Marketing: Values, Beliefs and Attitudes

Learning:

Behavioral learning: The process of developing automatic responses to a type of situation built up through repeated exposure to it. Marketers use: Stimulus generalization: Using the same brand name to launch new products is a common application. Stimulus discrimination: Ability to perceive differences among similar products.

Cognitive learning: Involves making connections between two or more ideas or simply observing the outcomes of others’ behaviors and adjusting your own accordingly. Marketers use to link a brand to an idea. Advil and headache remedy

Brand loyalty: Favorable attitude toward and consistent purchases of a single brand over time.

Values, beliefs and attitudes

Attitude: Tendency (learned) to respond to something in a consistently favorable or unfavorable way. Our attitude is shaped by our values and beliefs.

Beliefs: Consumers perceptions of how a product or brand performs.

Marketers attempt to change a consumer’s attitude toward products/brands:

• Changing beliefs about the extent to which a brand has certain attributes. Ex: Aspirin use causes an upset stomach, so they promoted the gentleness of its extra-strength aspirin.
• Changing the perceived importance of attributes. Ex: Pepsi changed the freshness look by adding dates on its cans.
• Adding new attributes to the product. Ex: Colgate added a new antibacterial ingredient.

Lifestyle: Lifestyle is a way of living that is identified by how people spend their time and resources (activities), what they consider important in their environment (interests) and what they think of themselves and the world around them (opinion).

Personal influence: A consumers purchases are often influenced by the views, opinions, or behaviors of others.

Opinion leaders: Individuals who have social influence over others.

Word of mouth: People influencing each other in personal conversations. One of the most powerful information sources for consumers because it involves friends or family who are viewed trustworthy. Buss marketing: refers to a brand becoming popular as a result of people talking about it to friends and neighbors. Some agencies are hired to create this buzz marketing.

Reference groups: People to whom an individual looks as a basis for self-appraisal or as a source of personal standards. For example: you might consider your family or the other students in your school as a reference group. They have importance on luxuries but not necessities. 3 main reference groups:

–          Membership group: One to which a person belongs, including fraternities, social clubs. Such groups are targeted by firms selling insurance, vacation packages etc.

–          Aspiration group: One that a person wishes to be a member of or wishes to be identified with, such as a professional society. Examples are spokespeople.

–          Dissociative group: One that a person wishes to maintain a distance from because of differences in values or behaviors.

Family influence: Rely from 3 sources, consumer socialization, passage through the family life cycle, and decision making with the family or household.

–          Consumer socialization: Process by which people acquire the skills, knowledge, and attitudes necessary to function as consumers.

–          Family life cycle: A family’s progression from formation to retirement, with each phase bringing distinct needs and purchasing behaviors.

–          Family decision making: There are two different possibilities, spouse dominance or join decision-making style. Spouse dominant either the husband or wife makes the decision. With joint decision-making, both take part.

Culture and subculture:

Culture: A set of values, ideas and attitudes that are learned and shared among the members of a group.

Subculture: Subgroups within a larger culture that have unique values, ideas and attitudes. Ex: French Canadian, Chinese Canadian.

Global cultural diversity:

Cross-cultural analysis: Study of similarities and differences among consumers in two or more societies.

Values: Socially preferable modes of conduct or states of existence that tend to persist over time.

Customs: Norms and expectations about the way people do things in a specific country or culture.

Cultural symbols: Objects, ideas, or processes that represent a particular group of people or society.

Back translation: Retranslating a word or phrase back into the original language by a different interpreter to catch errors.