Consumer Behavior: Building Marketing Strategy - Assignment Example

Case One Question one According to McGuire’ psychological motives, a number of needs can motivate Nestlé’s customers to participate in a boycott. The need for attribution can motivate customers to participate in a boycott. This need can be described as motives that deal with the need of customers to determine who or what causes the things that are happening around them. For the case of Nestle Company, customers participated in a boycott when the company started using palm oil in its products. The company sourced palm oil from Sinar Mas, an Indonesian company that has been accused of unlawful deforestation. Palm oil is associated with Indonesian rainforest’s destruction and habitat’s los for endangered species such as Orang-utans. Customers, therefore, since they are concerned with their environment, they had to participate in a boycott so as stop Nestle Company from associating with Sinar Mas, an Indonesian company that is well known for its destruction of environment (Hawkins and Coney 620). Hawkins and Coney argue that the need for objectification is another need that can motivate customers to participate in a boycott. The need for objectification is described as reflect needs for observable symbols or cues that allow individuals or customers to infer their feeling and knowledge. As a way of motivating consumer boycott of Nestle, the Greenpeace campaign released a disturbing viral advertisement on internet that showed office workers eating Orang-utans, endangered species in Australia. This advertisement symbolizes nestle products as a bad product and thus motivating customers to involve in a boycott. As a way of bringing to an end the palm oil and social media crisis, Nestle need to use McGuire’s theory to change its palm oil policy and to change its heavy-handed behavior in social media environment. The company can use attitude changing strategies to change consumers’ perception about its products. Nestle company can change the cognitive component that is a common and efficient way of changing attitudes. The company can change the consumers’ beliefs by either announcing or advertising that its products are palm oil free and thus changing the attitudes of consumers which in turn solves the social media crisis (Brijball, 250). Question Two The focusing on emotional rather than cognitive involvement by Nestle is a good approach since decision making and persuasion entails central route and peripheral route. Individuals are usually motivated and able to pay attention when they take a central route, that is, logical and conscious thinking. This usually results in permanent change in people’s attitude as they adopt and elaborate on arguments or discussions. At times individuals can take peripheral route. In this situation they do not usually pay attention to persuasive arguments but rather are persuaded instead by surface characteristics. Though people in this situation do change, it is usually temporarily (O'Shaughnessy, 140). According to O'Shaughnessy (140), the best way of motivating individuals to take the central route is to develop information that is personally relevant to consumers. Nestle is achieving this through a well organized advertisement and attractive packaging that is designed to incorporate consumer emotions. With central route the arguments that are against and not against are usually considered. Choice is also usually considered. Individuals happen to be more motivated to utilize the central route if the matter is personal relevant to them. When people are feeling good, they always desire to maintain this and avoid concentrating on stuffs that might bring them down again. They usually therefore take faster, peripheral route. Individuals in a negative or neutral mood are more liable to take the central route. It is therefore good to use central route when effecting longer-term changes and for simple compliance, it is good to use peripheral route. With celebrity advertisement and packaging that is designed to incorporate consumer emotions, Nestlé is focusing its attention in logical manner and present a compelling idea. Attractive packaging is a way of keeping consumers in a good mood so as they pay attention to the products produced. Focusing on consumer emotion is a way of involving them in decision making. Nestle advertising and innovative packaging enables them to emotionally connect with consumers. Its advertisement and packaging are emotionally focused on consumers. Nestle is a leading advertiser in the world. It is dedicated to spend a lot of money so as to make the consumers emotionally connected with its products. Nestle is developing its advertisement and packaging in a way that people become emotionally attached to them. It has been realized majority of people do recall Nestlé’s advertisement and brand name and about seventeen seven percent of the people in Australia are able to recall the main message in Nestlé’s advertisements. This therefore implies that people are emotionally connected with Nestlé’s products due to its innovative way of advertising. Nestle is trying so hard to understand consumers emotion towards a product and then include the emotions in packaging and in physical design. As a way of understanding people’s emotions, it introduces a certain packaging and then keenly observes how people respond to it. Incase it realizes that consumers do not have strong emotional connection with the product it immediately changes to the packaging that has strong emotional connection with the consumers (Lamb and McDaniel, 390). Part two Question one There are many roles that people usually involve in when deciding on which house to purchase. The immediate role that people usually take before deciding to purchase a house is the inspection of the house to be purchased. In a family this can be done by husband and wife. Deciding on which house to buy is very critical so the spouses are usually expected to take into account the needs of the whole family. When making this type of decision it is important for the two, that is, husband and wife, to critically evaluate their financial stands. The role of inspecting a house should not be gender-specific as it is in a more traditional family. Females need to take expressive roles in the housing purchase decisions. This usually associates with the aesthetic and emotional requirements of the family. Wives therefore have the most influence over decisions that relates to color and design, or the house flow or the children’s needs. Men on the hand tend to specialize in instrumental roles. This therefore implies that men have the most influence on decisions that are associated with the functional or economic aspects of the house, that is, maintenance, finance and location. It is therefore important for real estate agent to know the roles people play, and their preferences, in household purchase decisions so that when contacted by either gender the agents are able to explain best the areas and the location they feel it will please the intended buyer (Hoyer and Macinnis, 340). Question Two When purchasing a home there are usually seven stages that one usually go through. The first stage is to identify the decision to be made. A person needs to understand that a decision should be made. His or her understanding can be motivated by several things. It can be due to pressure from friends or family. It can also be due to a general sense of unease or dissatisfaction. A person then can go through an internal process of attempting to define clearly the nature of the decision that he or she needs to make (Spielberger, 2100). The second stage is collection of relevant information. Many decisions pertaining new home need gathering relevant information. The actual trick in this stage is to understand the information required, the best sources of the information and how the information is obtained. Some information should be sought from within the individuals via a process of self-analysis, while other information should be obtained from the books, people and other sources such as internet (Hughes and Fill, 230). A third stage is identification of alternatives. Via the process of gathering information an individual can possible identify two or more likely paths of action. He or she may also use the imagination and the obtained information to develop new choices. The fourth stage is to weigh evidence. Individuals need to draw on their information and emotions to find out what would be like if they undertake each of the choices up to the end. They should assess whether the problem or requirement identified in first stage can be helpful or solved via the use of every choice. Finally individuals should be able to place the available choices in order of preference, basing on their own value system. The fifth stage is to select among the alternatives. After weighing all the evidences, individuals concerned in purchasing new home are ready to choose the alternative that appears to be best suited to them. A person can decide to choose a combination of choices. The next stage after this is to take action. A person can take a number of positive actions which start to implement the chosen alternative in stage five. The seventh stage is to review the decision and consequences. In this stage an individual usually experiences the outcomes of the decision taken and evaluate whether or not it has assisted or solved the problem identified in stage one. In case it has solved, a person can retain the decision, if not he or she can repeat the process so as to make a new decision. Question Three Decisions in families can be categorized into types such as instrumental, affective, social, economic and technical. Instrumental decisions are the decisions that concentrate on money issues, health, shelter and food for family members. Affective decisions deals with alternatives that are related to feelings and emotions such as choosing on either to get married or not. Social decisions usually comprise of decisions that are related to values, roles and goals of the family. This can of decision can include whether children will be raised by going to a particular church or another or whether one parent will remain at home when the children are at preschool age. Economic decisions concentrate on alternatives about utilizing and collecting family resources, that is, whether an adolescent need to get a job and contribute to income of the family or purchase his or her own car. Technical decisions comprise of very small decisions that need to be made so as to undertake very large decisions. For instance, if a family decides that a member need to stop working so as to go back to school for further degree, then a number of technical decision need to be taken so as to materialize the larger decision (Solomon, 480). Works Cited Hawkins Del and Coney Kenneth. Consumer behavior: building marketing strategy, Volume 1. New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2004. Brijball Sanjana. Customer behaviour: a Southern African perspective. New York: Juta. (2004). O'Shaughnessy John. Persuasion in advertising. London: Routledge, 2004. Lamb Charles and McDaniel Carl. Essentials of Marketing. New York: Cengage Learning, 2008. Solomon R. Michael. Consumer behavior: buying, having, and being. New York: Prentice Hall, 2009. Hoyer D. Wayne and Macinnis J. Deborah. Consumer Behavior. New York: Cengage Learning. 2009. Spielberger Donald Charles. Encyclopedia of applied psychology, Volume 3. New York. Academic Press. Hughes Graham and Fill Chris. Marketing Communications 2007-2008. New York: Butterworth- Heinemann, 2007. Read More