As shown in Table 3.1, a large number of factors operate to influence the buyer’s behaviour. Most of these factors are interdependent and interrelated and often there is some overlapping between them.
The effect of these factors is briefly discussed below:
1. Cultural Factors:
The study of culture encompasses all aspects of a society such as religion, knowledge, language, customs, traditional music, art, technology, work pattern, products, etc. Culture is the sum total of learned beliefs, values, and customs which serve to guide and direct the consumer behaviour of all members of that society. It is the way of the life and thinking patterns that are passed from generation to generation. Culture is prescriptive, socially shared, facilitator of communication, learned, subjective, enduring, cumulative and dynamic.
Cultural influences are so pervasive that they are hard to identify and analyse. However, these cultural influences can provide an important basis for market segmentation, product development, advertising, etc. For example Gujaratis, Maharashtrians, Tamilians and the U.P. Brahmins have diverse cultures and need different products for their worship and even the type of utensils to be used.
i. Culture and Consumption:
Culture is prescriptive and decides the consumption habits, eating habits, food preferences and food preparation. For example, Indians do not eat beef because cow is religiously revered by Hindus. It is also considered improper to eat cow which supplies and helps in farming. However, Japanese, Americans, and people from Argentina consume beef in large quantities.
ii. Sub-Culture:
A sub-culture is an identifiable and distinct group that has unique characteristics. The sub-culture exists within large society. A sub-culture is a psychological, religious, social or geographical source of group identification. Thus, a person living in Kolkata would feel that he is different from the one living in Bihar. The sub-culture makes it possible for a person to understand another culture with reference to his own sub-culture. These sub-cultures are used by companies as a basis of segmentation.
iii. Social-Class:
Development of social class is a common thing in any society. The society inhibits some social class which is homogeneous and relatively permanent. The divided social class might bring about individuals/families having similar values, interest, behaviour and life-style.
2. Social Factors:
Social factors such as economic conditions of the family and role and status of family exert a powerful influence on buying decisions. The buying pattern of a rich family will be totally different from that of a poor family. A status conscious person will visit a prestige store for making purchase whereas an ordinary person will go to an economy store. Costly consumer durables such as fridge, colour T.V., air conditioner, music system, etc. are meant for the higher income groups who treat these things as status symbols.
The role of social factors in consumer behaviour is discussed below:
(i) Family:
A person’s world starts with the family in which he/she is born. The family has major influence on the behaviour of its members. Today, the concept of family has changed in urban population from joint family to nuclear family. However, the importance of the influence of family can be seen from the advertisements run by Titan Watches, Maruti, Everest, and Tata Gold Tea. The emergence of working women also affects the consumption pattern of the concerned family.
(ii) Reference Group:
A group means interaction of two or more persons to realise common goals. A reference group consists of group(s) that has (have immediate/remote, direct/indirect) influence on the forming of individual and group values, attitudes and behaviour. Thus, the reference group provides a frame of reference for an individual or group for their purchase, consumption, use or influence.
In general, there are three major types of reference groups — membership, aspirational, and dissociative. A membership reference group is one to which an individual actually belongs. An aspirational reference group is a group to which one aspires to belong. A group that a person does not wish to be associated with is a dissociative reference group. A reference group may serve as an individual, point of comparison and source of information.
For example, a person might switch on to a different brand of shirts on the advice of members of a reference group. Sometimes, a marketer attempts to use reference group influence by suggesting in advertisements that people in a specific reference group buy a particular brand and are highly satisfied with it.
The reference group member who provides information about a specific sphere that interests member of the group is called an opinion leader. An opinion leader is likely to be most influential when consumers have high product involvement but low product knowledge, when they share the attitudes and values of the opinion leader and when the product details are numerous and complicated.
(iii) Roles and Status:
An individual has many roles to play. A man is father of his daughter, husband of his wife, son of his parents, brother of his sister, manager of workplace, and so on. The type of status one can have in the society depends upon the relative position at home, work and society. For example, professor’s status is higher than a student’s, a judge’s status is higher than a lawyer, and so on.
Roles and status play an important role for marketers. Products must be prepared not only as per the customer’s requirements, the role of status that individuals enjoy help them target customers at right places. Thus, the role and status of a judge would take him to a store where he can get products of his choice. He is not expected to be seen in a street corner to buy the daily requirements.
3. Personal Factors:
A consumer is influenced by age and life-cycle stage, occupation, economic circumstances, life-style, personality and self-concept as discussed below:
(i) Age and Life-Cycle Stage:
A person’s age is important decider of his needs. Small children require milk, baby foods, toys, games, soft drinks and educational facilities. Young adults require trendy clothes, recreational facilities, transportation, etc. Consumption behaviour is also influenced by the specific stage of family life-cycle.
(ii) Occupation:
The occupation of a person decides the consumption pattern. For example, a teacher would buy simple clothes, means of communication, books, transparencies, etc., while a company executive would buy expensive clothes, get membership of resorts and club, etc.
(iii) Economic Condition:
Marketers targets customer needs that can be converted into wants and demands. Income, saving, asset, borrowing power, etc. decide the economic capacity of the customer to buy a product. Thus, marketers use trends and patterns in the income, saving, etc. of the people to assess their capacity to buy the products.
(iv) Life-Style:
It has been observed that customers coming from different cultures, sub-cultures, social classes, occupations etc. bear different lifestyles.
Life styles are identified by taking various Activities, Interests, Opinions, and Demographics (AIOD) into account as listed below:
(a) Activities:
Work, Hobbies, Social Events, Vacations, Entertainment, Clubs, Community, Shopping, Sports.
(b) Interests:
Family, Home, Job, Community, Recreation, Fashion, Food, Media, and Achievements.
(c) Opinion:
Themselves, Social Issues, Politics, Business, Economic, Education, Products, Future and Culture.
(d) Demographics:
Age, Education, Income, Occupation, Family Size, Dwelling, Geography, City Size, and Stage in life-cycle.
(v) Personality:
Personality is the inner psychological characteristic of a person that is manifest in outer behaviour in terms of individual differences (high/low sociable persons). Personality is consistent arid enduring but it can change with time (gradual maturity) and abrupt events. Personality is trait that is reflected in the autonomous/dominance, self-confidence, sociability, defensiveness, adaptability of a person. The prominent trait will determine the buying behaviour of the consumer.
4. Psychological Factors:
A consumer calculates at mental level to determine choices for buying the products. The psychological processes include motivation, perception, learning, beliefs and attitudes.
These factors are discussed below:
Marketing executives are greatly interested in both the “why” and “how” of consumer motivation. A “motive” is a stimulated need that an individual seeks to satisfy. A ‘need’ must be ‘aroused’ or ‘stimulated’ before it becomes a motive.
Motivation can be defined as what leads the individual to act/behave in a particular way. Motivation can be conscious or subconscious—a force that underlies a behaviour. It is important for marketers to understand the motives that lead consumers to make purchases.
Motivation is a complex network of psychological and physiological mechanisms. Motives can be instinctive or learned; it can be product or patronage primary or selective; or it can be conscious or unconscious, rational or irrational.
They can range from biogenic needs, such a hunger, sex, food or drink and bodily comforts which arise from physiological states of tension to the most advanced psychogenic needs (such as the desire to invent means for harnessing solar energy, or to carry on some most advanced scientific and cultural pursuits that arise from psychological states of tension).
Maslow’s Need Hierarchy Theory:
Abraham Maslow has offered a general theory of motivation based on hierarchy of needs of people. He was of the view that the process of motivation begins with an assumption that behaviour, at least in part, is directed towards the satisfaction of needs.
He proposed a hierarchy of five types of needs which are discussed below:
(i) Physiological needs—the needs for food, clothing, shelter, etc.
(ii) Safety and security needs—the needs for protection against danger, threat, deprivation and the need for job security.
(iii) Social needs —the needs for belonging, for association, for acceptance, for friendship and for love.
(iv) Esteem or ego needs — the needs for self-confidence, for independence, for achievement and for knowledge and the needs for status, for recognition, etc.
(v) Self-actualization needs—the needs to realise one’s own potentialities to experience continued self-development to be creative.
Second need does not dominate until first need is reasonably satisfied and third need does not dominate until first two needs have been reasonably satisfied and so on. The assumption of the need hierarchy theory is that man is a wanting animal, he continues to want something or the other.
He is never fully satisfied. If one need is satisfied, the other needs arise. Another point to note is that once a need or a certain order of needs is satisfied, it ceases to be motivating factor. Lastly, the physiological and security needs are finite but needs of higher order are sufficiently infinite and likely to be dominant in persons at higher levels in the organisation.
In practice, the need hierarchy may not flow the sequence postulated by Maslow. Even if safety need is not satisfied, the esteem or egoistic need may emerge. Preposition that one need is satisfied at one time is also of doubtful validity. The phenomenon of multiple motivation is of great practical importance in understanding the behaviour of man.
However, one or two needs or motives in any situation may be prepotent while others may be of secondary importance. Maslow’s theory helps marketers know how different products fit into customer need set. For a given consumer it might be interesting to look at the particular need and then to satisfy that need.
A motive is a drive or force which activates behaviour in order to satisfy the aroused need, i.e., the motive. Motivation provides a basic influence upon buyer behaviour, while perception is operationally critical. A motive creates a disposition to act. Perception triggers or causes the behaviour in a certain way. Perception gives the direction or path to be taken by the behaviour.
Perception is the meaning we give on the basis of our past experience. To perceive is to see, to hear, to touch, to taste, to smell and to sense something or event and to organise, interpret and find meaning in the experience. Our senses perceive the colour, shape, sound, smell, taste, etc., of the stimulus. Our behaviour is governed by these physical perceptions.
According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, perception is the process by which we become aware of changes through the senses of sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. Berelson and Stainer have defined perception as the process by which an individual selects, organises and interprets information inputs to create a meaningful picture of the world.
Perception determines what is seen and felt by the consumers when numerous stimuli are directed to them every-day by messages broadcast by the marketers through various promotional devices. Perception is a selective process.
It is the interpretation of information to select a response to a stimulus. Our eyes and mind seek out or read only information sources that interest us. For example, we are exposed to hundreds of advertisements every-day, but we can perceive only a few of them. The selected advertisements might affect our buying behaviour.
Schiffman and Kanuk have observed that stimulation to consumer can occur at the level that is above the conscious level, called supraliminal perception. Furthermore, on individual consumer may also perceive stimuli without being consciously aware (called subliminal perception), for example, by flashing a message on the TV screen for a part of the second.
The flow of information can be attended, organised and interpreted in an individual way resulting in different perceptions of the same situation. Kotler observed that perception depends on the physical stimuli, its relation to the surrounding field, and the conditions within the individual.
Since every consumer is exposed to numerous stimulating objects (say advertisements on Television) and it is not possible for an individual to attend to them all, the individual consumer is bound to selectively screen out, distort, or retain the effects of the objects. And the three perceptual factors-selective exposure, selective distortion, and selective retention-mean that marketers and consumers have to work hard to see that their message is sent through.
Learning is the process by which the knowledge and experience acquired from the purchase, consumption, use is applied to the future behaviour. A TV purchase from BPL would help learn the customer that VCD by BPL would be better. Thus, because of learning taken from earlier product, the experience and knowledge is extended to other products including brand extensions.
Much of the consumer learning is intentional but a great deal is also incidental, for example, an advertisement by ONIDA during initial period of introduction caught many customers unaware because of the presentation of a devil in that advertisement.
Motivations are essential to make the buyer purchase the product. For that the perceptual selection of the marketer’s stimuli must take place. This would help consumer to learn the product and change his beliefs and attitudes.
A belief is a descriptive thought that an individual consumer has about product, service, idea, or practice. Thus, a customer might hold the view that PC Jewellers keep jewellery sets worth Rs. 50,000 and above. Or that the goods sold at pavements are always of inferior quality.
An attitude is a pre-disposed behaviour. It is enduring and consistent. Every customer has attitude toward clothes, music, food, etc. Thus, it might turn out that Videocon products are economical and also superior in quality and technology.
Once the attitude turns in, it is difficult to change attitude. The product that satisfied the attitude would hold the customer, e.g., “If you are fed up with road conditions, potholes, speed breakers, etc., the Peugeot 309 would suit you”.
Thus, a marketer is advised to bring about positive beliefs by presenting facts. At the same time, the positive beliefs should be converted into enduring behaviour. In any case, the marketer is advised to fit the products into existing attitudes of buyers rather than to change attitudes to fit into their products.
Level of Involvement in Decision Process:
Depending upon the involvement level of the customer and the significance of differences between brands, a particular type of a buying behaviour is adopted as discussed below:
(a) High Involvement:
A customer is highly involved in the product if it is expensive, involves some risk, bought infrequently, is highly self-expressive, or is specialised/technical/mechanical product. For example, computer, television, car, wallpaper, camera, sarees, aluminium sliding or carpet.
The consumer buying behaviours can be of two types:
(i) Complex Buying Behaviour:
The consumer would inhibit such a behaviour if the product is not only of high involvement, but also there are significant differences between brands. Customer needs specialist advise to buy. Before the specialist is consulted, the data would be compiled. Other considerations include the brand name, after-sales service, etc.
(ii) Dissonance Reducing Buying Behaviour:
A high involvement product with few differences in the brands would make the consumer to seek maximum reduction of post-purchase dissonance by comparing prices, convenience, speed, durability, etc. For example, buying of carpet, wallpaper, or aluminium sliding hardly matters whether bought from Modi, Hindustan Carpets, Novex, etc. As long as finish is acceptable and the desirable impact is made, the product would be acceptable.
(b) Low Involvement:
A product is not considered to be highly involved if it is having low cost and frequently purchased. For example, toothpaste, stationery, salt, etc. Here also, two extreme types of consumer buying behaviours are visible.
(i) Variety-Seeking Behaviour:
The product would be highly searched and compared on account of price, features, quantity, package, incentives, etc. For example, toothpaste, tooth brush, powder, soaps, detergents, toiletries, etc. Here a lot of brand switching is possible. Customer can try new products without much risk of money. Thus, it is easy to change customer beliefs in these categories of goods. The market leader would try to convert the variety seekers into brand loyalty, i.e., habitual behaviour.
(ii) Habitual Buying Behaviour:
A low involvement product with insignificant brand differences would lead to a passive habitual buying behaviour. For example, branded salt was launched by Tata. Then it was joined by Captain Cook. However, even if the Captain Cook had positioned itself as free flowing salt, customer did not find much of difference for kitchen uses because no extra benefit is perceived to have been accrued to the consumer.
However, as an item that offers choice in branded salts, the sales of Captain Cook picked-up. The marketers tend to convert variety seeking behaviour into habitual buying behaviour, i.e., buying Promise toothpaste on a regular basis. Similarly, when no specific brand differences exist, (habitual buying behaviours, the marketers use price, sales promotion, and advertising to bring about brand differences and hence change consumer behaviour into variety behaviour.