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This is a summary for the course Consumer Behaviour for the MSc Business Administration program at the University of Amsterdam. It is written in semester 1, 2023/2024.
All weeks consist of exam practice questions, theories/content mentioned as important for the exam, and a...
MSc Business Administration / Digital Marketing / Consumer Behaviour
Academic Year 2023/2024
Consumer Behavior Summary 2023/2024
Contents
Week 1: What are the psychological factors that influence our choices?
Week 2: Consumer (Ir)rationality
Week 3: Consumer’s Affective and Emotional Response
Week 4: What are the social factors that influence consumers’ choice?
Week 5: Consumers & Marketing for a Better World
Week 6: Cultural Consumption & Consumers’ Lifestyle
*All weeks consist of theories/content mentioned as important for the exam,
and answers to assigned reading questions.
,Week 1: Literature & Lecture - What are the psychological factors that influence
our choices?
Consumer behavior reflects the totality of consumers’ decisions with respect to the
acquisition, consumption, and disposition of goods, services, activities, experiences, people,
and ideas by (human) decision-making units [over time].
Restaurant example:
- Think about going to your favourite restaurant
with a cold, where you can’t taste and smell the
same.
- What happens is that your experience changes
drastically.
- On top of that people in restaurant speak
loudly, a lot of noise.
- Small factors can have a huge impact in the way
we experience consumption in general.
Try to understand what are the different processes
that lead from a stimulus exposure to a specific
response.
1) PERCEPTION: Bornstein, Robert F., and Paul R. D'agostino. (1992) "Stimulus recognition
and the mere exposure effect." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63 (4), 545.
Perceptions are specific to context.
Image: scientists having to evaluate an elephant but they are
blind. Someone touching the tail will think it’s a rope, leg is a
tree etc.
Perception definition (SOS EXAM): Perception is the awareness or understanding of sensory
information.
Eyes are full by the size of the plate. If I tell you the quantity is
the same, our eyes perceive the image of the right to have more
quantity. This is an example of how marketers can fool
consumers.
Elements of Consumers’ Perception – Building Blocks that constitute perception
- Exposure: the idea that the stimulus enters the consumer senses in a certain way.
E.g., if a light is turned on I am exposed to that light.
, - Attention: devoted to the specific stimuli. - Comprehension of stimulus.
How do we process what we’re exposed
to?
Senses example: sensing the music at the
moment the sound is entering my ear. After
sensing I need to organize the information to
be able to process it. E.g. the moment my
brain can recognize the music I organize the
info in a way that I can recognize it.
How do we organize?
- The moment I sip a coffee my
senses are activated and my
brain needs to encode info
about colour, taste etc. I know
coffee and experienced it
before so that information is
assimilated to my brain
because the coffee is black, it
has a smell that I can
recognize and therefore I know that its coffee.
- Let’s say instead of coffee I sip iced coffee which I have never done before – no
knowledge. Brain encodes that it is something I tasted before (like coffee) but not as
warm. That information is stored into my brain with accommodation.
- Glass of wine. Never before drank. My brain encodes that it does not taste like coffee
so it is not a coffee. The new knowledge can be integrated and form a new category.
Theories about perception
- Is awareness of the stimulus necessary to influence consumers?
- The traditional dissociation paradigm suggest that consumers are influenced by
stimuli even when they are not aware of them (Erdelyi 1985).
- Attention is not necessarily conscious.
- When consumers are not aware of the stimuli, they can be influenced by it.
, When do we detect the stimuli?
Subliminal or Supraliminal?
- Brand of cigarettes – Camel. There is an image
of a woman inside the camel which you can’t see
unless I point it out.
- Disney hiding subliminal messages about sex. Maybe just consequence we do not
know, but brain is encoding it.
- Brain is processing the letter KFC when looking at Facebook page – form of
advertising.
Problem: how can we measure something that consumers are not aware of?
Whenever an indirect measure of responding is more strongly influenced by stimulus
exposure than is a comparable direct measure of responding, perception without awareness
can be inferred.
There are two ways to measure:
1. Direct measure (recognition) – did you see image or
not?
2. Indirect measure – change in mood – what do you
feel now?
It might happen that a direct measure is less impacted than an indirect measure. You tell me
that you did not recognize the guy in the picture, but if I notice that another indirect measure
(affect) did in fact change as a result of being exposed to the picture, I can infer that there was
a perception and that you were not aware of it.
Mere exposure effect
’Unreinforced exposure is sufficient to enhance attitude toward the stimulus”
Proven in different context:
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