WEEK 5 - consumer psychology Flashcards
What is consumer psychology?
- Area of psychology focused on how consumers acquire, consume, and dispose of goods, services (experiences, or ideas).
- Consumers can be individuals or groups including businesses and families.
- Consumers can act on behalf of/ be infl uenced by others
- Considers rational and irrational behaviours, and also the influence of outside forces, trends, and advertising
Some areas of growth in consumer psychology
- Online shopping
- App and gaming consumption
- The child’s infl uence on family consumption
- Minimalism and patterns of disposal
- Hording
- Health and food purchasing
- The COVID-19 Pandemic & behaviours
Cross-over areas (influences on consumer behaviour)
social psychology
economics
marketing
individual factors
marketing
social psychology
health sychology
Micro consumer behaviour (individual focus)
Experimental psychology
Clinical psychology
Microeconomics
Social psychology
Sociology
Macroeconomics
Demography
History
Cultural anthropology
How is consumer psychology related to social psychology?
Consumer Psychology is an application of social
psychology intersecting with the knowledge &
methods of other disciplines. Much of what we will cover today looks at how to apply concepts already familiar to you.
Why should we care? Isn’t consumer psych just about making big business richer?
- Australians owe $130 for every $100 they earn
- The average Australian household wastes about $1300 a year
- Each Australian produces a ton of waste each year
- We are consuming and disposing well beyond our
limits
The consumer as an individual
Motivation
personality
attitudes and; attitude change
What is motivation?
Biological, emotional, social, and cognitive forces that compels individuals to act.
Urge to breech gap created through desire, drive, or need
What is the motivation model?
learning
|
V
need and want –> tension –> drive –> behaviour –> goal fulfilment
^
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cognitive processes
Tension reduction
What are needs?
- Needs or human requirements
- can be physiological (e.g. for food) or acquired/learned in response to culture or environment (e.g., power or learning)
- A need may not be strong enough to motivate an action
- People may be very conscious of a want without having
awareness of the need underlying it
What are wants and Goal Objects
- Wants (goals)– specific preferences for the sought after results of motivated behaviour
- It’s lunch time and you need food….in addition to this, you want sushi
- In marketing, goal will often be to tighten the consumer’s ‘want’ to a particular product.
What is personality?
An enduring combination of behaviour, emotion, motivation, and thought patterns that define an individual
What is the relationship between personality & consumer behaviour
- Situation-specific traits are better predictors of consumer preferences than general personality traits (eg brand selection)
- Consumers seek products/brands that are consistent with their personality due to desire for congruence
- Developing ‘brand personalities’ is one way marketers seek to appeal to groups of consumers
- Archetypes have been developed – these are not specifically linked to the dimensions of ‘personality’ that
we refer to as psychologists
What are attitudes?
Expression of inner feelings that reflect whether a person is favourable or unfavourable of something
Set of emotions, beliefs and behaviours towards people, objects, things events or concepts
What are the core principles of attitudes in consumer psychology
- Learned and have a motivational impact
- Transferrable - eg a conservative approach to dress may predictably transfer to other purchase
- Consistent – relatively consistent over time but not necessarily permanent
- Contextual– eg, while you might hold a generally unfavourable attitude to fast food, you may still purchase it
while on a road trip, or when coming home late and tired from a long work day
Theory of Planned Behaviour
The theory of planned behavior (TPB) is a cognitive theory by Azjen (1985) that proposes that an individual’s decision to engage in a specific behavior, such as gambling or stopping gambling, can be predicated by their intention to engage in that behavior
parts are:
personal attitudes
subjective norms
perceived behavioural control
The consumer in groups
Reference groups – family – culture - identity
How do we make decisions as consumers?
- Routine vs novel decisions
- The context and factors that influence our decisions as
consumers is complicated AND complex - Exploring decision making in full requires it’s own unit (or
degree) - The labour of love
- Money vs free, social and monetary contract
What is the price of ‘Free’ of why do companies give away things for free?
- attract more users.
- Build reliance on the product.
- Also to build trust or a sense of obligation later.
- Generate user data –> e.g. microsoft
The price of zero
People are willing to work for free, and they are
willing to work for a reasonable wage; but off er
them just a small payment and they will walk away
xxxx and DIY impact on consumption
- Value (financial and emotional) of products can increase whXXXen we contribute to the labour – effect
- We must contribute enough to feel like our efforts were meaningful (Cake packets)
- However, this only works if the product is complete. Damaged or incomplete = xxxx eff etc dissipates
- Likely to be most impactful for some item
What is disposal
- Schemes to encourage responsible disposal
- Once a focus on problematic products,
- Now general acceptance that all consumer waste is problematic
- Programs now are part of corporate responsibility + marketing
Consumer behaviour & neuropsychology
Posterior Medial frontal cortex (and Medial orbital
frontal cortex)
PMFC and MOFC: Motivation to approach/avoid
Evaluation of monetary value
Ventromedial pre-frontal cortext – predictive of population level responses to persuasive health advertising (better than advertising experts)
Nacc: processing & pursuit of rewards; Approach avoid process of motivation
- While we are limited in the complex processes that can be accounted for through these studies, it does provide further insight into how we are evaluating and selecting products
