Consumer Behaviour - Impact of Culture

CULTURE :

The study of culture is the study of al aspects of a society. It is the language, knowledge, laws, and customs that give that society its distinctive character and personality. In the context of consumer behaviour, culture is defined as the sume total of learned behaviours, beliefs, values, customs that serve to regulate the consumer behaviour of members of a particular society. 

Beliefs and Values are guiding principles while customs are the usual and accepted norms of behaviour.

The impact of the culture on the society is so natural and so ingrained that its influence on behaviours is rarely noted. It is like fish distinguishing water.

Culture offers orders, direction and guidance to members of society in all phases of human problem solving.

Culture is dynamic and gradually and continually evolves to meet the needs of the society.

Culture is learned as a part of the social experience. Children acquire a set of beliefs, values and customs, which constitutes the culture,from the environment. These beliefs, values and customs are acquired through formal learning, informal learning and technical learning.

Advertising enhances formal learning by reinforcing desired modes of behavior and expectations; it enhances informal learning by providing models for behaviour.

Culture is communicated to members of society througha  common language and through commonly shared symbols. Because the human mind has the ability to absorb and to process symbolic communication, marketers can successfully promote both tangible and intangible products and product concepts to consumers through mass media.

All the elements in the marketing mix serve to communicate symbolically with the audience, Products project an image of their own, so does promotion. Price and Retail outlets symbolically convey masages concerning the quality of the product.

The elements of culture are transmitted by 3 pervasive social institutions; the family, the schols and the church. A fourth social insitution that plays a major role in the transmission of culture is  the mass media, both through editorial content and through advertising.

A wide range of measurement techniques is used to study culture. The range includes Projective Techniques,attitude measurement methods, field observation,participant observaiton, content analysis and value measurement  survey techniques.

What are you Consumer Groups? What are their Cultures?  How are you understanding and leveraging that for your business development and client engagement?

MANAGEMENT INNOVATIONS

managementinnovations2020@gmail.com;  manojonkar@gmail.com; 919375970812

Consumer Learning & Consumer Behaviours

What is Consumer Learning?

Consumer Learning is the process by which individuals acquire the purchase and consumption knowledge and experience they apply to future related behaviour.

Most of the learning is incidental. Some of it is intentional. Basic elements that contribute to an understanding of learning are:

1. Motivation
2. Cues
3. Response
4. Reinforcement

There are 2 theories on how Individuals learn:

1. Behavioural Theory
2. Cognitive Theory

Both contribute to an understanding of consumer behaviour.

Behavioural Theorists view learning as observable responses to stimuli, whereas Cognitive Theorists believe that learning is a function of mental processing.

3 Major Behavioural Learning Theories are :

1. Classical Conditioning : Includes Repetition, Stimulus generalization and Stimulus discrimination.
2. Instrumental Conditioning: Instrumental Learning theorists believe that learning occurs through a trial and error process in which the positive outcomes in the form of results or desired outcomes lead to repeat behaviour like Repeat Purchase or Repeat Postive Word of Mouth.               Both positive and negative reinforcement can be used to encourage the desired behaviour. The timing of repetitions influences how long the learned material is retained. Learning usually persists longer with distributed re-inforcement schedule, while mass repetitions produce more initial learnings.
3. Observational Conditioning or Vicarious Learning:

Cognitive learning theory holds that the kind of learning most characteristics of humans is PROBLEM SOLVING. Cognitive theorists are concerned with how information is processes by the human mind: how it is stored, retained, and retrieved.

Involvement theory proposes that people engage in limited information processing in situations of low relevance to them and people engage in extensive information processing in situations of high relevance.

TV is a low involvement medium for learning and print and interactive media encourage more cognitive information processing.

Measures of consumer learning include recall and recognition tests, cognitive responses to advertising, and attitudinal and behavioural measures of brand loyalty.

A basic issue among researchers is whether to define brand loyalty in terms of consumer's behaviours or the consumer's attitude towards the brand. Brand Equity refers to the inherent value a brand name has in the marketplace.

Brand Loyalty consists of both attitudes and actual behaviours toward a brand and both must be measured. For marketers, the major reasons for understanding how consumers learn are to teach them that their brand is best and to develop brand loyalty.

What does your brand mean to your customers? Are they really loyal to your brand? How do you increase their loyalty?

MANAGEMENT INNOVATIONS

managementinnovations2020@gmail.com; manojonkar@gmail.com; 919375970812