Historical Perspective of Consumer Psychology - Essay Example

Sub Consumer Psychology Consumer psychology can be described as the learning of human reactions to services and products related experiences and information. Generally, consumer psychologists investigate consumer activities related with the buying, using and disposing of goods as well as services, comprising the consumer’s cognitive, emotional in addition to behavioral reactions that herald, determine, or follow these actions (Cherry, 2015). A wide range of service and product related information is important to consumer psychology, comprising marketer instigated stimuli (such as coupons, websites, advertisements, package labels, point-of-sale displays),consumer magazines and other related media, in addition to word-of-mouth communications arising from both relatives and friends. Consumer psychology uses hypothetical psychological techniques in understanding consumers. Thus consumer psychologists rely upon developmental, cognitive, social as well as other psychological spheres. Consumer psychologists therefore make use of a wide range of research techniques that encompass quantitative (such as field surveys and lab experiments) together with qualitative (that include observation, interviews) approaches. The objectives of consumer psychology are description, prediction, influencing and or explaining consumer reactions or responses (Kardes, et al, 2015). Historical Perspective of Consumer Psychology The discipline of consumer psychology rose with the rise of consumer society. A rising interest in trying to understand consumers was fuelled by rising production as well as adoption of consumer goods from beverages to household equipments and automobiles) during the 1920’s and 1930’s.Another reason was the dawn of advertising through radio in 1920 and television in 1941.In addition after the end of World War II ,several countries around the world wanted to empower their economies in part via increased consumer spending, something that further bolstered a keen interest in this discipline. APA’s department of Consumer Psychology was founded in 1960 so as to represent psychologists whose attention lay in consumer-related themes. Nevertheless, the name was in 1988, changed to the Society for Consumer Psychology (Cherry, 2015). There are several reasons for studying consumer psychology such as enhancing business performance, influence communal policy in addition to educating and helping consumers arrive at better decisions. Due to the fact that companies need to be knowledgeable about their consumers, so that they can come up with marketing campaigns and products which are appealing to their targeted segment, consumer psychologists basically have to spend a lot of time studying more about the number one thing that makes shoppers excited. This frequently comprises of figuring out the targeted segment or audience for a specific product comprising of the age, socioeconomic status and gender of the potential shopper. Secondly, the consumer psychologist may start researching the kinds of marketing messages and products that are appealing to these kinds of shoppers (Sandilands, 2015). There are other consumer psychologists who may concentrate on social marketing or rather how messages and ideas move amongst groups. Thus researchers will be keen in acquiring information regarding a product or a significant public health message. Studying how attitudes and beliefs move amongst groups can assist organizations know how to properly get their message out and promote marketing through word-of-mouth. Consumer psychologists frequently carry out research to study more about the behavior of buyers. Some popular research techniques utilised by these experts comprise phone surveys, direct observation, focus groups, questionnaires and experiments. Most market research surveys are conducted by use of phone and perhaps via direct mail. In these surveys it is common for consumers to be asked to explain their past shopping experience, factors that swayed their decision making as well as future buying arrangements (Sandilands, 2015). Thus researchers basically collect details about every respondent’s present financial situation, age, sex, race and educational history. Such type of details are extremely vital because they allow researchers to search for patterns as well as study more about who purchases certain products. Thus, for instance, utilising a survey may permit researchers to find out that women aged between 30-45 having household income between $60,000 to & 100,000 are more likely to purchase a specific service or product. Armed with this information, such researchers may start designing marketing promotions whose objective focuses on this given target audience (Boyd, 2010).The advertising companies usually make use of marketing messages that are bombarded to people time and again. Several of these commercials make use of the same persuasive techniques to persuade consumers to purchase, vote or else manipulate you to what the marketer wants done. The following are some techniques which they use in persuading consumers to buy their products; Their way of addressing the products they sell-marketers will use a number of ways in addressing their products such as flag waving which basically means linking a person with a product or course with unnecessarily undue patriotism. They will also use repetition whereby they repeat the idea time and again and lastly they will employ card stacking which is telling consumers just only one side of the coin as if there are no other considerations or opposing views(Hansen,1976). Secondly they express disapproval of their competition by use of innuendo which causes the audience to become suspicious or wary of the competition by suggesting that negative information may be secretly kept. They also employ name calling which is using derogatory or negative words to create an unpleasant association the consumers’ minds (Hansen, 1976). The manner in which they talk about the promoters or consumers by using plain folks who embodies the “typical” target of the advertisement to pass the message that the audience is just like that, and since they use the service/product the consumers should use it too. Companies also utilize transfer which is use of pictures or names of well-known people though not direct quotes. They also make use of the ‘bandwagon effect’ to buy the product since ‘everybody else is using it’. Finally they employ ‘testimonials’ which is use of words of a famous person or an expert to persuade the audience. Marketers also make use an urgency tone in their promotion. Thus they use exigency creating the notion that action is needed immediately or the chance will be gone forever. In addition they use bargains and imply that the audience can acquire something for almost nothing or even free. They play with people’s emotions through crafting their promotion in such a way that it affects the feelings, logic and manner of thinking. This is achieved through glittering generalities which is use of glowing terms and providing no evidence the advertiser or speaker supports a candidate or a solution to social issues. They employ emotional words whose intention is to make one feel strongly regarding the given idea. Lastly, marketers lure consumers through way of reasoning by explaining or listing reasons or the concept applied (Cronley & Loroz, 2015). The persuasion tactics used are not legal at all times and most of the time the marketing message communicated is false. There is the issue of product claims that are exaggerated. Thus marketing campaigns frequently cast specific groups in stereotypical tasks. The most famous being the washing powder adverts which portray women being housewives whose core preoccupation is laundry .The other key stereotype created by persuasion marketing is that possessing products abundantly leads to happiness and fulfillment, nevertheless, the opposing message is that those who fail to buy will not be part of the contented and excited group (Haugtvedt et al, 2008). Promotional campaigns also exploit social paradigms and ethnic and cultural sensitivities may make particular groups to feel offended by some kind of marketing. For instance, in the promotion advert of a luxury vehicle that portrays man as a driver able to appeal to a beautiful woman makes social statements that may be offensive. These are the fact that women care only about wealth and the notion that a man requires a luxury vehicle to charm the woman he wants. There is also the creation of the illusion that when a man purchases such a vehicle he will become desirable immediately. Lastly, persuasive adverts may be targeted at vulnerable audiences such as children. Thus, for instance, the marketing of unhealthy snacks and fast food may result in children not wanting to eat anything else apart from such junk, leading to childhood obesity (Bradburn, 2001).In addition, there is also the issue of post-purchase dissonance which basically happens when what you bought is not want you get. For instance when one makes a purchase through mail order, he may realize that the quality of the products is inferior as compared to his expectations. Though s/he may return the good, the marketer bets on the fact that returning back the item and incurring insurance and postage cost may deter the buyer from bothering (Sandilands, 2015). Basically, consumer behaviour theories are mostly utilised by businesses so as maximise their marketing and selling strategies. Thus these theories seem to focus on how consumers use their money, what makes them spend more money as well as how the using of consumer money ought to influence the strategies and planning exercised by businesses. Various kinds of consumer behaviour theories might concentrate on the choices that consumers arrive at on the basis of their budgets. In addition, the theories also focus on how consumers arrive at their decisions to realize the highest satisfaction levels as well as how consumers make considerations on the features and utilities of various products and finally on what as well as how consumers are knowledgeable on a given product (Hansen, 1976). One of the regularly used behaviour theories claims that consumers are rational and therefore bound to behave rationally. This implies that consumers seem to want to derive value as much as they can from their products while at the same time using the very little amount of money. In addition, this theory states that consumers are not likely to use all their cash at once, leaving them without savings. Nevertheless, on the other side of the scale, consumers regularly do not save all their cash, something which could make them live without buying even basic necessities such as shelter, food and clothing. The second very significant theory states that consumers have preferences and tastes that influences which products they are interested in. Consumer studies are frequently carried out by marketing experts which they split into various demographics like location, age and occupation because these factors lead to consumer preferences. Another critical factor in this theory is income because income is actually what limits most consumers’ budgets (Haugtvedt, et al, 2008). List of References Flemming, H 1976 "Psychological Theories of Consumer Choice." Chicago Journals : 1-30. Haugtvedt ,C, Herr, P & Kardes,F 2008 Handbook of Consumer Psychology. New York: Psychology Press. Hawkins, D, & Mothersbaugh, D 2008 Consumer Behaviour Building Marketing Strategy. New York: Psychology Press. Jansson, B 2010 Consumer Psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill Education(UK) . Kardes, F, Cronley ,M &Cline, T 2015. Consumer Behaviour. New York: Cengage Brain. Kendra, C 2015 "What Is Consumer Psychology?" About Education:np. Loroz ,P &Cronley, M, 2015 "Consumer Psychology." American Psychological Association : 1-10. Roger, B 2001Understnding Business Ethics. New York: Cengge Brain. Tracey, S 2015. "Marketing Issues That Have Ethical Implications." 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