional commitment toward a brand. Brand loyalty is viewed as multidimensional construct. It is determined by several distinct psychological processes and it entails multivariate measurements. Customers' Perceived value, Brand trust, Customers' satisfaction, Repeat purchase behavior and Commitment are found to be the key influencing factors of brand loyalty. Commitment and Repeated purchase behaviors are considered as necessary conditions for brand loyalty followed by Perceived value, satisfaction and brand trust.

Industrial Markets

In industrial markets, organizations will regard the `heavy users' as `major accounts', to be handled by senior sales personnel and even managers; whereas the `light users' may be handled by the general sales force or by a dealer.

Portfolios of Brands

Andrew Ehrenberg, then of the London Business School said that consumers buy 'portfolios of brands' they switch regularly between brands, often because they simply want a change. Thus, 'brand penetration' or 'brand share' reflects only a statistical chance that the majority of customers will buy that brand next time as part of a portfolio of brands they favor. It does not guarantee that they will stay loyal.

Influencing the statistical probabilities facing a consumer choosing from a portfolio of preferred brands, which is required in this context, is a very different role for a brand manager; compared with the - much simpler - one traditionally described, of recruiting and holding dedicated customers. The concept also emphasizes the need for managing continuity.

Market Inertia

On the other hand, one of the most prominent features of many markets is their overall stability - or inertia. Thus, in their essential characteristics they change very slowly, often over decades - sometimes centuries - rather than over months. This stability has two very important implications. The first is that if you are a clear brand leader you are especially well placed in relation to your competitors, and should want to further the inertia which lies behind that stable position. This will, however, still demand a continuing pattern of minor changes, to keep up with the marginal changes in consumer taste (which may be minor to the theorist, but will still be crucial in terms of those consumers' purchasing patterns - markets do not favor the over-complacent.). But these minor investments are a small price to pay for the long term profits which brand leaders usually enjoy.

The second, and more important is that if you want to overturn this stability, and change the market (or significantly change your position in it), then you must expect to make massive investments to succeed. Even though stability is the natural state of markets, however, sudden changes can still occur and the environment must be constantly scanned for signs of these.

How human needs motivate the consumers to buy? Discuss in the light of Maslow’s hierarchy of need theory & Ditcher’s major consumption motives?

Ans: Needs can be understood as the most basic human requirement like Food, Sex, Clothing, Shelter etc.

Need is a feeling or desire for something, which is lacking and through performing various activities to get the feeling of lacking removal and thus become satisfied.

Thus any human behavior is caused by motives or needs.

1) Physiological needs

Physiological needs are the literal requirements for human survival. If these requirements are not met, except of clothing and sex, the human body cannot survive.

These needs are breathing, homeostasis, water, sleep, food, sex, clothing, shelter.

2) Safety needs

The individuals seek safety to survive in adverse and competitive situations such needs are termed as safety needs. these safety needs manifest themselves in such things as a preference for job security, grievance procedures for protecting the individual from unilateral authority, savings accounts, insurance policies, and the like.

Safety and Security needs include:

Personal security

Financial security

Health and well-being

Safety net against accidents/illness and the adverse impacts etc.

3) Social needs

. The social needs are emotionally-based relationships in general, such as:

Friendship

Intimacy

Having a supportive and communicative family

The major sources of social needs fulfillments are:

. In the absence of these elements, people become susceptible to loneliness, social anxiety, and clinical depression.

3) Esteem Needs

The esteem refers the desire to be accepted and valued by others.

All humans have a need to

1. be respected,

2. have self-esteem,

3. have self-respect,

4. to gain recognition

e.g., “I want to get an MBA in Marketing from IIM’s.”

4) Self actualization needs In this stage a person strives to satisfy his personal, emotional and spiritual being through certain behavior. Maslow has put this need at the top.

Dichter’s 12 motives-

• Power-masculinity-virility
• Security
• Eroticism
• Moral purity/cleanliness
• Social acceptance
• Individuality
• Status
• Femininity
• Reward
• Mastery over environment
• Desalienation
• Magic-mastery

Define social class? How social class dies influences Marketplace behavior from product & brand choice to spending patterns to outlet choice to symbolic consumption?

Ans: Social class—a status hierarchy by which groups and individuals are classified on the basis of esteem and prestige.—American Marketing Association
A social class is a group of people whom other members of the community see as equal to one another in social prestige and whom others believe to be superior or inferior in prestige to other groups that constitute the social classes below them or above them (Warner).

Social Class in the United States
A five-class hierarchy

Upper class
Attend elite schools, engage in inconspicuous consumption
Upper-middle class
Professionals, independent businesspeople, corporate executives
Lower-middle class
Salespeople, clerical workers, supervisors, construction contractors, small retail store owners
Upper-lower class
Skilled and semi-skilled blue-collar workers
Lower-lower class
Lower blue-collar workers, the unemployed, families on welfare, and unskilled workers

Social Class and Marketplace Behavior: Media Use
Influence on media use

• Lower-class people are less likely to subscribe to newspapers than are members of the middle class.

Choice of magazine is likely tied to education and reading ability

• Lower-middle class—Reader’s Digest, Ladies Home Journal
• Upper-middle class—Time, The New Yorker, etc.

Broadcast media choice also varies by social class

• Upper-middle class—NBC vs. lower-middle class: CBS
• Lower-middle class—more responsive to audiovisual forms of communication

Social Class: Shopping
Lower-class women are the most “impulsive” about shopping
Outlet choice varies by social class
Upper-lower class women are likely to respond to promotions offering coupons or other special inducements
Members of the upper class prefer traditional home furnishings

Social Class and Leisure
Bowling, TV, and bingo are favorite lower-class leisure pursuits
Most activities enjoyed by middle- and upper-class people are less time consuming than lower-class choices.

Discuss consumer’s decision cycle and its various stages in detail. Also discuss roles of household members in the consumer decision process?

Ans: The followings are the stages in the basic model of consumer decision making.

1) Problem recognition stage

2) Information search

3) In Information evaluation

4) Purchase Decision stage

5) In Post-purchase evaluation

In Problem recognition stage

The consumer perceives a need and becomes motivated to solve a problem. Problem recognition is that result when there is a difference between one's desired state and one's actual state. Consumers are motivated to address this discrepancy and therefore they commence the buying process.

Sources of problem recognition include:

Store gets out of stock

Dissatisfaction with a current product or service

Changing consumer needs and wants

IN Information search stage

Once the consumer has recognized a problem, they search for information on products and services that can solve that problem

Internal search

Scanning one’s memory to recall previous experiences with products or brands.

Often sufficient for frequently purchased products.

External search

When past experience or knowledge is insufficient

The risk of making a wrong purchase decision is high

The information search clarifies the problem for the consumer by:

(1) Suggesting criteria to use for the purchase.

(2) Yielding brand names that might meet the criteria.

(3) Developing consumer value perception.

In Information evaluation At this time the consumer compares the brands and products that are in their evoked set.

The marketing organization needs to understand what benefits consumers are seeking and therefore which attributes are most important in terms of making a decision.

A consumer's evaluative criteria represent both the objective attributes of a brand (such as locate speed on a portable CD player) the subjective factors (such as prestige).

Purchase Decision stage.

• The consumer decides which brand to purchase and from which shop.
• Three possibilities:
• Where to buy from is influence by
• Terms of sale
• Past experience buying from the seller
• Return policy
  

.2. When to buy is influence by

Store atmosphere ,Time pressure ,A sale and Pleasantness of the shopping experience

In Post-purchase evaluation the consumer evaluates his purchase decision after consuming the product or brand the consumer compares it with expectations and is either satisfied or dissatisfied.

which brings learning to the consumer about the brand?

After buying a product, Satisfaction or dissatisfaction affects

* Consumer value perceptions

* Consumer communications

* Repeat-purchase behavior

Discuss various characteristics of innovations upon which due rate of acceptance of the innovation by target consumer depend?

Ans: Characteristics of innovations

• Observability
  • The degree to which the results of an innovation are visible to potential adopters
• Relative Advantage
  • The degree to which the innovation is perceived to be superior to current practice
• Compatibility
  • The degree to which the innovation is perceived to be consistent with socio-cultural values, previous ideas, and/or perceived needs
• Trialability
  • The degree to which the innovation can be experienced on a limited basis
• Complexity
  • The degree to which an innovation is difficult to use or understand.

Individual innovativeness

• Innovativeness

The degree to which an individual is relatively earlier in adopting an innovation than other members of his social system

• Modified & extended innovations are:
  • Inherent / actualized novelty seeking
  • Creative consumer
  • Adoptive / vicarious innovativeness

Other posssible factors.

• Social environment of diffusion of innovation
• Marketing strategies employed
• Institutional structures (e.g., government)

Decisions within families may be classified into several types: instrumental, affective, social, economic, and technical.

Instrumental decisions are those which rest on functional issues such as providing money, shelter, and food for the family members (Epstein, Bishop, and Baldwin 1982).

Affective decisions deal with choices related to feelings and emotions. Decisions such as whether to get married are affective.

Social decisions are those related to the values, roles, and goals of the family, such as decisions about whether one parent will stay at home while the children are preschool age.

Economic decisions focus on choices about using and gathering family resources. Whether an eighteen-year old child should get a job and contribute to the family income is an economic decision.

Technical decisions relate to all the sub decisions that have to be made to carry out a main decision. For instance, if a family decides that one member will quit work and go to college, then a variety of technical decisions must be made to enact that decision.