Marketing 2 Summary Chapter 8 PerceptionPerception is a process that begins with consumer exposure and attention to marketing stimuli and ends with consumer interpretation. Information processing is a series of activities by which stimuli are perceived, transformed into information, and stored. A useful information-processing model has 4 major stages: exposure, attention, interpretation and memory. The first 3 of these constitute perception (zie figuur 8.1). Exposure occurs when a stimulus such as a banner ad comes within range of a person’s sensory receptor nerves – vision, in this example. Attention occurs when the stimulus (banner ad) is “seen” (the receptor nerves pass the sensations on the the brain for processing).Interpretation is the assignment of meaning to the received sensations.Memory is the short-term use of the meaning for immediate decision making or the longer-term retention of the meaning. This suggests a linear flow from exposure to memory. However, these processes occur virtually simultaneously and are clearly interactive. For example, a person’s memory influences the information he or she is exposed to and attends to and the interpretations the person assigns to that information. At the same time, memory itself is being shaped by the information it is receiving. The selectivity, sometimes referred to as perceptual defenses, means that individuals are not passive recipients of marketing messages. Rather, consumers largely determine the message they will encounter and notice as well as the meaning communicating with consumers.

Exposure occurs when a stimulus is placed within a person’s relevant environment and comes within range of their sensory receptor nerves. Exposure provides consumers with the opportunity to pay attention to available information but in no way guarantees it. For example, have you ever been watching television and realized that you were not paying attention to the commercials being aired? In this case, exposure occurred, but the commercials will probably have little influence due to your lack of attention. Most of the stimuli to which individuals are exposed are “self-selected”. That is, people seek information that they think will help them achieve their goals. An individual’s goals and the types of information needed to achieve those goals are a function of that person’s existing and desired lifestyle and such short-term motives as hunger or curiosity. The highly selective nature of consumer exposure is a major concern for marketers since failure to gain exposure results in lost communication and sales opportunities. The impact of the active, self-selecting nature of media exposure can be seen in the zipping, zapping and muting of television commercials. Zipping occurs when one fast-forwards through a commercial on prerecorded program. Zapping involves switching channels when a commercial appears. Muting is turning the sound off during commercial breaks. This is often referred as ad avoidance. Marketers increasingly seek to gain exposure by placing their brands within entertainment media, such as in movies and television programs, in exchange for payment of promotional or other consideration. Such product placement involves exposure that consumers don’t try to avoid, it shows how and when to use the product, and it enhances the product’s image.

Stimulus factors are physical characteristics of the stimulus itself. Stimulus characteristics such as ad size and color are under the marketer’s control and can attract attention independent of individual or situational characteristics. The attention garnered by stimulus factors tends to be relatively automatic. So if you think you are not interested in a car (individual characteristic), a large and colorful car ad (stimulus characteristics) may be hard to ignore.Factors are:

Size larger stimuli are more likely to be noticed than smaller ones. This is certainly the case on store shelves where shelf space is at a premium and more shelf space can translate into greater attention and sales.

Intensity the intensity (e.g. loudness, brightness, length) of a stimulus can increase attention. For instance, the longer a scene in an advertisement is held on-screen, the more likely it is to be noticed and recalled. In online advertisement one aspect of intensity is intrusiveness, or the degree to which one is forced to see or interact with a banner or pop-up in order to see the desired content. Repetition is related to intensity. It is the number of ties an individual is exposed to a given stimulus, such as an ad or brand logo, over time. Attention generally decreased across repeated exposure, particularly when those exposure occur in a short period of time. However the decrease in overall attention caused by repetition needs to be interpreted in view of two factors. First, consumer may shift the focus of their attention from one part of the ad to another across repetitions. Have you ever noticed something new about an ad after you’ve seen it a couple of times? This is a result of a shift in your attention as you become more familiar with the ad. The second factor is that repetition often increases recall.

Attractive visuals Individuals tend to be attracted to pleasant stimuli and repelled by unpleasant stimuli. This explains the ability of attractive visuals, such as mountain scenes and attractive models. To draw consumer attention to an advertisement.

Color and movement Both color and movement serve to attract attention, with brightly colored and moving items being more noticeable. Certain colors and color characteristics crate feelings of excitement and arousal, which are related to attention. Brighter color are more arousing than dull and warm colors, such as reds and yellow, are more arousing than cool colors, such as blues and grays.

Position refers to the placement of an object in physical space or time. In retail store, items that are easy to find or that stand out are more likely to attract attention. Position effects in advertising often depend on the medium an dhow consumers normally interact with that medium. In print context, ads on the right-hand page receive more attention than those on the left based on how we peruse magazines and newspapers. In television, the probability of a commercial being viewed and remembered drops sharply as it moves from being the first to air during a break to the last to air, since consumers often engage in other activities during commercial breaks.

Isolation is separating a stimulus object from other objects. In-store, the use of stand-alone kiosks is based on this principle. In advertising, the use of ‘white space’ (placing a brief message in the center of an otherwise

blank or white advertisement) is based on this principle, as is surroundings a key part of a radio commercial with a brief moment of silence.

Format Catalog merchants wishing to display multiple items per page often create an environment in which the competition for attention across items reduces attention to all the items. However, with proper arrangement and formatting, this competition for attention can be reduced and sales improved. Format refers to the manner in which the message is presented.

Contrast and expectations Consumers pay more attention to stimuli that contrast with tie background than to stimuli that blend with it. Contrast is related to the idea of expectations. Expectations drive our perceptions of contrast. Packaging, in-store displays, and ads that differ from our expectations tend to get noticed. For example, ads that differ from the type of consumers expect for a product category often motivate more attention than ads that are more typical for the product category. Adaptation level theory suggest that is stimulus doesn’t change, over time we adept or habituate to it and begin to notice it less. Thus, an ad when we initially notice when it’s new may lose its ability to capture our attention as we become familiar with it.

Interestingness what one is interest in is generally an individual characteristic.

Information quantity finally, information quantity represents the number of cues in the stimulus field. Cues can relate to the features of the brand itself, typical users of the brand, typical usage situations, and so on. Information overload occurs when consumers are confronted with so much information that they cannot or will not attend to all of it.

Individual factors are characteristics that distinguish one individual from another. Generally speaking, consumer motivation and ability are the major individual factors affecting attention.

Motivation is a drive state crated by consumer interest and needs. Interests are a reflection of overall lifestyle as well as a result of goals (e.g. becoming an accomplished guitar player) and needs (e.g. hunger). Product involvement indicates motivation or interest in a specific product category. Product involvement can be temporary or enduring. One way marketers have responded to consumer interest and involvement is by developing smart banners for the Internet. These are banner ads that are activated based on terms used in search engines.

Ability refers to the capacity of individuals to attend to and process information. Ability is related to knowledge and familiarity with the product, brand or promotion. An audiophile, for example, is more capable of attending to highly detailed product information about stereo equipment than a novice. Brand familiarity is an ability factor related to attention. Those with high brand familiarity may require less attention to the brand’s ads because of their existing knowledge.

Situational factors include stimuli in the environment other than the focal stimulus (i.e. the ad or package) and temporary characteristics of the individual

that are induced by the environment, such as time pressures or a crowded store. Clutter and program involvement are two major situational factors affecting attention.

Clutter represents the density of stimuli in the environment. In-store research suggests that cluttering the environment with too many point-of-purchase displays decreases the attention consumers pay to a given display. This explains why companies such as Walmart have made concerted effort to reduce the number of displays in their stores. In advertising, consumers pay less attention to a commercial in a large cluster of commercials than they do to one in a smaller set.

Program involvement refers to how interested viewers are in the program or editorial content surroundings the ads ( as opposed to involvement with the ad or brand). In general, the audience is attending to the medium because of the program or editorial content, not the advertisement. Ad quality represents how well a message is constructed in terms of being believable and appealing, and in communicating the core message effectively.

Stimuli may be attended to without deliberate or conscious focusing of attention. A classic example is the cocktail party effect, whereby an individual engaged in a conversation with a friend isn’t consciously aware of other conversations at a crowded party until someone in another group says something relevant such as mentioning her name. The idea behind hemispheric lateralization is that different parts of our brain are better suited for focused versus non-focused attention.

Hemispheric lateralization is a term applied to activities that take place on each side of the brain. The left side of the brain is primarily responsible for verbal information, symbolic representation, sequential analysis, and the ability to be conscious and report what is happening. The right side of the rain deals with pictorial, geometric, timeless and nonverbal information without the individual being able to verbally report it. However just because consumers don’t pay direct attention to an advertisement doesn’t mean it can’t influence them. For example, brands contained in ads to which subjects are exposed but pay little or no attention (incidental exposure) nonetheless are more likely to be considered for purchase.

Subliminal stimuli is a message presented so far or so softly or so marked by other messages that one is not are of seeing or hearing it.

Interpretation is the assignment of meaning to sensations. Interpretation is related to how we comprehend and make sense of incoming information based on characteristics of the stimulus, the individual, and the situation. Several aspects of interpretation are important to consider, first, it is generally a relative process rather than absolute, often referred to as perceptual relativity. A second aspct of interpretation is that it tends to be subjective and open to a host of psychological biases. The subjective nature of interpretation can be seen in the distinction between semantic meaning, the conventional meaning assigned to a word such as found in the dictionary, and psychological meaning, the specified meaning assigned a word by a given individual or group of individuals based on

their experiences, expectations, and the context in which the term is used. A final aspect of interpretation is that it can be a cognitive “thinking” process or an affective “emotional” process. Cognitive interpretation is a process whereby stimuli are placed into existing categories of meaning. Affective interpretation is the emotional or feeling response triggered by a stimulus such as an ad. Emotional responses can range from positive to negative.

Individual characteristics Traits Inherent physiological and psychological traits, which drive our

needs ns desires, influence how a stimulus is interpreted. Fro a physiological standpoint, consumers differ in their sensitivity to stimuli. Some children are more sensitive to the bitter taste of certain chemical found in green, leafy vegetables such as spinach. From a psychological standpoint, consumers have natural cognitive, emotional, and behavioral predispositions. As just one example, some experience emotions more strongly than others, a trait known as affect intensity.

Leaning and knowledge The meanings attached to such “natural” things as time, space, relationships, and colors are learned and vary widely across cultures. Consumers also lean about marketer-crated stimuli like brands and promotions through their experiences with them.

Expectations Individuals’ interpretations of stimuli tend to be consistent with their expectations, an effect referred to as the expectation bias. Most consumers expect dark brown pudding to taste like chocolate, not vanilla.

A variety of situational characteristics have an impact on interpretation, including temporary characteristics of the individual, such as time pressure and mood, and physical characteristics of the situation, such as the number and characteristics of other individuals present and the nature of the material surroundings the message in question. Basically, the situation provides a context within which the focal stimulus is interpreted. The contextual cues present in the situation play a role in consumer interpretation independent of the actual stimulus. The Stimulus is the basic entity to which an individual responds and includes the product, package, advertisement, in-store display, and so son. Consumer react to and interpret basic traits of the stimulus (size, shape, color), the way the stimulus is organized, and changes in the stimulus. These processes are likely to be heavily influenced by the individual and the situation.

Traits Specific traits of the stimulus, such as size, shape, and color, affect interpretation. Rhetorical figures involve the use of an unexpected twist or artful deviation in how a message is communicated either visually in the ad’s picture or verbally in the ad’s text or headline.

Organization Stimulus organization refers to the physical arrangement of the stimulus objects. Organization affects consumer interpretation and categorization. For example, you likely perceive the letters that make up the words you are reading as words rather than as individual letters. Proximity refers to the fact that stimuli positioned close together are perceived as belonging to the same category. Some proximity comes from the stimuli itself. For example, when consumers read the headline “Have a safe winter. Drive Bridgestone Tire” they tend to infer from the proximity

of the two statements that the ad means Bridgestone Tire will help then have a safe winter. However, the headline does not explicitly make that claim. Sometimes proximity results from the relationship of the stimulus to its context, as in ambush marketing. This involves any communication or activity that implies, or from which one could reasonably infer, that on organization is associated with an event, when in fact it is not. Closure involves presenting an incomplete stimulus with the goal of getting consumer to complete it and thus become more engaged and involved. Figure-ground involves presenting the stimulus in such as way that it is perceived as the focal object to be attended to and all other stimuli are perceived as background.

Changes In order to interpret stimulus change, consumers must be able to categorize and interpret the new stimulus relative to the old. The physiological ability of an individual to distinguish between similar stimuli is called sensory discrimination. This involves such variables as the sound of stereo systems, the taste of food products, or the clarity of display screens. The minimum amount that one noticed is referred to as the just noticeable difference (j.n.d.).

An inference goes beyond what is directly stated or presented. Consumers use available data and their own ideas to drawn conclusions about information that is provided.

Quality signals Inferences are as numerous and divergent as consumers themselves. Some inferences related to product quality are relativity consistent across consumers. Price-perceived quality is an inference based on the popular adage “ you get what you pay for.” Consumers often infer that higher-priced brands posses higher quality than do lower-priced brands. Advertising intensity is also a quality signal. Consumers tend to infer that more heavily advertised brands are higher quality. Warranties are another quality signal, with longer warranties generally signaling higher quality. Others include country of origin, in which consumers interpret products more positively when they are manufactured in a country they perceive positively, as well as brands effects, where well-known brands are perceived as higher quality than are unknown brands.

Interpreting images Consumer inferences from visual images are becoming increasingly important as advertisers increase their uses of visual imagery.

Missing information and ethical concerns When data about an attribute are missing, consumers may assign it a value based on a presumed relationship between that attribute and one for which data are available; they may assign it the average of their assessments of the available attributes; they may assume it to be weaker than the attributes for which data are supplied; or any of a large number of other strategies may be used.

Cross-promotion whereby, signage in one area of the store promotes complementary products in another.

Brand name and logo development

Linguistic considerations sometimes brand names start out having no inherent meaning, but gain associations over time as consumers gain experience with them.

Brand strategies Marketers engage in numerous strategies to leverage strong existing brand names. One is brand extension where an existing brand extends to a new category with the same name, such as Levi Strauss putting its Levi name on a line of upscale men’s suits. Another is co-branding, an alliance in which two brands are put together on a single product.

Logo design and typographics How a product or service name is presented – its logo – is also important.

Chapter 9 Learning, Memory and Product PositioningLearning is any change in the content or organization of long-term memory or behavior and is the result of information processing. In the previous, we described information processing as a series of activities by which stimuli are perceived, transformed into information, and stored. The four activities in the series are exposure, attention, interpretation and memory. Memory is the total accumulation of prior learning experience. It consists of two interrelated components: short-term and long-term memory. Short-term memory is that portion of total memory that is currently activated or in use. Long-term memory is that portion of total memory devoted to permanent information storage. Short-term memory has a limited capacity to store information and sensations. Individuals use short-term memory to hold information while they analyze and interpret it. They may then transfer it to another system; place it in long-term memory, or both. STM is an active dynamic process, not a static structure. Maintenance rehearsal is the continual repetition of a piece of information in order to hold it in current memory for use in problem solving or transferal long-term memory. For example, repeating the same formula several times before taking an exam. STM has limited capacity. Organizing individuals item into groups of related items that can be processed as a single unit is called chunking. Elaborative activities are the use of previously stored experiences, values, attitudes, beliefs and feelings to interpret and evaluate information in working memory as well as to add relevant previously stored information. Elaborate activities can involve both concepts and imagery. Concepts are abstractions of reality that capture the meaning of an item in terms of other concepts. Thus, a consumer might bring to mind concepts such as harmonize, coordinate, and bring together, when first processing the new concept SYNC (vb uit boek). Imagery involves concrete sensory representations of ideas, feelings and objects. It persists a direct recovery of aspects of past experiences. Thus, imagery processing involves the recall and mental manipulation of sensory images, including sight, smell, taste and tactile (touch) sensations. Elaboration increases the chances that information will be transferred to LTM and be retrieved at a later time by increasing the processing attention directed at that information and by establishing meaningful linkages between the new information and existing information. Long-term memory is viewed as an unlimited, permanent storage. It can store numerous types of information, such as concepts, decision rules, processes and affective (emotional) states. Marketers are particularly interested in semantic

memory, which is the basic knowledge and feelings an individual has about a concept. It represents the person’s understanding of an object or event at its simplest level. Another type of memory marketers are interested in is episodic memory. This is the memory of sequence of events in which a person participated. These personal memories of events such as first date, graduation, or learning to drive can be quite strong. Two important structures are schemas and scripts.

Schemas are a pattern of such associations around a particular concept. Notice that our hypothetical schema contains: product characteristics, usage situations, episodes and affective reactions. In the schema shown in figure 9,2, concepts, events, and feelings are stored in nodes within memory. Associative links connect various concepts to from the complete meaning assigned to an item. Brands in schematic memory that come to mind (are recalled) for a specific problem or situation such as thirst are known as the evoked set.

Scripts: memory of how an action sequence should occur, such as purchasing and drinking a soft drink to relieve thirst.

The likelihood and ease with which information can be recalled from LTM is termed accessibility. Accessibility can be enhanced by rehearsal, repetition and elaboration. The accessibility effect for brands is called top-of-mind awareness. Retrieval may involve explicit or implicit memories. Explicit memory involves the conscious recollection of an exposure event. For example, when you read a chapter and than try to answer a question about it without referring back to the chapter. Implicit involves the nonconscious retrieval of previously encountered stimuli. Information processing (and therefore learning) may be conscious and deliberate in high-involvement situations, or it may be nonfocused and even nonconscious in low-involvement situations. A high-involvement learning situation is one in which the consumer is motivated to process or learn the material. For example, an individual reading PC magazine prior to purchasing a computer is probably highly motivated to learn relevant material dealing with the various computer brands. A low-involvement learning situation is one in which the consumer has little or no motivation to process or learn the material. A consumer whose television program is interrupted by a commercial for a product he or she doesn’t currently use or feel a desire for generally has little motivation to learn the material presented in the commercial. Much consumer learning occurs in relatively low-involvement contexts.

Conditioning is probably most appropriately described as a set of procedures that marketers can use to increase the chances that n association between two stimuli is formed or learned. There are two basic forms of conditioning:

Classical conditioning attends to created an association between a stimulus (e.g., brand name) and some response (e.g., behavior or feeling). The process of using an established relationship between one stimulus (music) and response (pleasant feelings) to bring about the learning of the same response (pleasant feelings) to a different stimulus (the brand) is called classical conditioning. Hearing popular music (unconditioned stimulus) automatically elicits a positive emotion (unconditioned response) in many individuals. If this music is consistently paired with a particular brand of pen or other product (conditioned stimulus), the

brand itself may come to elicit the same positive emotion (conditioned response).

Operant conditioning (or instrumental learning) involves rewarding desirable behaviors such as brand purchases with a positive outcome that serve to reinforce the behavior. The more often a response is reinforce, the more likely it will be repeated I the future as consumer learn that the response is associated with a positive outcome. Unlike the relatively automatic associations created by classical conditioning, operant conditioning requires that consumer first engage in a deliberate behavior and come to understand its power in predicting positive outcomes that serve ass reinforcement. Shaping is the process of encouraging partial responses leading to the final desired response (free samples, special price discount).

Cognitive learning encompasses all the mental activities f humans as they work to solve problems or cope with situations. There are three types of cognitive learning:

Iconic Rote Learning is known as learning a concept or the association between two or more concepts in the absence of conditioning. For example, one may see an ad that states, “Keptoprofin is headache remedy” and associate the new concept “keptoprofin” with the existing concept “headache remedy”.

Vicarious Learning or Modeling It is not necessary for consumers to directly experience a reward or punishment to learn. Instead they can observe the outcomes of other’s behaviors and adjust their own accordingly. Similarly, they can use imagery to anticipate the outcome of various courses of action this is known as vicarious learning or modeling.

Analytical reasoning represents judgments made upon statements that are based on the virtue of the statement's own content. No particular experience, beyond an understanding of the meanings of words used, is necessary for analytic reasoning. For example, "John is a bachelor." is a given true statement. Through analytic reasoning, one can make the judgment that John is unmarried. One knows this to be true since the state of being unmarried is implied in the word bachelor; no particular experience of John is necessary to make this judgment. Analogical reasoning is an inference process that allows consumers to use an existing knowledge base to understand a new situation or objects.

Stimulus discrimination or differentiation refers to the process of learning to respond differently to similar but distinct stimuli. For example, the management of Bayer aspirin feels that consumers should not see its aspirin as being the same as other brands. In order to obtain a premium price or a large market share, Bayer must teach consumers that its aspirin is distinct form other brands. Stimulus generalization often referred to as the rub-off effect, occurs when a response to one stimuli sis elicited by a similar but distinct stimulus. Thus, a consumer who leans that Nabisco’s Oreo Cookies taste good and therefore assumer that the company’s new Oreo Chocolate Cones will also taste good has engaged in stimulus generalization.

In conditioned learning, forgetting is often referred to as extinction, since the desired response decays or dies out if learning is not repeated and reinforce. In cognitive learning, forgetting is often referred to as retrieval failure, since information that is available in LTM cannot be accessed, that is retrieved from LTM into STM.

The strength of learning: the stronger the original learning, the more likely relevant information will be retrieved when required. This is enhanced by six factors:

1. Importance refers to the value that consumer place on the information to be learned.

2. Message involvement When a consumer is not motivated to learn the material, processing can be increased by causing the person to become involved with the message itself. For example, playing an instrumental version of a popular song with lyrics related to product attributes may cause people to sing along, either out loud or mentally.

3. Mood Learning enhancement caused by a positive mood suggests the types of programs that marketers attempting to encourage consumer learning should advertise on.

4. Reinforcement Anything that increases the likelihood that a given response will be repeated in the future is considered reinforcement.

5. Repetition enhances learning and memory by increasing the accessibility of information in memory or by strengthening the associative linkages between concepts.

6. Dual coding Consumers can store (code) information in different ways. Storing the same information in different ways (dual coding) results in more internal pathways (associative links) for retrieving information. For example, when consumers learn information in two different contexts – for example, a consumer sees two ads for the same brand of dandruff shampoo, one with an office theme and one with a social theme. The varied theme (context) provides multiple paths to the brand and therefore enhances recall later on.

Memory interference occurs when consumers have difficulties retrieving a specific piece of information because other related information in memory gets in the way. There are a number of strategies to decrease competitive interference:

Avoid competing advertising Strengthen initial learning Reduce similarity to competing ads Provide external retrieval cues

Brand image refers to the schematic memory of a brand. It contains the target market’s interpretation of the product’s attributes, benefits, usage situation, users and manufacture/marketer characteristics. Product positioning is a decision by a marketer to try to achieve a defined brand image relative to competition within a market segment. Perceptual mapping offers marketing managers a useful technique for measuring and developing a product’s position. Perceptual mapping takes

consumer’s perceptions of how similar various brands or products are to each other and relates these perceptions to product attributes. Product repositioning refers to a deliberate decision to significantly alter the way the market views a product. Brand equity is the value consumers assign to a brand above and beyond the functional characteristics of the product. Brand leverage refers to marketers capitalizing on brand equity using an existing brand name for new products.

Chapter 10 Motivation, Personality and EmotionMotivation is the reason for behavior. A motive is a construct representing an unobservable inner force that stimulates and compels a behavioral response and provides specific direction to that response. There are numerous theories of motivation. This section describes two particularly useful approaches. First Maslow’s need hierarchy is a macro theory designed to account for most human behavior in general terms. The second approach, based on McGuire’s work, uses a fairly detailed set of motives to account for specific aspects of consumer behavior.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is based on four premises:1. All humans acquire a similar set

of motives through genetic endowment and social interaction.

2. Some motives are mote basic or critical than others.

3. The more basic motives must be satisfied to a minimum level before other motives are activated.

4. As the basic motives become satisfied, more advanced motives come into play.

Maslow presented a hierarchical set of five basic motives, and other researchers have proposed hundreds of additional, very specific motives. McGuire developed a classification system that organizes these various theories into 16 categories. This system helps marketers isolate motives likely to be involved in various consumption situations. McGuire first divides motivation into four main categories using criteria:

1. Is the mode of motivation cognitive or affective?2. Is the motive focused on preservation of the status quo or on growth?

Cognitive motives focus on the person’s need for being adaptively oriented toward the environment and achieving a sense of meaning. Affective motives deal with the need to reach satisfying feeling states and to obtain personal goals. Preservation-oriented motives emphasize the individual as striving to maintain equilibrium, while growth motives emphasize development. These four categories are further subdivided on the bases of source and objective of the motive:

3. Is this behavior actively imitated or in response to the environment?4. Does this behavior help the individual achieve a new internal or a new

external relationship to the environment?McGuire’s 16 motives and their implications are described in the following section.

Cognitive preservation motives Need for Consistency (active, internal) A basic desire is to have all facets of oneself consistent with one another. Cognitive dissonance is a common motive of this type. For example, making a major purchase is not consistent with the need to save money.Need for attribution (active, external) This set of motives deals with our need to determine who or what causes the things that happen to us and relates to an area of research called attribution theory. Need for categorize (passive, internal) People have a need to categorize and organize the vast array of information and experiences they encounter in a meaningful yet manageable way. So they establish categories or mental partitions to help them do so. Need for objectification (passive, external) These motives reflect needs for observable cues or symbols that enable people to interferer what they feel and know.

Cognitive growth motive Need for autonomy (active, internal) The need for independence and individuality is a characteristic of the American culture. Need for stimulation (active, external) people often seek variety and difference out a need for stimulation. Teleological Need (passive, internal) Consumers are pattern matchers who have images of desired outcomes or end states with which they compare their current situation. Behaviors are changed and the results are monitored in terms of movement toward the desired end state. Utilitarian Need (passive, external) These theories view the consumer as a problem solver who approaches situations as opportunities to acquire useful information or new skills.

Affective preservation motives Need for tension reduction (active, internal) People encounter situation in their daily lives that crate uncomfortable levels of stress. In order to manage tension people seek ways to reduce arousal. (Recreational products)Need for expression (active, external) This motive deals with the need to express one’s identity to others. People feel the need to let others know who and what they are by their actions, which include the purchase and use of goods. Need for ego defense (passive, internal) The need to defend one’s identity or ego is another important motive. When one’s identity is threatened, the person is motivated to protect his or her self-concept and utilize defensive behaviors and attitudes. Need for reinforcement (Passive, external) People are often motivated to act in certain ways because they were rewarded for behaving that way in similar situations in the past. Products designed to be used in public situations (clothes, furniture and artwork)

Affective growth motives Need for assertion (active, internal) Many people are competitive achievers who seek success, admiration, and dominance. Important to them are power, accomplishment and esteem.Need for affiliation (active, external) Affiliation refers to the need to develop mutually helpful and satisfying relationships with others. It relates to altruism and seeking acceptance and affection in interpersonal relations. Need for identification (passive, internal) The need for identification results in the consumer’s playing various roles. Need for modeling (passive, external) The need for modeling reflects a tendency to base behavior on that of others. Modeling is major means by which children learn to become consumers.

Manifest motives are motives that are known and freely admitted. Example of J. Crew clothes Clothes are high quality and comfortable.Latent motives are motives that were unknown to the consumer or were such that she war reluctant to admit them. Example of J. Crew clothes It will show that I’m sophisticated and trendy.Techniques for identifying those motives are: laddering, or constructing a means-end or benefit chain. Involvement is a motivational state caused by t consumer perceptions that a product, brand or advertisement is relevant or interesting. Needs play a strong role in determining what is relevant or interesting to consumers. For example, watches may be involving because they tell time (utilitarian need), because they allow for self-expression *expressive need), or because they provide a way to fit in (affiliation need).

There are three key types of motivation conflicts:1. Approach-approach motivational conflict A consumer who must

choose between two attractive alternatives faces this conflict. The more equal the attractions, the greater the conflict.

2. Approach-avoidance motivational conflict A consumer facing a purchase choice with both positive and negative consequences confronts this conflict. Consumers who want a tan but don’t want to risk skin damage and health risks. Instant Bronze Sunless tanner resolves this conflict.

3. Avoidance-avoidance motivational conflict A choice involving only undesirable outcomes produces this conflict. When a consumer’s old washing machine fails, this conflict may occur. The person may not want to spend money on a new washing machine, or pay to have the old one repaired, or go without one.

Promotion-focused motives resole around a desire for growth and development and are related to consumer’s hopes and aspirations.Prevention-focused motives revolve around a desire for safety and security and are related to consumer’s sense of duties and obligations.Regulatory focus theory suggests that consumers will react differently depending on which broad set of motives is most salient.

Personality is an individual’s characteristic response tendencies across similar situations. Thus, two condemners might have equal need for tension reduction, but differ in their level of extroversion, and as a consequence, engage in very different behaviors designed to satisfy that need. Trait theories examine personality as an individual difference and thus allow marketers to segment consumers as a function of their personality differences. Some traits research attempts a consumer’s entire personality profile across a set of relatively exhaustive dimension. Specifically, multitrait personality theory identifies several traits that in combination capture a substantial portion of the personality of the individual. The five-factor model identifies five basic traits formed by genetics and early learning. Single trait theories emphasize one personality trait as being a particularly relevant to understanding a particular set of behaviors. Consumer ethnocentrism reflects an individual difference in consumer’s propensity to be biased against the purchase of foreign products. Need for cognition reflects an individual difference in consumer’s propensity to engage in and enjoy thinking. Consumer’s need for uniqueness reflects an individual difference in consumers’ propensity to pursue differentness relative to others through the acquisition, utilization, and disposition of consumer goods. Brand personality is a set of human characteristics that become associated with a brand.

Communicating brand personality: Celebrity endorsers User Imagery involves showing a typical use along with images of the

types of activities they engage in while using the brand. Executional factors go beyond the core message to include how it is

communicated. The tone of the ad, the appeal used, the logo and typeface characteristics, the pace of the ad, and even the media outlet chosen can all communicate a brand’s personality.

Consumer emotional intelligence is defined as a person’s ability to skillfully use emotional information to achieve a desirable consumer outcome.

Chapter 11 Attitudes and influencing attitudesAn attitude is an enduring organization of motivational, emotional, perceptual and cognitive processes with respect to some aspect of our environment. An attitude is the way one thinks, feels and acts towards some aspect of his or her environment, such as a retail store, television program, or product. Attitude has three components:

1. Cognitive component consists of a consumer’s beliefs about an object. 2. Affective component represents feelings or emotions to an object. For

example, a consumer who states “I like Diet Coke” is expressing the results of an emotional or affective evaluation of the product.

3. Behavioral component of an attitude is one’s tendency to respond in a certain manner toward an object or activity. A series of decisions to purchase or not purchase Diet Coke or recommend it or other brands to friends would reflect the behavioral component. Actual behaviors reflect these intentions as they are modified by the situation in which the

behavior will occur. Actual behaviors and response tendencies are most often measured by fairly direct questioning. For a more sensitive topic indirect questioning comes to mind.

Consistent means that a change in one attitude component tends to produce related changes in the other components. At least six factors may account for inconsistencies between measures of beliefs and feelings and observations of behavior.

1. Lack of need2. Lack of ability3. Relative attitudes4. Attitude ambivalence: holding mixed feelings/beliefs about an attitude

object.5. Weak beliefs and affect6. Interpersonal and situational influences

Four basic marketing strategies are used for altering the cognitive structure of consumer’s attitude:

1. Change beliefs2. Shift importance Most consumers consider some product attributes to

be more important than others. Marketers often try to convince consumers that those attributes on which their brands are relatively strong are the most important. For example, General Motors uses detailed narratives of drives in distress to emphasize the importance of instant communication and emergency assistance, which its proprietary OnStar system provides.

3. Add beliefs For example, the California Pomegranate Council want consumers to know that beyond processing vitamins and minerals, new search shows that pomegranates contain “powerful antioxidants that help retard aging and can neutralize almost twice as many free radicals as red wine an seven times as many as green tea”.

4. Chang ideal Many conservation organizations strive to influence our beliefs about the ideal product in terms of minimal packaging, nonpolluting manufacturing, extensive use of recycled materials, and nonpolluting disposition after its useful life.

There are three basic approaches to directly increase affect (changing the affective component):

1. Classical conditioning A stimulus the audience likes, such as music, is consistently paired with the brand name. Over time, some of the positive affects associated with the music will transfer to the brand.

2. Affect toward the ad or website Liking the advertisement generally increases the tendency to like the brand.

3. Mere exposure This is simply presenting a brand to an individual on a large number of occasions might make the individual’s attitude toward the brand more positive. “Familiarity breeds liking”.

The elaboration likelihood model (ELM) is a theory about how attitudes are formed and changed under varying conditions of involvement. ELM integrates select individual, situational and marketing factors to understand attitudes.

The source of a communication represents “who” delivers the message. There are different ways to deliver the same message by different sources.

Source credibility consists of trustworthiness and expertise. A source that has no ulterior motive to provide anything other than complete and accurate information would generally be considered trustworthy.

Celebrity sources are widely used in advertising. Celebrity sources are effective for a variety of reasons: attention, attitude toward the ad, trustworthiness, expertise, aspirational aspects and meaning transfer. Rather than using celebrities many firs are creating spokes characters.

Sponsorship a company providing financial support for an event such as the Olympics or a concert, is one of the most rapidly growing marketing activities.

The nature of the appeal, or “how” a message is communicated affects the attitude formation and change.

Fear appeal uses the threat of negative consequences if attitudes or behaviors are not altered. (smoking)

Humorous appeals opposite from fear appeals. Ads build around humor appear to increase attention and liking of the ad.

Comparative ads directly compare the features or benefits of two ore more brands.

Emotional appeals are designed primarily to elicit a positive affective response rather than to provide information or arguments.

Value-expressive versus utilitarian appeals Value-expressive appeals attempt to build a personality for the product or create an image of the product user. Utilitarian appeals involves informing the consumer of one or more functional benefits that are important to the target market. Which is best under what conditions?

In advertisements and sales presentations, marketers generally present only the benefits of their product without mentioning any negative characteristics it might possess or any advantages a competitor might have. These are one-sided messages, since only one point of view is expressed. The idea of two-sided message, presenting both good and bad point, is counterintuitive, and most marketers are reluctant to try such an approach. Message framing refers to the presenting one of two equivalent value outcomes either in positive or gain terms (positive framing) or in negative or loss terms (negative framing). There are various types of message frames, and the type of frame influences whether positive or negative framing is best. The simplest form appears to be attribute framing where only a single attribute is the focus of the frame. For example, only mentioning 80% fat free not 20% fat). Goal framing is where “the message stresses either the positive consequences of performing an act or the negative consequences of not performing the act”.Benefit segmentation is segmenting consumers on the basis of their most important attribute or attributes.

Chapter 12 Self-concept and lifestyle Self-concept is defined as the totality of the individual’s thoughts and feelings having reference to himself or herself as an objet. It is an individual’s perception of and feeling towards him-or herself. In other words, your self-concept is composed of the attitudes you hold towards yourself. The self-concept can be divided into four basic parts: actual versus ideal, and private versus social. The actual-ideal distinction refers to the individual’s perception of who I am now (actual perception) and who I would like to be (ideal self-concept). The private self refers to how I am or would like to be to myself (private self-concept), and the social self is how I am seen by others or how I would like to be seen by others (social-self concept). It is useful to categorize self-concepts into two types:

1. Independent self-concept emphasizes personal goals, characteristics, achievements and desires.

2. Interdependent self-concept emphasizes family, cultural, professional and social relationships.

The extended self consists of the self plus possessions: that is, people tend to define themselves in part by their possession. Thus, some possession are not just a manifestation of a person’s self-concept: they are an integral part of that person’s self-identity. A peak experience is an experience that surpasses the usual level of intensity, meaningfulness and richness and produces feelings of joy and self-fulfillment. The mere ownership effect or the endowment effect is the tendency of an owner to evaluate an object more favorably than a nonowner. The etend to which brands become part of the extended self appears to be affected by individual differences in brand engagement. Brand engagement refers to the extent to which an individual includes important brands as part of his or her self-concept.

Lifestyle indicates basically how a person lives. It his how a person enacts her or his self-concept and determined by past experiences, innate characteristics, and current situations. Attempts to develop quantitative measures of lifestyle were initially referred to as psychographics psychographics studies typically include the following:

Attitudes Values Activities and interests Demographics Media patterns Usage rates

By far the most popular application of psychographic research by marketing managers is Strategic Business Insights’ (SBI’s) VALS program. VALS provides a systematic classification of American adults into eight distinct consumer segments. The primary motivations underlie VALS:

Ideals motivation Achievement motivation Self-expression motivation