Dependent Programmed Behavior and Consumer Behavior

Because the consumer environment or universe made up of goods, communications, commercial establishments and the frequency of purchase-consumption determine consumer behavior, a model called programmed-dependent behavior is proposed to facilitate its understanding. Therefore, the concepts of transduction, sensory process and pleasure will be described on which the proposed model is built.

Dependent programmed behavior includes the following axioms: Knowing two assets, prioritizing assets, rational choice, dependent behavior, sense of belonging and insatiability.

consumer-theory-theory-and-dependent-programmed-behavior-1

The research is based on observation and questionnaires as the primary source. As a secondary source; existing information on the matter.

The research was done with one hundred and twenty people; sample for convenience, of both sexes, over sixteen years of age, from different social strata, educational institutions, commercial establishments in different sectors of the city of Barranquilla.

The questionnaire was used to measure the factors that stimulate and program consumer behavior; by means of a rating scale of one to ten; where one represents 10% stimulation and ten represents one hundred percent stimulation. However, the level of apperception was measured by means of open-ended questions and is assessed depending on the sample size.

SENSORY PROCESS

Every man seeks happiness. Stuart Mill ¹ believed that happiness is the directive rule of human behavior, because every human being is capable of feeling pleasure or pain, this determines that the things that produce pleasure are called GOODS and those that produce pain are called EVILS. Man's tendency is to maximize pleasure by consuming goods.

All sense organs, including the brain, work together to offer a version of the world around us. The sensory process is presented as follows: communication, perception, experimentation, mental representation and identification.

* COMMUNICATION: Mediation process between the consumer environment and the individual (consumer). Process that facilitates knowledge, assimilation, acceptance and continuity in relation to the action of maintaining consumption.

Figure 1 illustrates this process.

Graph 1. The circle represents the environment, the black dot inside the circle represents the consumer and the arrows represent that communication is two-way in any movement in space time.

Market research in relation to the factors that determine the environment or universe of the consumer and program our buying-consuming behavior, showed: 79% of the respondents consider that products stimulate consumption between 80% and 100%, the 71% of respondents believe that communications stimulate consumption between 80% and 100%, while 56% of respondents believe that establishments stimulate consumption between 80% and 100%.

* PERCEPTION: Process by which the individual selects, organizes and interprets the information he receives, to create an understandable image of the world around him ².

The greater the environmental stimuli, the greater the areas that are activated in the brain, accumulating sensory experience. See graph 2.

Graph 2. Nerve cells and brain areas activated by environmental stimuli. Both cells and neurons can adapt to a stimulus, a specific pathology or environmental conditions. Scientists have named this neuronal property, plasticity ³.

Market research in relation to the sensory experience that affects purchasing-consumption behavior showed that both the different sensations that the consumer perceives have an impact. See table 1.

Table 1. How much different sensations impact.

PRODUCED BY THE PRODUCT

SENSATION TYPE

% SHOWS

IMPACT DEGREE

Hygiene

Price

Design

Color

Packing

Label

Brand

Reuse

Size

Texture

80-100%

PRODUCED BY THE MEDIA

Demonstration

Reference Model

Press

Radio

Internet

80-100%

Source: all the information presented in this article is the result of the market research carried out by the researcher April 12, 2000 .

* EXPERIMENTATION: Defined as the direct or indirect contact between the consumer and his environment or universe. The more favorable the environment, the nervous system takes advantage of its ability to record, store and integrate experiences. While the reactions related to mood states such as taste and disgust are called emotions, they are assimilated by the Limbic system *.

Market research reveals that the consumer is quite excited ** regarding the beauty and comfort of the establishment. Observe table 2.

Table 2. Excitation of the consumer.

ESTABLISHMENT CHARACTERISTICS

% SHOWS

EXCITATION DEGREE

Circulation

Visual coverage

Space Distribution

Location of Articles

Ubic. Display Items

Construction Design

Facade

Parking lot

Access roads

Location Establishment

Public services

80-100%

* MENTAL REPRESENTATION: The mental representation occurs thanks to the different types of memory ^4,5. Understanding by memory the ability of living organisms to acquire, retain, use, the information and knowledge stored for later use ⁶.

* IDENTIFICATION: It is related to sensory recognition, especially sensory memory ⁷. The neurologist Jorge Armando Castellanos Prada, explains it as follows:

Stimulus: That it is only the capture of the event or the words; The storage of this information and the evocation *, explains that people capture a stimulus in a matter of thousandths of seconds, it stores it for a certain time in what is known as the hippocampus. Subsequently, the information passes to the association area, that is, to the place where she fixes herself depending on the interest and the attention that the subject has given her when perceiving. That association according to Jack Trout is called apperception ⁹.

Regarding recall, market research showed the following results: 23% of respondents recalled the Diesel, Coca-Cola and Nike brand.

The most remembered shopping centers were Villa Country, Country Plaza and Parque Central, while the Bahia shopping center was only remembered by 2% of the respondents.

Regarding chain stores, the most remembered were Olimpica, Sao, Superley and Vivero, and the least remembered was Comfamiliar.

TRANSDUCTION

Transduction is the transformation of one form of energy into another ⁹. In the nervous system, transduction occurs when energy from the environment is converted into electrical energy ¹⁰.

Without transduction the sensory process would not occur, transduction occurs when stimuli stimulate the neuronal receptors or nerve cells of the sensory organ in question (sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing and proprioceptive knowledge *) creating electrical energy by means of the potential of action**. The minimum value that it must take or reach is (+40 mV) *** forty millivolts for perception to be generated.Without transduction, nerve impulse and the release of neurotransmitters such as catecholamines, serotonin and opiates would not be generated. endogenous that provide the sensation of pleasure.

PLEASURE

They are positive emotions, that is, those whose subjective experience is pleasant, that contribute to the achievement of one's goals or that produce well-being ¹¹, and the things that generate pleasure or well-being are desirable.

This is how Abraham Maslow classified our wishes in 1970:

At the base of the pyramid are the vital longings related to the survival of the individual (hunger, thirst, sleep, heat and shelter).

In the middle of the pyramid we find the unique psychological desires of man and therefore they are learned and acquired in the course of life, ¹² such as: intimate security, participation, self-confidence and affection.

At the top of the pyramid the desires for self-realization. That they are the product of man's exclusive level of education and cultural level and therefore they are learned.

So far we have explained the triad of human behavior (transduction, sensory process and pleasure) factors that program our consumption behavior, and the ability we have to accept or reject different stimuli, is called autonomous programming.

Next, the model of programmed and dependent behavior will be explained.

DEPENDENT SCHEDULED BEHAVIOR

It is the ability of the consumer to remain faithful to the brand, goods and establishments. As a result of the continuous transduction that occurs between him and his environment.

Conduct that manifests itself in the sense of belonging, and this in turn in the frequency of purchase-consumption, visits to commercial establishments and the size of your basket of goods, ordered according to the level of pleasure that maximizes your happiness.

This conduct is made up of the following aspects:

* Know two goods: At least the consumer must try two goods, although his basket of goods is more extensive.

Knowledge is obtained through the sensory process, at the level of the nervous system experiences are stored and integrated, in the limbic system emotions and at the neurological-cerebral level, the image, the idea and impression of goods.

* Nesting goods: it is done in order to maximize happiness.

- If the consumer searches, finds and searches for another good or goods that generate less satisfaction than the originally consumed good, he will reasonably decide to consume the original good again.

- If the consumer searches, finds and tests another good or goods that generate more satisfaction, he reasonably decides to return to consuming the other goods.

* Rational choice: as shown in diagram 1, the level of satisfaction of good X is greater than that of good Y. The consumer will prefer good X, since if it is rational it is able to rank goods based on pleasure *.

Diagram 1

RATIONAL CHOICE

Interpretation: the straighter the frequency curve of consumption of specific goods, the greater the sense of belonging and therefore the greater the selective retention (WMPride / OCFerrell. Marketing manual, vol 1, p109,1986).

Since this behavior does not allow another good that is part of the same group of goods to belong to your basket of goods, this behavior allows another good, even if it belongs to the same group of goods, to be removed from your basket of goods, including this individual behavior or in combination of the goods ¹³ can be part of or be removed from the basket of goods

Incidentally, the market research yielded the following result: Consumers are regular customers of the shopping malls and chain stores mentioned in this document, since 84% of respondents admit that they go between 3 and more than ten times in the month, and 86% of the respondents in the month acquire between 5 and more than 10 goods.

This means that consumers go to shopping malls and chain stores because surely the feeling of comfort originates enjoyment and they acquire the goods "products, services, activities, ideas, people" that maximize their happiness.

* INSACIABLE: Market research shows a trend and it is: the greater the number of visits to commercial establishments, there is also an increase in the basket of goods that the consumer buys. r * = 0.64 or converted the correlation coefficient into significance levels we would have that p ** <0.001, which means that out of every thousand consumers, only one does not increase their basket of goods, while nine hundred and ninety-nine (999) if they increase it and do it for the purpose of maximizing utility-obtaining happiness.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES

STUART MILL, Jhon. Utilitarianism. Great Works of Thought. Ed. Atalaya.SCHWARTZ, David. Marketing Today in: (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1977); p. 520 cited by: Pride WM and Ferrel OC Marketing Manual. Mexico 1980. Editorial Marketing. Vol. 1; p. 108 Very interesting magazine. Everything is in the head. Year 15. No. 173. p. 39-40.AGUILERA, Sandra. Memory: The key is in the attention. Section, seventh day. Liberal vanguard. May 7, 2000.

WOOLFOOK, Anita E. Educational Psychology. 6th. Edition. Prentice - Hall Hispanoamericana sa México 1996. p. 244, 246, 249.TROUT, Jack. The New Positioning: The Latest on the World's # 1 Business Strategy. 1ed Santa Fé de Bogotá. Editorial Kimpies Ltda.. Mc Graw Hill. 1996. p. 17

WOOLFOOK, Anita E. op. cit. p. 244

TROUT, Jack. Op. Cit. p.15

GOLDSTEIN, E. Bruce. Feeling and Perception. Ed. Thomson. 5th edition. Mexico 1999. pag. 3.4 GOLDSTEIN, E. Bruce. Ibid; P. 3,4 Very interesting magazine. Year 15. No. 169. p. 25.KURT, Lewin. Principales of Topical Psichology, New York. Mc Graw Hill Book Co, 1936. Quoted by: CHIAVENATO; Idalberto. Mc Graw Hill 2nd edition. Mexico 1989. pag. 132-133 (Abott, 1995), (Becker, 1965) AND (Lancaster, 1996) cited by: LAMBIN, Jean Jaques. Strategic marketing. Colombia. Mc Graw Hill 1987. p. 61-62

CONCLUSIONS

The consumer environment made up of goods, communications and establishments together with the frequency of purchase-consumption allows the development of programmed-dependent behavior.

The programmed-dependent behavior is basically sustained in the sense of belonging that the consumer feels as the consumption of products and the frequency of visits to commercial establishments increases.

The tendency to increase your basket of goods classifies it as insatiable, but increases your basket of goods because as it increases it maximizes your happiness.

Observing in particular the characteristics of the products, the feeling of hygiene and the price produce greater stimulation towards consumption, it means that the products enter through the eyes and the economic factor is highly incident to the consumer's taste as it increases or decreases its purchasing power.

With respect to television and demonstration communications, they generate audiovisual, tactile and gustatory sensations that easily stimulate consumption.

Definitely, the feeling of comfort originated in the establishment incites the action of buying, or acquiring and maintaining consumption.

The ability of the consumer to accept or reject a brand, a good, an establishment is called autonomous programming.

The ability of the consumer to accept a brand, a good, an establishment in order to maximize their happiness is related to programmed-dependent behavior.

Download the original file