experience and
more on personal observation to secure information; thus, in-store pro-
motion would become an important communication tool. Knowing the basic personality
traits of target customers can be useful information for the manager in designing the mar-
keting mix. Marketers have, however, found personality to be difficult to apply in devel-
oping marketing strategy. The primary reason for this is the lack of good ways to measure
personality traits. Most available measures were developed to identify people with prob-
lems that needed medical attention. These have little value with consumers who are men-
tally healthy. As a result, most marketers have turned to lifestyle analysis.
Lifestyle
One of the newer and increasingly important set of factors that is being
used to understand consumer behavior is lifestyle. Lifestyle has been generally defined as the attitudes, interests, and opinions of the potential customer. Such variables as interest in
hunting, attitude toward the role of women in society, and opinion on the importance of
dressing well can be used to better understand the market and its behavior.
It is the multifaceted aspect of lifestyle research that makes it so useful in consumer
analysis. A prominent lifestyle researcher, Joseph T. Plummer, summarizes the concept as
follows:
. .. life style patterns, combines the virtues oj demographics with the richness and
dimensionality ojpsychological characteristics. ... Life style is used to segment the marketplace because it provides the broad, everyday view oj consumers life style segmentation and can generate identifiable whole persons rather than isolatedjragments. 8
A useful application of the lifestyle concept rela tes to consumer's shopping orienta-
tion. Different customers approach shopping in very different ways. They have different attitudes and opinions about shopping and different levels of interest in shopping. Once people know their alternatives, how do they evaluate and choose among them? In particular,
how do people choose among brands of a product? Current description of this process empha-
sizes the role of attitudes. An attitude is an opinion of a person, idea, place, or thing. Attitudes range based on a continuum from very negative to very positive. Traditionally, an attitude is broken down into three components : cognitive, affective, and behavioral. That is, an attitude is first what we know/believe, followed by what we feel, and ending with an action.
Thus, we have learned that a particular company has been polluting a local river; we feel
very strongly that business shouldn't do this and feel very angry; and we boycott the prod-
uct
by that company.
A great deal of marketing strategy is based on the idea that the cognitive, affective,
and behavioral components of an attitude tend to be consistent. Thus, if it is possible to
change what people believe about Yamaha CD players, their feelings and their actions may
eventually change as well . However, this relationship among the three components of an
attitude seems to be situation- or even product-specific . For example, attitudes tend to pre-
dict behavior better in high-involvement decisions. Thus, if someone has a strong attitude
about wearing stylish clothes, then it is possi ble to predict that the person will restrict purchases to a particular set of brands. Furthermore, we do not react to products in isolation.
The situation, or our attitude toward the situation, plays an important role in how well atti-
tudes predict behavior. For example, assume that a consumer likes pizza
doesn ' t like
Pizza Inn pizza. In a social setting where everyone wants to go to Pizza Inn for pizza, this
person might eat this brand rather than not have pizza at all.
Despite limitations on the predictive power of attitudes, attitudes can help us
understand how choices are made. However, we need to carefully assess the validity of the
attitude-behavior relationships for each situation and product.
ORGANIZATIONAL BUYER BEHAVIOR
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MARKETING CAPSULE
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0
1. The following factors influence consumer behavior:
3. Reference groups
a. Situational influences
4. Family
1. The buyer task: high-involvement vs. low-
c. Internal influences
involvement
1. Learning and socialization
2. Market offerings
2. Motivation
3. Demographics
3. Personality
b. External influences
4. Lifestyle
1. Culture
5. Attitudes
2. Social class
Given the hypothesis that attitudes influence buying behavior, how can a company
bring its products and consumers' attitudes into a consistent state; that is, into a situation
where consumers evaluate a given product or brand as satisfying their need? Marketers have
two choices: either they can change consumers' attitudes to be consistent with their prod-
uct, or they can change the product to match attitudes. It is easier to change the product
than to change consumers' attitudes. Nevertheless, attitudes can sometimes be modified .
Modifying attitudes might be the only reasonable choice, as when a firm is introducing a
truly new product or an unusual new use for an existing one. Marketers should neverthe-
less face the fact that it is extremely difficult to change consumers' attitudes. If there is to be change, it is most likely to occur when people are open-minded in their beliefs or when
an existing attitude is of weak intensity; that is, when there is little information to support
the attitude or very little ego involvement on the individual 's part. The stronger a person's
loyalty to a certain brand, for example, the more difficult it is to change that attitude.
ORGANIZATIONAL BUYER BEHAVIOR
Those who supply goods and services to consumer markets are themselves in need of
goods and services to lUn their business. These organizations-producers, resellers, and
government-make
vast marketing organizations that buy a large variety of products,
including equipment, raw material, and labor and other services. Some organizations sell
to other organizations and never come into contact with consumer buyers.
Despite the importance of organizational markets, far less research has been conducted
on factors that influence their behavior than on factors that influence consumers . However,
we can identify characteristics that distinguish organizational buying from consumer buy-
ing and typical steps in the organizational buying process.
Characteristics of Organizational Buying
Many elements of the sociocultural environment discussed earlier influence organizational
as well as
buying, but some additional forces are salient only in the organiza-
tional setting. In particular, each organization has its own business philosophy that guides
its actions in resolving conflicts, handling uncertainty and risk, searching for solutions, and
adapting to change. For example, Peabody Coal, which is palt of a declining industry, relies
on a conservative purchase strategy in an attempt to maintain their status quo.
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