Concept of Attitude in Consumer Behavior

An attitude describes a person’s relatively consistent evaluations,  feelings, and tendencies toward an object or an idea.  Attitudes put people into a frame of mind for liking or  disliking things and moving toward or away from them.  For example, many people who have developed the attitude  that eating healthy food is important perceive vegetables as a  healthy alternative to meat and chicken. As a result, the per  capita consumption of vegetables has increased during recent  years, leading the meat and chicken producers to try to  change consumer attitudes that chicken and meat are unhealthy.  Companies can benefit by researching attitudes toward their  products.… Read the rest

Hierarchy of Effects Model

Another widely used model in marketing that attempts to  explain consumer decision making process is called the Hierarchy of Effects Model.  Originally conceived to explain how advertising affects  consumer’s purchase decisions, the Hierarchy of Effects Model focuses on consumer learning that takes place as he/she  processes information from the external world. Although different researchers developed  slightly different models, the basic idea is the same: people  experience a sequence of psychological stages before purchasing  a product.

The origins of the Hierarchy of  effects can be traced all the way  back to 1898 and the hierarchy’s  creator, a salesman named Elias St  Elmo Lewis.… Read the rest

Factors Influencing the Consumer Decision Making Process

Each buying decision you make involves an elaborate mental thought  process, a degree of active reasoning, though on the surface it may not always seem to be so. This may be because over a period of time you have taken certain buying decisions so many times  that they now seem to be made almost automatically but that is not true at all. Even your daily decision of buying a loaf of  bread involves the element of active reasoning as buying a new  sofa set for your drawing room. However, in the former case,  the extent and intensity of active reasoning may be much less as  compared to the latter case.… Read the rest

Types of Consumer Buying Behavior

Consumers are becoming smarter day by day; it is not to fool them with any gimmick. Nowadays, consumer does his/her homework very well before making any purchase in the market. Even before buying a face wash a consumer go through a rigorous process of choosing the best among the many present in the market. Buying a face wash and buying a luxurious car is very different, therefore the perception involved and the information gathered by the consumer in purchasing a car is much more than buying a face wash.

Henry Assael distinguished four types of consumer buying behavior based on the degree of buyer involvement and the degree of differences among brands.… Read the rest

Consumer Decision Making Process

The five stages of the consumer decision making process include; Problem recognition, information search, information evaluation, purchase decision, and evaluation after purchase. This is just a general model of the consumer decision making process and it emphasizes that the buying decision making process starts before the actual purchase and continues even after the purchase. It also encourages the marketer to focus on the complete buying process and not just on the purchase decision.

1. Problem Recognition

Consumers  recognize a problem as a need or want. Of course, the most frequent problem  occurs  when consumers realize they are out of the product.… Read the rest

Level of Involvement in Consumer Behavior

Consumer involvement is considered as an important variable that can  help explain how consumers process the information and how this information  might influence their purchase or consumption related behavior. However,  there is wide agreement that the degree of involvement has a very significant  effect on consumer behavior.

Herbert Krugman, a researcher is credited with his contribution to the concept of consumer involvement. According to him, consumers approach the marketplace and the corresponding product/service offerings with varying levels and intensity of interest and personal importance. This is referred to as consumer involvement.

Involvement variables are believed to precede involvement and  influence its nature and extent.… Read the rest