Cosumer Behavior

SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR (KAREN A. BLOTNICKY)
The study of individuals, groups, or organizations and the processes they use to select, secure, use, and dispose of products, services, experiences, or ideas to satisfy needs and the impacts that these processes have on the consumer and society (Ph. Kotler). Or

Individuals or groups acquiring, using, and disposing of products, services, ideas or experiences, also includes acquisition and use of information. (Michael R. Solomon) Or

How individuals or groups select, purchase, use or dispose of products, services, ideas, or experiences to satisfy their needs and desires. (Nancy J. Rabolt)

The Domain of Consumer Behaviour

WHY STUDY CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR
Consumer behavior is exciting and fun.
Businesses stay in business by attracting and retaining customers.
As the global reach of businesses expands, the job of attracting and retaining customers grows ever more challenging.
Even if you don’t go into business, understanding consumer behavior is likely to be an important tool in your job.
A consumer behavior course can make you better informed and prepared to exercise control over your own consumer behavior.
Studying consumer behavior is also important from a personal perspective.
You will be better informed and prepared to exercise more effective control over your own consumer behavior in the marketplace.
Marketers need to understand the role of consumption activities in the daily lives of consumers.
They need to have a broadened understanding of consumption.
Important to learn about customer needs and wants in B2B settings. o Low cost o High quality o Prompt delivery time o Inventory management o Profit maximization
Making sense of consumer behavior is important in a number of professions.

CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR (EXTERNAL ELEMENTS)
 Purchase situation/ Post-purchase satisfaction
 Group influences – reference group, conformity
 Family decision making
 Income/ social class
 Canadian identity and subcultures
 Age subcultures
 Culture
 Diffusion of Culture

CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR (INTERNAL ELEMENTS)
 Perception
 Learning and memory
 Motivation / Involvement/ values
 Self- Self concept, roles, image
 Personality and Lifestyle
 Attitudes
 Attitude change
 Decision making

MAIN PERSPECTIVES OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

• Anthropology
The study of people within and across cultures, Emphasis on cross-cultural differences, Questioning of assumptions within own culture

• Economical
Basic economic issues o Supply and demand o Rational decision making o Perfect information
Emphasis on predicting behavior, Complications in real life, Behavioral economics—e.g., “mental accounting”

• Historical and geographical
Origins of behavior, perspectives, and traditions
Impact of geography on individuals o Isolation o Language development o Climate
Geographic determinism

• Psychological o Personality o Personal development o Cognition (thinking), perception o Attention and its limitations o “Learning”—e.g., acquired tastes

• Sociological
Cultural and interpersonal influences on consumption—e.g. o Fads, fashions o Diffusion of innovation o Popular culture o Myths and rituals

Personal influence o Opinion Leadership o Word of Mouth

Reference groups
• The family o Consumer Socialization o Family Life Cycle o Family Decision Making

Social class

SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
The sociological perspective recognizes the manifestation of a social process or discourse, rather than the definer of a specific concept. (gray southon and ross tod). Basically it defines the concept that how people hold conversation about purchased products and the products to be purchased.
Sociological perspective has many influence tactics including norms of reciprocity, altercasting, and scarcity, interpersonal influence, persuasion, power, advertising, mass media effects, persuasion in democracy, propaganda, comparative influence, compliance, minority influence, influence in groups, cultic influence, social movements, social contagions, rumors, resistance to influence, influence across cultures(taylor and fracis)
Also deals with other persons present who could have an impact on the individual consumer's behavior; the effects of other people on a consumer in a consumer activity.
The analysis of scientific references shows that consumer behaviour is a continuous process including actions of an individual ranging from appearance of a problem, which can be solved through acquisition of particular goods to reaction in regard of already purchased goods
(Rasa Glinskienë, Auðra Skrudupaitë)

EXAMPLES
You are in a store looking at personal hygiene products. An attractive classmate of the opposite gender sees you and stops to chat. Would this encounter affect what brand you choose? Would you delay the purchase?
You are walking through the mall and something in the lingerie store looks interesting. Would you stop to further investigate if you are with your best friend? If you are with your mother?

CULTURE AND SUBCULTURE INFLUENCE
Culture: The values, beliefs, customs, and tastes valued by a group of
People
Subcultures: A group within a society whose members share a distinctive. Or
A subculture is a group coexisting with other groups in a larger culture whose members share a distinctive set of beliefs or characteristics set of beliefs, characteristics, or common experiences.

1). Racial groups
2). Ethnic groups

MULTICULTURAL MARKETING:
The practice of recognizing and targeting the distinctive needs and wants of one or more ethnic subcultures.

PARTS OF CULTURE
Culture: norms, roles, beliefs, values, customs, rituals, artifacts
Culture classifies things into discontinuous units of value in society
Codes classified units, develops behaviors, specifies priorities, legitimizes and justifies the classifications
Consumer socialization - the process by which people develop their values, motivations, and habitual activity
Culture creates meanings for everyday products
We study how the use and/or collections of products and their meanings move through a society

NATURE OF CULTURE—COMPONENTS
Norms: rules that designate forms of acceptable and unacceptable behavior
Customs: behaviors that lasted over time and passed down in the family setting
Mores: moral standards of behavior
Conventions: practices tied to the conduct of everyday life in various settings
Ethnocentrism: the tendency to view one’s own culture as better or superior to others

ELEMENT OF FASHION (Michael Solomon)
It's been said that clothes make the man, but what makes a man or a woman pick certain styles of clothing?
Fashion is a driving force that shapes the way we live - it influences apparel, hairstyles, art, food, cosmetics, cars, music, toys, furniture, and many other aspects of our daily lives that we often take for granted. Fashion is a major component of popular culture - one that is ever-changing. With a solid base in social science
Consumer Behaviour: In Fashion" provides a comprehensive analysis of today's fashion consumer (Solomon, Michael R. ;Rabolt, Nancy J)

DIFFUSION OF INNOVATON (Lars perner)
The diffusion of innovation refers to the tendency of new products, practices, or ideas to spread among people. Usually, when new products or ideas come about, they are only adopted by a small group of people initially; later, many innovations spread to other people.
ATM cards spread relatively quickly. Since the cards were used in public, others who did not yet hold the cards could see how convenient they were.
Accepting credit cards was not a particularly attractive option for retailers until they were carried by a large enough number of consumers. Consumers, in contrast, were not particularly interested in cards that were not accepted by a large number of retailers. Thus, it was necessary to "jump start" the process, signing up large corporate accounts, under favorable terms, early in the cycle, after which the cards became worthwhile for retailers to accept.
Innovations come in different degrees.
A continuous innovation includes slight improvements over time.
A dynamically continuous innovation involves some change in technology, although the product is used much the same way that its predecessors were used
A discontinous innovation involves a product that fundamentally changes the way that things are done
Several factors influence the speed with which an innovation spreads. One issue is relative advantage (i.e., the ratio of risk or cost to benefits). Some products, such as cellular phones, fax machines, and ATM cards, have a strong relative advantage. Other products, such as automobile satellite navigation systems, entail some advantages, but the cost ratio is high. Lower priced products often spread more quickly, and the extent to which the product is trialable (farmers did not have to plant all their land with hybrid corn at once, while one usually has to buy a cellular phone to try it out) influence the speed of diffusion. Finally, the extent of switching difficulties influences speed—many offices were slow to adopt computers because users had to learn how to use them.
Some cultures tend to adopt new products more quickly than others, based on several factors:
Modernity: The extent to which the culture is receptive to new things. In some countries, such as Britain and Saudi Arabia, tradition is greatly valued—thus, new products often don’t fare too well. The United States, in contrast, tends to value progress.
Homophily: The more similar to each other that members of a culture are, the more likely an innovation is to spread—people are more likely to imitate similar than different models. The two most rapidly adopting countries in the World are the U.S. and Japan. While the U.S. interestingly scores very low, Japan scores high.
Physical distance: The greater the distance between people, the less likely innovation is to spread.
Opinion leadership: The more opinion leaders are valued and respected, the more likely an innovation is to spread. The style of opinion leaders moderates this influence, however. In less innovative countries, opinion leaders tend to be more conservative, i.e., to reflect the local norms of resistance.

MYTHS (Ana oliveira)
Every society has it good and evil and its good luck and bad luck
Binary opposition
Mono myth

Rituals
Is a set of symbolic behaviour that occurs in a fixed sequence and tend to be repeated periodically.
Turning conceptions into ritual events may be highly profitable
Many businesses owe their livelihood to their ability to supply ritual artifacts, or items used in performance of rituals.
Grooming
Gift giving ritual
• Gestation: the giver is motivated by an event to buy a gift.
• Structural: prescribed by the culture
• Emergent: decision is more personal
• Presentation: recipient responds to gift and donor evaluated the response
• Reformative: bonds b/w parties are adjusted
Self giving
Holydays
Rites of message

KEY POINTS ABOUT CULTURE
It is learned: transmitted from generation to generation
It rewards acceptable behaviors
It stays the same, yet can change
Family, Religion, School and Peers: what is the relative influence of each?
Values Transfusion Model shows how these combine
Will any become more, less relevant?
Consumer socialization: the acquisition of consumption-related cognitions, attitudes, and behaviors.

CULTURAL GENERALIZATIONS
Culture is pervasive
It’s in most every corner of people’s lives
High-context style—it is where the communication has most of the information in either the physical way it’s presented or the person receiving it already knows the meaning
Low-context style—the knowledge of the ins and outs of the society is not as widespread
Culture is functional

THE “LANGUAGES” OF CULTURE
Colors
Color choice that signifies death varies across regions of the world
The color red
Bright colors
Colors and fashion
Self-time, interaction time, institutional time
Space
What is the acceptable personal space across cultures?
Distance
Gestures, postures, or body positions
Symbols—signifiers
Friendship and agreements
Government and Laws

DIFFERENT DIMENSIONS OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR
RELATING WITH CULTURE (By Hofesade)
Power distance
Uncertainty avoidance
Individualism-collectivism
Masculinity-femininity
Long l term/short l term orientation to life

Culture represents the behavior, beliefs and, in many cases, the way we act learned by interacting or observing other members of society. In this way much of what we do is shared behavior, passed along from one member of society to another. Yet culture is a broad concept that, while of interest to marketers, is not nearly as important as understanding what occurs within smaller groups or sub-cultures to which we may also belong. Sub-cultures also have shared values but this occurs within a smaller groups. For instance, sub-cultures exist where groups share similar values in terms of ethnicity, religious beliefs, geographic location, special interests and many others.
Culture refers to the set of values, ideas and attitudes that are accepted by a homogeneous group of people and transmitted to the next generation
Subcultures - groups within the larger, or national, culture with unique values, ideas, and attitudes.
Three largest racial/ethnic subcultures in the U.S
Hispanics
African
Americans
Asians
Each of these groups exhibits sophisticated social and cultural behaviors that affect their buying patterns.
1. African-American Buying Patterns
• African-Americans have the largest spending power of the three subcultures.
• While price conscious, they are motivated by product quality and choice.
• Respond to products and advertising that appeal to their African-American pride and heritage as well as address their ethnic features and needs.
2. Hispanic Buying Patterns
• Hispanics represent the largest subculture.
• About 50% are immigrants
• The majority are under the age of 25.
• Marketing to Hispanics has proven to be a challenge because o The diversity of this subculture o The language barrier.
• Sensitivity to the unique needs of Hispanics by firms has paid huge dividends.
3. Asian Buying Patterns
• The Asian is the fastest growing subculture
• About 70% of Asians are immigrants
• Most are under the age of 30.
• Asians represent a diverse subculture, including Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Koreans, Asian-Indians, people from Southeast Asia, and Pacific Islanders
• Two groups of Asian-Americans have been identified o Assimilated Asians are
• conversant in English
• highly educated
• exhibit buying patterns very much like "typical" American consumers o Nonassimilated Asians
• recent immigrants who cling to their native languages and customs

BRAND CULTURES
Within this research focus we apply a constructivist, postmodern view of brands which may constitute cultures with varying degrees of coherence. Brand cultures are social contexts within which brand objects, symbols, norms and specific rules of exchange, rites and rituals, beliefs, ethos, ideologies, culture specific language, and patterns of behaviour are socially co-created as constituent parts of a specific brand. The brand culture is co-created through ongoing social discourse and action and can be experienced at various touch points in ‘brandscapes’. Brand cultures have a history; they exist across formal boundaries of organizations and may evolve across ethnic cultures.
Within the outlined view we particularly investigate current brand cultures with members from various ethnic, organizational, and functional cultural environments. We want to understand
1. The ongoing development of their meaning systems, their principles of exchange and gift-giving, as well as their formation and decline;
2. The development of subcultures, their potential conflicts, friction-free coexistence, or mutual reinforcement;
3. The reasons for their members to participate in the creation and production of new products, activities, symbols, norms or artifacts;
4. The emancipatory political facets of brand cultures, which may lead to sharp distinctions between in-group and out-groups, to oppositional brand loyalty or resistance phenomena.

Brand communities

A specialized, non-geographically bound community, based on a structured set of social admirers of a brand or
A brand community is a network of real or virtual social interrelationships among individuals, who have developed emotional bonds among each other.

A brand may be conceived as consisting of three closely interrelated elements: (1) individuals, groups of people, and organizations interested in the brand, (2) the meanings of the brand and (3) brand object(s) or brand manifestations (which can also be subjects, issues or activities).

1. Brand interest groups

Individuals, groups and organizations more or less intensively communicating in a brand related direct and indirect, verbal and non-verbal, real or virtual manner may be called a brand interest group. Members of such a brand interest group may be, for example, a supplier of a product or service, who communicates about its offer, the staff of this supplier, intermediaries and their staff, consumers and sympathizers of the offer, consumers and sympathizers of competitive offers, or journalists. Each of the members of a brand interest group contributes her/his knowledge, expectations, and evaluations to an ongoing social discourse in the broadest sense (including direct or indirect observation of relevant others´ actions) from which brand meanings continually emerge (Schouten and McAlexander, 1995). How intensively individuals participate in the ongoing discourse depends on the relevance of the brand to them.
People with very high brand involvement may form an inner circle, also called a brand community. A brand community is a network of real or virtual social interrelationships among individuals, who have developed emotional bonds among each other (Muniz and O´Guinn, 2001).

2. Brand meaning

Brand meanings are a dynamic collective knowledge and evaluation system continually emerging from a communicative interaction process among the members of a brand interest group. Brand meanings represent the "vision of life", the cultural and social principles of a brand community. But they include more than the elaboration of the brand community. Brand meanings are consensual, but not uniform. The individual cognitive structures of members of a brand interest group have the same essence (=core) independent of context, but specific time and context related cognitions are distributed across members (=periphery). Each member of the brand interest group holds part of the collective knowledge and evaluation system.
These individual parts overlap. Therefore, various subversions of the same knowledge and evaluation system exist in the centre of which the brand object(s) is (is) situated as its physical manifestation (Wagner, 1995).

3. Brand manifestation or objectification

The brand object(s) is (are) the manifestation or objectification of the meanings of a brand. They may include physical objects, but also people or activities. As objectification of brand meanings, brand objects are socially constructed by the members of a brand interest group (Dant, 1999). They continually stimulate the reproduction of the collective knowledge and evaluation system. They may be the object of "consumption", the focus of interest, and at the same time, the simplified visual representation of the brand in terms of a sign. By the use of that sign, a brand community becomes real for all members of a brand interest group (Durkheim, 1994) even if they do not have any actual contact with each other.

CULTURAL INFLUENCES OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR AFTER TSUNAMI (kritika kongomspong) culture is usually linked to a language, an event, and a particular time period, this Study’s research results support its hypotheses that people directly affected by unexpected disasters becomes more collective, less materialistic, and more susceptible to social influences in purchasing decisions than those unaffected. The Study also raises questions for further research such as whether the changes in behavior from the trauma are long-term cultural changes or a transient impact. A re-evaluation at a later date may significance to the findings.

COLLECTIVISM AND INDIVIDUALISM:
Collectivism and individualism refer to the theory that people have a basic set of beliefs deriving from their interaction with others around them. Hofstede (1980, 1991) provided insights on fundamental cultural distinctions that differentiate people from various countries around the world. His collectivism and individualism theory maintains that individualist is the polar opposite of collectivist, and thus has the opposite characteristics from those on the collectivist continuum. The robustness of collectivism/individualism construct has been repeatedly demonstrated by linking with various other constructs related to consumer behavior (Peng & Nisbett, 1999; Kongsompong, 2004).
The Study supports Hofstede’s findings, and developed three hypotheses by integrating collectivism with consumer materialism and social influence. The three hypotheses include: Collectivism and view on uncertainties, Collectivism and consumer’s materialism, and Collectivism and social influence in purchasing decision. Research literature on collectivism and its related constructs were selectively reviewed.

COLLECTIVISM AND VIEW ON UNCERTAINTIES:
The Collectivism/Individualism concept relates to the theory that people have a basic set of belief stemming from their interaction with others around them (Triandis et al., 1988). Collectivism is positively correlated with the uncertainty avoidance (Hofstede, 1980), thus collectivists are more likely to avoid uncertainties to evade events that may have an adverse impact on their harmonious way of life. In an unpredictable environment, collectivists become more interdependent with their in-groups (family, tribe, nation, etc.), give priority to the goals of their in-groups, shape their behavior primarily on the basis of in-group norms, and behave in a communal way (Mills & Clark, 1982). To cope with negative events, individualists are likely to have greater positive self-esteem (Heine et al., 1999) and are more optimistic (Lee et al., 1999) than collectivists.

COLLECTIVISM AND CONSUMER’S MATERIALISM:
Hofstede (1983) proposes that collectivists place collective goals above personal goals while individualists refers to self as a set of internal attributes including motivation, traits, and values, for personal needs. Richins and Dawson (1992) developed the material values scale (MVS) to measure materialism in consumers.
Materialism was factored as a value that influences the way people interprets their environment and structures their lives. MVS ascribed materialism as the ownership and acquisition of material goods in achieving major life goals or desired states. The success of these acquisitions would lead to believed happiness and life satisfaction.

COLLECTIVISM AND SOCIAL INFLUENCE IN PURCHASING DECISION:
Collectivism and individualism have been identified as orientations taken with respect to a person’s or group’s relationship to others (Hofstede, 1980; Triandis, 1984, 1995), and many researchers have compared and consistently reported significant differences between in-group and out-group behaviors in collectivist cultures and individualist cultures (e.g., Gudykunst et al., 1987; Leung & Bond, 1984). Social behavior serves as a function of in-group norms to a greater extent in collectivist than individualist cultures (Davidson et al., 1976). In regard to purchasing decisions, individualists are more resistant to social influences while collectivists are more attentive and yielding to social cues (Leung & Bond, 1984).

PERSONAL INFLUENCES
Personal influences are very important in consumer behaviour.

OPINION LEADERS (Michael Jordon)
Individuals who exert direct or indirect social influence over others or
A person who is frequently able to influence others’ attitudes or behaviors by virtue of his or her active interest and expertise in one or more product categories.
Marketers try to attract opinion leaders...they actually use (pay) spokespeople to market their products.

WORD OF MOUTH
People influencing each other during face-to-face conversations
Power of word of mouth has been magnified by the Internet and e-mail

FACTORS ENCOURAGING WOM
Involvement
Knowledge
Concern for someone else
To reduce uncertainty

NEGATIVE WOM
Rumors
Boycotts

REFERENCE GROUPS
An actual or imaginary individual or group conceived of having significant relevance upon an individual’s evaluations, aspirations, or behavior (J.P. Peter and J.C. Olson) or
Reference groups are people to whom an individual looks as a basis for self-appraisal or as a source of personal standards. Reference groups have an important influence on the purchase of luxury products but not of necessities
Any external influence that provides social cues small reference groups establish norms that influence purchase decisions, and their word-of-mouth is considered to be more powerful than advertising and other commercial forces
Families, friends, sororities, civic and professional organizations
Any group that has a positive or negative influence on a person’s attitude and behavior
Three groups have clear marketing implications (louise ripley)

PRIMARY VS SECONDARY
Primary reference groups involve face-to-face
Interaction, secondary ones not

FORMAL VS INFORMAL
Formal reference groups have clearly defined
Structure, informal ones not

MEMBERSHIP GROUP
One to which a person actually belongs

ASPIRATION GROUP
One with which a person wishes to be identified

DISSOCIATIVE GROUP
One from which a person wants to maintain a distance because of differences in values or behaviors

REFERENCE GROUP INFLUENCE
• Informational: seek advice from other members, imitate their choices
• Utilitarian: psychosocial rewards and punishments for adherence to and violations of reference group code
• Value-expressive: create cultural meanings

THE POWER OF REFERENCE GROUP
Sadly, people will often do things in groups that they'd never do alone, think about lynching

TYPES OF POWER
Referent
Information
Legitimate
Expert
Reward
Coercive

NORMATIVE INFLUENCE
A consumer fulfills other’s expectations to gain a direct reward or to avoid a sanction. It’s a social pressure designed to encourage conformity to the expectations

INFORMATIONAL INFLUENCE
A consumer uses the values, norms, and behaviors of others as credible and needed evidence about reality. It offers information that helps decision making. (e.g., opinion leaders = expertise, credibility, innovation, confidence)

When are RG most influential? (Moderating variables)
Product characteristics:
• Simple vs. Complex
• Abstract vs. Concrete
• Necessity vs. Luxury
• Expensive vs. Cheap
Consumption characteristics:
• Public vs. Private consumption
Individual characteristics:
• Personality traits: need for uniqueness (+ and – correlations)
• Gender
Group characteristics:
• Social power - Unanimity, size, and expertise
• Coercive power - Ability to apply sanctions

VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES
Virtual Communities: collection of consumers whose online interactions are based upon shared enthusiasm for and knowledge of a specific consumption activity.

Types of Virtual Communities (Armstrong and Hagel III 1996):
• Communities of transaction: trade/utilitarian motives
• Communities of interest: informational/utilitarian motives
• Communities of fantasy: hedonic/experiential games
• Communities of relationship: informational/utilitarian + hedonic/affective motives, such as social support

BRAND COMMUNITIES
Brand community: A specialized, non-geographically bound community, based on a structured set of social admirers of a brand (e.g., Harley Davidson, Jeep, Macintosh, Saab).

Community (from a sociological perspective):
• Consciousness of Kind: intrinsic connection that members feel toward one another, and the collective sense of difference from others not in the community.
• Rituals and Traditions: Social practices which seek to celebrate certain behavioral norms and values. The inculcation of history, for instance, keeps the community vital.
• Moral Responsibility: sense of duty or obligation to the community as a whole.
The degree to which a reference group will affect a purchase decision depends on an individual’s susceptibility to reference group influence and the strength of his/her involvement with the group FAMILY INFLUENCES
Family Household – at least two people who are related by blood or marriage (Census Bureau).

CONSUMER SOCIALIZATION
Consumer socialization is the process by which people acquire the skills, knowledge, and attitudes necessary to function as consumers

FAMILY LIFE CYCLE
The distinct phases that a family progresses through from formation to retirement
Each phase bringing with it identifiable purchasing behaviors
• Young singles
• Young married without children
• Young married with children
• The older married
• Older unmarried

FAMILY LIFE CYCLE (Michael Jackson)
• Families go through stages; each stage creates different consumer demands
• Bachelor stage
• Newly married, young, no children
• Full nest I, youngest child under 6
• Full nest II, youngest child 6 or over
• Full nest III, older married couples with dependant children
• Empty nest I, older married couples with no children living with them, head in labor force
• Empty nest II, older married couples, no children living at home, head retired
• Solitary survivor, in labor force
• Solitary survivor, retired
Modernized life cycle includes divorced and no children

MODERN FAMILY LIFE CYCLE (Professor Andrei Strijnev)

FAMILY DECISION MAKING
Autonomic decisions - Wives (still!) - Groceries, children’s toys, clothes, and medicines.
Syncratic decisions - Couple – cars, vacations, homes, appliances, furniture, home electronics, interior design, and long-distance phone services or
Two decision-making styles exist:
• Spouse-dominant (either wife or husband is responsible)
• Joint decision making (most decisions are made by both husband and wife).
Increasingly, preteens and teenagers are assuming these roles for the family, given the prevalence of working parents and single-parent households.

The family forms the system of values and being members of the family we learn how to create the environment of cognition and learning and develop our role in social life. Certain consumer behaviour of the family members develops already in the family. The family being a social unit of the community is important both as a unit of influence on the consumer and as an economic unit. Lately it has been more and more often classified as a separate consumption unit as most of goods is purchased for the whole family and purchasing decisions depend on the influence of other family members.

Five roles of individual family members in the purchase process exist

• Information gatherer
• Influencer
• Decision maker
• Purchaser
• User
• Watcher
The roles, which are played by the family members at a particular time, would also depend on who of the spouses dominates. The dominance of one family member quite often depends on the type of a particular product (e. g. car, household object).

FAMILY AS A GROUP DECISION MAKING
There is some evidence that decisions made by groups differ from individual decisions. Due to
Diffusion of responsibility: individuals perceive themselves as less accountable (e.g., social loafing)
Risky shift: discussions trigger riskier alternatives
Decision polarization: discussion leads to more extreme choices (either conservative or risky). Whatever the initial direction was, it becomes more polarized.

Family is the most basic group a person belongs to. Marketers must understand:
• that many family decisions are made by the family unit
• consumer behavior starts in the family unit
• family roles and preferences are the model for children's future family (can reject/alter/etc)
• family buying decisions are a mixture of family interactions and individual decision making
• family acts an interpreter of social and cultural values for the individual

FAMILY INFLUENCE TACTICS

Tactic Example

Leave the scene Refuse responsibility in the matter, go away Overt information Make suggestions, ask other to yield, talk About needs/importance/interests Distorted information Suppress or manipulate relevant information Indirect coalition Refer to others, emphasize benefit decision Brought to others Direct coalition Discuss in presence of others, hoping for Their support Trade-offs Engage in “bookkeeping”, remind others of Past favors Integrative bargaining Search for solution that is optimal for all Parties Reason Present objective arguments, argue logically

SOCIAL CLASS INFLUENCES
An open group of individuals who have similar social rank
The relatively permanent, homogeneous divisions in a society into which people sharing similar values, interests, and behavior are grouped.

Status symbols: products that are purchased and displayed to Signal membership in a desirable social class.

Determinants of social class include

• Occupation
• source of income (not level of income)
• education

Social class influences many aspects of our lives

• Upper Americans-upper-upper class, .3%, inherited wealth, aristocratic names
• Lower-upper class, 1.2%, newer social elite, from current professionals and corporate elite
• Upper-middle class, 12.5%, college graduates, managers and professionals
• Middle Americans-middle class, 32%, average pay white collar workers and blue collar friends
• Working class, 38%, average pay blue collar workers
• Lower Americans-lower class, 9%, working, not on welfare
• Lower-lower class, 7%, on welfare

Social class determines to some extent, the types, quality, and quantity of products that a person buys or uses.
Lower class people tend to stay close to home when shopping; do not engage in much prepurchase information gathering.
Stores project definite class images.

MODERN PERSPECTIVE OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

Socio-psychological (Valerie S. Folkes,)
As a social psychologist my main emphasis on the interaction between the individual and the situation, I believe that ours is a unique discipline. It is different not just because of its emphasis on certain stimuli (e.g., advertisements, brands) and behaviors (e.g., repurchase word-of-mouth). If one accepts an interactionist perspective, it is the interaction of the situation and the individual that leads to behavior. The study of consumer behavior is justified as a separate domain of inquiry because when situational cues lead people to perceive themselves as customers, they then interpret the world differently than when they do not perceive themselves as customers, and that influences their behavior.
This is a perspective that is rarely emphasized in our literature. Many consumer behavior studies test general theories of human behavior, implicitly assuming that people respond the same way to stimuli when they have purchase goals as when they have nonpurchase goals. For example, the underlying process involved in attitude change is the same whether a message is about a politician or a product. People make attributional inferences whether it is in regard to product breakdown or romantic rejection. Consumer research that examines such general principles of behavior is valued because it cuts across many domains. In the reviewing process, a broad contribution can be perceived as a “bigger” contribution - and so sized up as a major contribution to the literature. Peter Wright (1986) has suggested that consumer behavior researchers have focused our efforts on understanding basic human phenomenon because, working in a young field, researchers could more easily legitimize their work if it addressed general issues rather than those specific to the marketplace. In his 1986 Presidential Address he urged more research on our unique phenomenon. Terry Shimp’s (1994) Presidential Address urged us to depend less on other disciplines and examine “consumer behavior that occurs within the milieu of actual marketplace phenomena

REFERENCES
 Valerie s. folkers, university of southern California.
 Lars perner , assistant professor, department of marketing, marshell school of business California.
 Andrei strijnev, professor, university of texas at dallas
 Harvey Hartman, Hartman group.inc
 Micheal.R Solomon, human science professor of consumer behaviour in auburn university.
 Rasa glinskiene,kaunas university of technology
 Mcgraw hill and Irwin , the mcgraw hill companies.inc
 Page moren, professor, university of Colorado
 Darron dahi, university of british Colombia
 University of Chicago press release
 Consumer behaviour by philp kotler
 Jagdesh n seth, atul parvattyer emory university
 Karen A .blotnicky (slides) , mount saint ,Vincent university, Halifax,NS
 Kritika kongomspong, sasin graduate institute of business administration of chulalongkorn California.
 Hofstade G, culture consequences, baverly hill California
 www.dogpile.com
 www.msnsearch.com
 www.yahoosearch.com
 www.MBAnet.com
 www.amazon.com
 www.google.com
 www.emeraldinsight.com