Consumer Behavior and Marketing Process - Essay Example

Kollner (2008) states that motivation is a function of two things: a) drive or arousal and b) goal-object. The drive is the motivation that results in behavior directed towards the goal. Kollner says that automatic arousal causes behavior without much thought, which is a likely result of learning. For small-ticket products, this type of motivation comes into play: at the supermarket, the decision to purchase a particular brand of diapers for a baby is very easy and does not require much thought, except perhaps the very first time when the diapers choice was made. Conversely, for high-end, expensive products, the needs are different and solutions also require detailed analyses and information search, which is also called extended problem-solving.   

In a marketing context, motivation plays a very important role in understanding the consumer. When there is a want or need, the consumer feels conflict and unrest; to appease that feeling he or she looks at various solutions. The marketer must be able to satisfy that feeling by making available the right solution (product or service), at the right time and through an accessible channel. Once the marketer understands what drives the customer to act in a certain way, a lot of insights can be added into the marketing process which will assist in making it more targeted and satisfactory to the consumer. For the diaper example discussed previously, a marketer must know that he need not provide additional information to the customer at the supermarket but make him buy the product by making it easily accessible (eye level rack) and offer him deals and savings (e.g. 10% extra).  

Learning

The process of learning involves assessing and acquiring new knowledge and information about things and utilizing that information for future decisions and behaviors. Learning happens as a result of study as well as experience. This process does not have to be consciously done. Kardes, Cronley, and Cline explain that as learning increases, it is stored in our brains in the form of memory. Learning tells the marketers how to expect a consumer to behave. 

In the marketing context, learning is crucial as it affects the preferences and needs of consumers. A consumer learns to react to certain stimuli in a particular and expected way, say Boone and Kurtz. The cue or stimulus that encourages action is key. The smell of baked goods is likely to induce a sense of hunger in consumers and is therefore rampant in certain areas of the shopping mall. Another example is a consumer might not care for the taste of a particular brand of cereal but might learn to like it because it is iron-fortified and assists in his iron deficiency.

   Family life cycle
            This is the division of a family into different stages, representing the different wants and needs at every stage using variables of age, income, children, marital status, and career levels. The traditional categories in the family life cycle included stages from infant to toddler, teenage, and adulthood and incorporated single people and those married with kids, ending with the elderly and retired person. However, these earlier models, says Easey (p87), do not account for divorced and single-parent families. Furthermore, there need to be more structured analyses of people who remain unmarried but in relationships, those who choose to stay single and alternative lifestyles. Newer models will be better able to aid marketers to judge the kind of behaviors people will exhibit based on their personal characteristics and relationships.   

The purpose of studying the family life cycle is to segment the diverse market into definite groups which have more in common with each other and have similar needs. Market segmentation is a very important tool in marketing as it allows the focus on market plans. The family life cycle division helps a company define exactly who its products are catering to. This helps in utilizing the other concepts of consumer behavior and then developing targeted marketing initiatives around them. Furthermore, this helps in identifying any niche areas where the consumer need is not being satisfied and can result in a new product.  

Extended problem solving

For purchase decisions regarding everyday items, such as the purchase of cereal or detergent, the information required by a person is set and the criteria are also defined; the customer knows against which benchmarks he needs to compare possible choices and which criteria to run them through. However, the purchase decisions regarding more expensive, high-end items are more complicated as there is little current information available to the customer. For example, the purchase of a house is a big decision and one that is mostly new to a customer. For him, this will require extended problem solving, which means that he does not have much information about choices, and those that are available are not easily categorized, as explained by Boone and Kurtz (2011).

            In these circumstances, the customers require thorough information, the pros, and cons, possible alternatives, value for money, and post-purchase customer service. The customer is likely to consult different vendors before reaching a decision. This plays a crucial role in the information search step of the consumer buying process.