Motivations and Emotions: Driving Consumer Behavior - Term Paper Example

Marketers can apply their knowledge of motivation and emotion to the marketing strategies by discovering ways to arouse consumers’ emotions and motivate consumers to satisfy the needs kindled by those emotions. Thus, motivation and emotions have significant implications for the marketers who want to sell their products and services to the consumers. The field of consumer behavior is the study of the activities involved when people or groups choose, buy, utilize, or discard goods, services, thoughts, or experiences to fulfill their needs and wants (Lake, 2009).

There are various types of consumers, ranging from a 6-year-old begging her mother for a stuffed toy to a business man in a large organziation making a decision regarding a multimillionaire computer system (Solomon, 2001). The items people consume can consist of anything from bottled milk to a spa treatment, justice, movie or a celebrity. Furthermore, needs and wants to be fulfilled can range from hunger to thirst to love, status, or even spiritual fulfillment (Solomon, 2001). At first, commercialism of goods and services through numerous marketing strategies generally focused on the existing products and services that individuals needed.

But today, marketing strategies are used to inform individuals about the goods and services that they should and must have knowledge about and buy for themselves (Quester et al., 2007). In today’s information-oriented world, studying consumers’ behavior has become an important activity for business companies, institutions, and organizations, who want to be acquainted with the consumer market, individuals who consider consumption as a fixed part of their daily lives (Quester et al., 2007).

More specifically, consumer behavior attempts to determine not only the socio-demographic characteristics of the consumers, but also psychographic profile of consumers in order to understand how