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Book summary Consumer Behavior
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Book summary of the required chapters for Consumer Behavior
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Consumer BehaviorEvaluative conditioning!
Week 1
Chapter 1: Understanding
consumer behavior and consumer
research (Kardes)
Consumer behavior entails all
consumer activities associated with
the purchase, use, and disposal of
goods and services, including the
consumers’ emotional, mental, and
behavioral responses that precede,
determine, or follow these activities.
Individual consumers purchase goods and services to satisfy their own personal needs and
wants or to satisfy the need and wants of others.
Organizational consumers purchase goods and services in order to produce other goods or
services, resell them to other organizations or to individual consumers or help manage and
run their organization.
Purchase activities are those through which consumers acquire goods and services. It
includes everything done leading up to the purchase.
Use activities describe where, when, and how consumption takes place.
Disposal activities are the ways consumers get rid of products and/or packaging after
consumption, and include discarding products, recycling, reuse and resale.
Emotional responses (affective responses) reflect a consumers’ emotions, feelings, and
moods.
Mental responses (cognitive responses) include a consumers’ thought processes, opinions
beliefs, attitudes and intentions about products and services.
Behavioral responses include a consumers’ overt decisions and actions during the purchase,
use, and disposal activities.
Why study consumer behavior?
To improve business performance
o Marketers who understand their customers can create better products and
services, promote their products and services more effectively, and develop
marketing plans and strategies that foster sustainable competitive advantage.
To influence public policy
o Those interested in shaping public policy study consumer behavior to
understand the public needs and wants, and at the same time, to protect the
public from unfair, unethical, or dangerous business practices.
To educate and help consumers make better decisions
, o Many people study consumer behavior because they want to educate
consumers or help them act responsibly
Marketing concept = the idea that firms should discover and satisfy customer needs and
wants in an efficient and profitable manner, while benefiting the long-term interests of
society.
Customer perceived value = the consumers’ overall assessment of the utility of a product
based on perceptions of what is received and what is given.
Customer delight = suggesting customer benefits that not only meet, but also exceed
expectations in unanticipated ways.
Approaches to study consumer behavior
Motivation research – applied psychoanalytic therapy concepts from clinical
psychology, in-depth interviewing to uncover hidden or unconscious motivations,
Behavioral science – applies the scientific method, relying on systematic, rigorous
procedures to explain, control, and predict consumer behavior, experimental
approach (controlled experiments) and marketing science approach (computer-based
simulations and mathematical models)
o Steps of scientific method
Observe and ask the question
Form a hypothesis and make a prediction
Test the hypothesis
Theory generation
Interpretivism – relies less on scientific and technological methodology, view
consumers as a non-rational being and their reality is highly subjective (qualitative
methods)
Marketing research is a systematic process of planning, collecting, analyzing, and
interpreting data and information relevant to marketing problems and consumer behavior.
Sometimes decisions based on intuition
Unethical and/or unintended manipulation of research data or results
Consumer research is divided into two broad categories based on the goals of the research:
Basic research – looks for general relationships between variables, regardless of
specific situations, conclusions drawn from it generally apply across a variety of
situations
Applied research – examines many of the same variables, but within a specific
context of interest to a marketeer.
Correlation = when a statistically testable and significant relationship exists between two
variables
Causal relationship = the variables are correlated and one variable influences the other, but
not vice versa.
Secondary data = data that already exists and is readily accessible
Primary data = new data collected specifically for the research purpose at hand
,Primary data collection methods
Observation – obtrusive observation (person is aware), unobtrusive observation
(person is unaware), participant observation/ethnographic research (researcher joins
family/group)
Direct questioning – surveys, interviews, focus groups
Experimentation – manipulation of variables in a controlled setting to determine
their relationship to one another (independent variables, dependent variables,
constants)
Projective techniques – unstructured, indirect form of questioning that encourages
respondents to project their underlying beliefs, attitudes, feelings, and motivations in
an apparently unrelated or ambiguous scenario (word-association tests, completion
tests, construction tests, expression tests)
Chapter 6: Research strategies and validity (Gravetter)
Quantitative research = examines variables that typically vary in quantity, results are usually
numerical scores that can be summarized, analyzed, and interpreted using standard
statistical procedures.
Qualitative research = result is typically a narrative report, involves careful observation of
participants, usually accompanied by extensive note taking.
Research strategy = a general approach to research determined by the kind of question that
the research study hopes to answer
Descriptive research strategy = intended to answer questions about the current state of
individual variables for a specific group of individuals, not concerned with relationships
between variables, but rather with the description of individual variables.
Relationships between variables = changes in one variable are consistently and predictably
accompanied by changes in another variable (linear, curvilinear, positive, negative)
Correlational research strategy = measuring two variables for each individual, only intents
to describe the relationship, not trying to explain the relationship.
Experimental, quasi-experimental or nonexperimental research strategies = comparing two
or more sets of scores
Experimental – intended to answer cause-and-effect questions about the
relationship between two variables.
Quasi-experimental – usually attempts to answer cause-and-effect questions
about the relationship between two variables, but it can never produce an
unambiguous explanation. Quasi-experimental studies are almost, but not
quite, experiments.
Nonexperimental – intended to demonstrate a relationship between variables
but it does not attempt to explain the relationship.
Validity = the degree to which the study accurately answers the question it was intended to
answer.
, Threat to validity = any component of a research study that introduces questions or raises
doubts about the quality of the research process or the accuracy of the research results
External validity
External validity concerns the extent to which the results obtained in a research study hold
true outside that specific study. Can the results of the study be generalized to other
populations, other settings, or other measurements? External validity focuses on any unique
characteristics of the study that may raise questions about whether the same results would
be obtained under different conditions.
Three different kinds of generalization:
1. Generalization from a sample to the general population
2. Generalization from one research to another
3. Generalization from a research study to a real-world situation
Threats to external validity
Generalizing across participants or subjects
o Selection bias
o Volunteer bias
o College students (cheap participants)
o Participant characteristics
o Cross-species generalizations
Generalizing across features of a study
o Novelty effect
o Multiple treatment interference
o Experimenter characteristics
Generalizing across features of the measures
o Sensitization
o Generality across response measures
o Time of measurement
Internal validity
A research study has internal validity if it produces a single, unambiguous explanation for the
relationship between two variables. Internal validity is concerned with factors in the
research study that raise doubts or questions about the interpretation of the results.
Threats to internal validity
Extraneous variables
o Any variable in a research study other than the specific variables being
studied
Confounding variables
o An extraneous variable that changes systematically along with the two
variables being studied. A confounding variable provides an alternative
explanation for the observed relationship between the two variables and,
therefore, is a threat to internal validity.
Environmental variables
o Size of the room, time of day, gender or experimenter
Individual differences
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