Introduction.
This work allows us to identify the influencing factors in consumer behavior as problem solving, for the satisfaction of needs. It also provides knowledge of the problem-solving process, the influences that determine these behaviors and the existing response levels according to the degree of participation in the purchase. It also allows the acquisition of tools for the classification and measurement of the different levels of consumption response..
Analysis of buyer behavior: main factors influencing buyer behavior
The influence of culture on buyer behavior
The study of culture is the study of all aspects of a society: its language, knowledge, laws, customs, etc. that give that society a distinctive character and personality. In the context of consumer behavior, culture is defined as the sum of beliefs, values and customs acquired and transmitted from generation to generation, which serve to regulate the behavior of a given society.
The impact of their culture on society is so natural and so deeply rooted that its influence on behavior is remarkable. Culture offers order, direction and guidance to the members of a society in all phases of its resolution of human problems. Culture is dynamic and gradual, and it continually transforms to suit the needs of society.
Culture is learned as part of the social experience. From childhood, the environment of a series of beliefs, values and customs that contribute to their culture is acquired. They are acquired through formal, informal and technical learning. Advertising improves formal learning by reinforcing desirable role models or expectations and enhances informal learning by providing role models. Because the human mind has the ability to absorb and process symbolic communication, marketing can successfully promote tangible and intangible products and product concepts through mass media.
The elements of culture are transmitted by three institutions: the family, the church, and the school. A fourth institution plays a greater role in the transmission of culture, it is the media, both through editorial content and advertising.
Some manifestations of culture.
- National character Subcultures Non-verbal language: postures, gestures, food preference Importance of symbols, taboos, prohibitions, ritual attitudes (transition rites: graduation, marriage, retirement and death)
This cultural meaning is drawn from the world of culture itself and transferred to a consumer good through advertising and the fashion system. These goods are then transferred to consumer behavior through certain consumption rituals.
Subcultural aspects in consumer behavior
Subcultural analysis allows marketing to segment the market to meet the needs, motivations, perceptions, and attitudes that are shared by members of a specific subcultural group.
A subculture is a distinguishable cultural group that exists as an identifiable sector within a larger and more complex society. Its members have beliefs, values and customs that separate them from other members of the same society. The main subcultural categories are: nationality, race, religion, geographic location, age, sex, and education.
Ethnic subculture: attend to the origins.
Offspring of common ancestors: they tend to live closely, tend to marry people from the same group, share a sense of belonging.
Age.
Youth subculture. The teen market not only spends a lot of money of their own, but they do spend their family members too. Children greatly influence family consumption decisions. Corporations take advantage of the persistent trend of children in the search for a new product.
When designing messages for the youth market, the following guidelines should be taken into account:
- Never underestimate young people Be totally, absolutely and unconditionally sincere Recognize young people the merit of being motivated by rational values Be as personal as possible
Subculture of the elderly. It is necessary to recognize certain unfavorable characteristics:
- They are conservative They have less than half the income of the entire population Their mental faculties may be impaired They are in poor health They are often isolated from people
Long-lived people shop near their home and pay attention to the vendor's product and brand suggestions.
A promotion strategy that gives good results is the so-called “transgeneration” in which adults, children and the elderly all appear together. In addition, the message should be sought:
- Keep it simple Contain familiar elements Step by step Give preference to print media Take advantage of context by appealing to evocation
Social class
Social classes are Multidimensional since they are based on numerous components: they are not equivalent to income; or to some other isolated criterion or are determined accordingly by any of them. Income is often a misleading indicator of position in social class.
Occupation generally provides a good indication of social class, as does housing.
The social class structure can cover a range from two to nine classes. A frequently used classification divides them into five groups: high, medium high, medium, medium low, low. The profiles of each of these classes indicate that socioeconomic differences are reflected in differences in attitudes, in leisure activities and in consumption habits.
The research revealed differences between classes in terms of clothing habits, home decoration, telephone use, use of free time, preference of places of purchase and habits of saving, spending and use of credits. All of this can be strategically used in marketing. Studies of consumer dissatisfaction reveal a relationship between the type of problems posed by the consumer and social class.
Social factors in consumer behavior
Primary Group: is one in which personal relationships are face to face with a certain frequency and even at an intimate and affective level. In these groups develop norms and roles. Family, work groups, friends are examples of such groups. The primary group exercises informal control over its members, non-institutionalized control but no less effective for that reason.
Secondary group: this includes all those groups that are not primary, such as political groups, aid associations, neighborhood commissions, etc.
In these groups, the individual is not interested in others in terms of people, but rather as officials who play a role. Contrary to the primary groups, the control that is applied is formal, that is, there are regulations that establish norms and sanctions.
Reference groups: it is the group to which one wants to belong, it can be defined as a group of people who influence activities, values, behaviors and can influence the purchase of a product and / or the choice of the brand.
The marketing professional must identify an opinion leader within the reference group to sell a product or brand.
They can be classified into positive aspirational and negative aspirational groups (dissociative groups).
The most used reference groups in the mkt are: personalities, experts and the "common man". Celebrities are used to give testimony or support or as company spokespersons. Experts can really be experts or be actors playing such a role. The ordinary man approach is designed to show that individuals like the prospect are satisfied with the advertised product.
Appeals to referral groups are effective promotional strategies because they serve to increase product recall and reduce perceived risk among potential customers.
Personal factors influencing consumer behavior
Psychological
Personality: Personality is defined as an individual's pattern of traits that depend on behavioral responses. These have been used to study consumer behavior and explain the organized totality of their behavior. We know that a person's personality is often reflected in the clothes they wear, the brand and type of car they drive, the restaurants they eat at, etc. but we cannot quantify the individual traits of each individual.
Self-concept is the perception of itself by the subject. And at the same time it is the image that we think others have of ourselves. The importance of studying the self-concept in mkt is given because the person through consumption describes himself.
Motivation: In order to understand why consumers observe certain behavior, it is necessary to ask first what drives a person to act. All behavior begins with motivation, the reason (or impulse) is a need is a stimulated need that the subject tries to satisfy. One or more motives within a person trigger the behavior towards a goal that is supposed to provide satisfaction.
It is important that the need has to be stimulated so that it becomes a reason. Sometimes the man has needs that are latent, therefore, they do not activate the behavior because they are not intense enough, that is, they have not been awakened. The source can be internal (it makes us hungry) or environmental (we see a food advertisement). It is also possible that simply thinking about a need (food) awakens the need (hunger).
Family: Of the small groups to which we belong for years, there is one that normally exerts a more profound and lasting influence on our perceptions and behavior, this group is the family. This directly performs the function of final consumption operating as an economic unit, earning and spending money. In doing this, family members are forced to set individual and collective consumer priorities, to select what products and brands they will buy, and how they will be used to meet the goals of family members.
Most consumer studies classify family consumption decisionsa as: _main predominant (husband) _ female predominant (wife) _ joint _ automatic
Perception: is the process by which the individual selects, organizes and interprets stimuli to build a meaningful and coherent picture of the world. The consumer makes decisions based on what he perceives more than on objective reality.
People usually perceive the things they need or want and block the perception of unfavorable or unpleasant stimuli.
The way the products are perceived is more important to your success than the actual characteristics you have. Products that are favorably perceived, obviously, have a better chance of being purchased.
Learning, retention and memorization.
The first is the process by which the individual acquires the knowledge and experience of buying and consuming that he will apply in his future behavior. Some of the learning is intentional but much of it is casual.
Time management in the learning process influences the duration of retention of what has been learned. Massive learning causes greater initial uptake, while gradual learning achieves greater temporal persistence. The most typical way of human learning is through problem solving, which involves a mental process.
A very simple process of memory structure and operation suggests the existence of three storage units:
- Sensory Short-term Long-term
The memory process encompasses the testing, encoding, storage, and retrieval of information.
At the macrosegmentation level, only the general characteristics are taken into account when the future buyers are organizations; which is related to the variables of influences on consumer behavior by cultural factors and within this the subculture and social class.
But when it comes to consumers (people), it is necessary to refine the definition of the characteristics of the buyers: ages, lifestyles, purchasing behaviors, advantages sought, what is typical of micro-segmentation and is closely related to social factors and personal in consumer behavior.
Cognitive response: refers to the area of knowledge, that is, to the set of information and beliefs that an individual may have a group of people "process by which an individual selects or interprets the information to which he is exposed"
Affective response: it is essentially evaluative. It refers to the field not only of knowledge but of sentiment, of preferences of intentions, of favorable or unfavorable judgments of a brand or organization.
Behavioral response: The simplest and most direct measure of behavioral response is given by the sales statistics of the product or the brand, completed by an analysis of the market share within each covered segment. Another type of information is the set of information on habits, conditions and field circumstances and information on post-purchase behavior (loyalty, market share, satisfaction, etc.)
Marketing describes the buying behavior of consumers as a process of rational problem solving. This proposition is developed describing the process of consumer choice in situations of varied complexity and risk.
The purchase of a used car is proposed as a complex purchase situation and with a certain degree of risk. The complexity lies in the transaction, transfer, insurance, patents, and the risk situation is the state of operation of the vehicle.
The observed process is as follows:
- Need for mobility Choice of a specific brand and model (desire) Analysis of economic resources to acquire said good Selection of the car available in the market, according to available resources (search for information) Given the non-existence of the car as a result of our desire and According to our purchasing power, information is sought on available credits to achieve the purchase. The credit is agreed, the purchase is made and the corresponding procedures are carried out.
Reference is made to the purchase of a durable good, TV, photographic machine, PC or other that has been recently made, and it is about reconstructing the decision process that has followed, identifying the sources of information consulted and the type of resolving behavior which is adopted.
Reconstruction of the decision process in the purchase of a heater.
Decision process: part of the intensive search for product information that meets the need (heating)
Source of information consulted: distributors, sellers (information dominated by the producer), friends who acquired the desired product and the specific experience of verifying the satisfactory operation of the product.
The resolution behavior adopted is extensive.
Conclusion.
Through this practical work it was possible to know the factors that influence purchasing behavior, very important knowledge to be able to make predictions about market response to certain new products or to assess the positioning or perception of existing products in the market.
With respect to the attributes and having knowledge of the level of perception by consumers, a more effective advertising campaign for the product can be carried out, guiding communication on the importance that the consumer gives to some of the attributes studied of the product in question..
It is noteworthy that knowing some of these factors and analyzing suitable strategies it is possible to stimulate the latent needs of the individual, this stimulus is essential to "mobilize" the individual in a purchasing behavior
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