13. Quiz Preparation - II

A. Overarching View

1. Individual dimension of consumer behaviour
   • Perception
   • Decision Making
   • Concept of self
2. Social / collective dimension of consumer behaviour
   • Social norms
   • Household decision making
3. Market behaviour: How do first organize our experience
   • Consumer experience – Theme, Staging, and Actions

B. Decision Making

1. Individual dimension

1. Involvement
2. Perceived Risk
3. Monetary Risk
4. Performance Risk
5. Physical Risk
6. Social Risk
7. Psychological Risk
8. Decision Fatigue

• Utilitarian goods – Purchased for their practical and functional benefits
• Ego expressive goods – Purchased for their symbolic benefits; means of self-expression

Q. How does level of involvement influence consumer behavior? how should marketers take this into account?

• Topics: Involvement, Perceived risk, Cognitive dissonance

Cognitive dissonance

Also known as “consumer remorse” or “consumer guilt”, this is an unsettling feeling consumers may experience post-purchase if they feel their actions are not aligned with their needs.

A. Level of involvement is the degree of importance that a consumer attaches to a product or service. The higher the level of involvement, the more time and effort the consumer will expend in the decision-making process. Marketers should take this into account by providing more information to consumers with high involvement.

Q. Perceived risk and involvement related?

• Topics: Involvement, Perceived risk A. Higher the level of involvement, the higher the perceived risk.

2. Under low effort

• Sunk-cost Fallacy – tendency to justify increased investment in a decision, based on the cumulative prior investment
• Heuristics and Biases
  • Heuristics: Mental shortcuts that help us make decisions quickly and efficiently
  • Biases: Systematic errors in thinking that lead to irrational decisions

3. Family decision making

• Family cycle (FLC)

• Works as a unit (Syncretic decision making)

• Different roles

  • Initiator
  • Gatekeeper
  • Influencer
  • Buyer
  • User

• Consensual Purchase Decision members agree on the desired purchase, they disagree only in terms of how they will make it happen.

• Accommodative Purchase Decision group members have different preferences or priorities and can’t agree on a purchase that satisfies everyone’s needs.

• Sex-role socialization – Children learn about the social expectations and attitudes associated with their own sex

• Consumer socialization – Children acquire skills, knowledge, and attitudes that will help them function as consumers

C. Culture Influences

Culture: Set of lens which an individual views phenomena

• how individuals perceive and interpret phenomena, it provides the blueprint of human action.
• Cultural movement – culture is dyanmic and learned

Enculturation: Process of learning one’s own culture

Acculturation: Process of learning another culture’s beliefs and practices

Rituals	Habit
Conscious and aware	Automatic
Symbolic	Practical
Meaningful practices with a sense of purpose	Practical practices

Rites of Passage: A ritual that marks a transition from one stage of life to another

• Three dimensions of a rite of passage
  • Separation – Leaving the old self behind
  • Transition – Moving from one stage to another
  • Incorporation – Becoming a new self

Examples:

1. Birthdays
2. Graduation
3. Marriage
4. Retirement

Myths: A story with symbolic elements that represent a culture’s idea and values

• Myths are powerful because they have an associated story and story-telling is a powerful way to communication

Other Definitions

• Norms
• Cultural capital – distinctive and socially rare tastes and practices
• Brand community
• Brand fests
• Habitus – socially-ingrained habits, skills, and dispositions
• Two step flow of communication
  1. Information flows from the mass media to opinion leaders
  2. Opinion leaders then communicate it to the general public

D. Consumer Experience

Different phases of consumer experience

1. Pre-consumption experience
2. Purchase experience
3. Core Consumption experience
4. Remebered consumption experience

Peak-end rule: The tendency for consumers to remember the peak and end of an experience, rather than the middle.

• Active - Customers actively influence the performance, thereby creating a unique experience
• Passive - Customers purely observes or listens

Experiential context framework

A mix of stimuli such as as the decor or activites that are designed to generate a specific consumption experience.

1. Stage – The environment in which the experience takes place
   • Costumes
   • Design of the stage
   • Music
2. Theme – The story being told by the experience
3. Actions - Activites that the consumer performs or experiences

F. Social Dimension of Consumption

• Social Norms – implicit codes of conduct that provide a guide to appropriate action in a given situation.

Descriptive Norms	Injunctive Norms
What other people do in a social circle	What people should do; Behaviours that one is expected to follow and expects others to follow in a given social situation;

According to “The forms of capital”, there are three types of capital:

1. Economic capital
2. Social capital - the collection of social relations one has at one’s disposal
3. Cultural capital

Cultural Capital

Forms of knowledge, skills and education, as well as socially rare tastes and practices that a person has, which give them a higher status in society.

G. Concept of self

• Self-concept, self-esteem, extended self
• self-congruence theory
• Looking glass self
• Actual vs Idea self
• Social comparison theory: Humans have a drive to evaluate themselves and that they evaluate themselves by comparison with others
• Dramaturgical perspective: The metaphor of life as theatre and people as actors who play different roles
• Impression management

H. Perception

• Mere exposure effect – the tendency for liking to increase with the frequency of exposure
• Perception process – process by which stimuli are selected, organized and interpreted
• Cross-modal perception – perceiving/intneracting with something in two or more different senses
• Exposure
• Absolute threshold – the minimum amount of stimulation that can be detected
• Difference threshold – the minimum amount of change in stimulation that can be detected
• Weber’s law – the principle that the difference threshold is a constant proportion of the intensity of the stimulus

Furthermore, there are different types of tendencies that affect perception:

• Perceptual vigilance
• Perceptual defense
• Schemas – set of belief about objects, ideas or people

Other important concepts:

• Contrast
• Perceptual Maps

I. Interviews vs Surveys

Interviews	Surveys
Interview is a formal conversation between the interviewer and respondent	Survey is a questionnaire that is filled by the respondent
The questions are open-ended	The questions are closed-ended
Sample size is small	Sample size is large
Structured and improvised at the same time	Completely structured beforehand
Subjective in nature	Objective in nature
Time consuming	Time efficient
Expensive	Cheap

1. Designing an interview guide

1. Define the key areas – Mind map
2. Building the opening
3. Funnel the questions
   • Facts
   • Behaviour
   • Opinions/Feelings
4. Add questions to elicit more information
5. Review

Example:

• WARM-UP
  • Life situation, families, kids etc.
  • What’s going on in life

Projective techniques – indirect questioning, enables the respondent beliefs and feelings onto third party Examples:

• Sentence completion
• Third person test
• Obituary

APX. Essay Answer Structure

1. Identify the key concepts that can be used to explain the question
2. Explain the key concepts
3. Apply the key concepts to the question
   • Avoid long sentences
   • Use bullet points (if appropriate)
   • Provide examples
4. Draw conclusions