Buyer BehaviourSituational Influences and Perception

Dr Brian Monger

Copyright February 2014. This Power Point program and the associated documents remain the intellectual property and the copyright of the author and of The Marketing Association of Australia and New Zealand Inc. These notes may be used only for personal study associated with in the above referenced course and not in any

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Dr. Brian Monger

• Brian Monger is the CEO of MAANZ International and a Professional marketer and consultant with over 40 years

experience.• He is highly active on social media – including Linked In, where he owns, manages and moderates groups with about

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Situational Influences in Buyer Choice

• The purchase decision and the consumption process always occur in the context of a specific situation.

• Therefore, before examining the decision making process in any depth it is important to develop an understanding of

situations.

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Situational Influences

• Marketing managers should view marketing activities designed to affect and influence a buyer in light of the

situations that buyer faces.

• A buyer situation is a set of factors outside of, and removed from, the individual buyer, as well as being removed from the

characteristics or attributes of the product.

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Continuums of Influences

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Situational Influences

• Types of situational influence

• Nature of situational influence

• Dimensions of the situation

• Physical

• Social

• Time (temporal)

• Task definition

• Antecedent

• Ritual Situations7

Physical Surroundings

• For the purpose of helping to explain buyer behaviour, situations have been classified into a scheme of five

objectively measured variables.

• Physical surroundings include geographical and institutional location, decor, sound, aromas, lighting, weather and displays

of merchandise or other material surrounding the product.

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Examples of Physical Surrounds

• Store location

• Interior decor

• Music

• Smell/aromas

• Temperature (air-conditioning or heating)

• Choice provided (by product category or across the categories)

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Examples of Physical Surrounds

• Store location

• Interior decor

• Music

• Smell/aromas

• Temperature (air-conditioning or heating)

• Choice provided (by product category or across the categories)

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Social Surroundings

• The concept of social surroundings relates to the presence of other people who could have an impact on the individual

buyer's behaviour.

• Our actions are frequently influenced, if not altogether determined, by those around us.

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Examples of Social Surroundings

• Types of customers in the store

• Queues and crowding

• Whether the consumer is likely to be known by others/recognised

• Whether there are high-profile people/celebrities shopping at that store

• Whether the product will be consumed privately or in the presence of others

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Temporal perspectives

• Temporal perspectives deal with the effect of time on buyer behaviour. This dimension of a situation may be specified in units ranging from time of day to seasons of the year. Time

may also be measured relative to some past or future event.

• This includes concepts such as time since last purchase, time since or until meals or payday, and time constraints imposed

by commitments.

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Examples of Temporal Influences

• Whether the product is seasonal

• Whether the product is urgently required (snack between lectures)

• Time available for shopping limited/excess (the product may be an excuse for shopping)

• How long the previous product lasted or was expected to last

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Task Definition

• Task definition reflects the purpose or reason for engaging in the consumption behaviour. The task may reflect different

buyer and user roles anticipated by the individual. For example, a person shopping for glassware for a wedding

present is in a different situation than he or she would be if the glassware were for personal use.

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Examples of Task Definition

• Is the product utilitarian or used as a status symbol?

• Is it a gift or for oneself?

• Must the product be long-lasting/tough? (e.g. an everyday watch)

or decorative? (e.g. a dress watch)

• Is the product intended for several uses? (e.g. a family computer for study and internet access)

• Note: Many of these definitions exist on a continuum and/or they may not be exclusively one or the other

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Antecedent states

• Antecedent states are features of the individual that are not lasting or relatively enduring characteristics. They are

momentary moods or conditions. Momentary moods are such things as temporary states of depression or high excitement, which all people experience. Momentary conditions are such

things as being tired, ill, having a great deal of money (or none at all) and so forth.

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Ritual Situations

• A ritual situation can be described as a set of interrelated behaviours that occur in a structured format, which have

symbolic meaning, and that occur in response to socially-defined occasions

• Important to marketers as they define consumption, e.g. anniversaries, seasonal gifts

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Direct Impact

• Situational influences may have a very direct impact of their own, but they also interact with product and individual

characteristics to influence behaviour.

• In some cases, the situation will have no influence, because the individual’s characteristics or choices are so intense that

they override everything else.

• But the situation is always potentially important and therefore is of concern to marketing managers.

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Situational Influences and Marketing Strategy

• Developing a situational influence matrix

• Positioning the product based on situation

• Segmenting the market based on usage situation• alone

• in combination with other segmentation variable• person/situation segmentation

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Situational Influence Matrix

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Usage Situations and Product Positioning

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Other Situation Types

• Communication situation

• Purchase situation

• Usage situation

• Disposal situation

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The Communication Situation

• The situation in which buyers receive information has an impact on their behaviour.

• We all know that the degree to which we see and listen to marketing communications is determined by whether we are

alone or in a group, in a good mood or a bad one, in a hurry or not, and so on.

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The Purchase Situation

• As we have already seen, the purchase situation can also affect product selection.

• A buyer-for example, a student trying to make a purchase between classes-has a shortage of time, this can affect the

store chosen, the number of brands considered, and the price the buyer is willing to pay.

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Usage Situation Examples

• Is the product used in conjunction with other people?• Is the product used in conjunction with other products?

• Is the product used only occasionally or a lot?• Are other similar (alternative) products also available to the

user at the same time?• Does use require a high level of skills/learning?

• Is the product used many times before disposal?• Has the product been used before.

• Does the product require additional preparation?• Does the product require regular complex maintenance

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Disposal Situation

• How will the old product be disposed of?

• Consider that it is not only the physical disposal of the old Product that needs to be considered.

• The old product may be linked to other products or processes.

• The old product may have significant learning and experience factors that will need to be changed.

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Situation and Classification of Products

• Situation and the type of product interact.

• Situational influences will vary with different product types and vice versa

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Convenience Goods

Preference Goods

Specialty GoodsShopping Goods

High Clarity

High SpecificSelf-Confidence

Mental effeort during Shopping viaBrand Comparisons

Low ClarityLow Specific Self-ConfidenceMental Effort prior to Shopping viaInformation Seeking

Low MagnitudeLow Ego InvolvementLow Physical Shopping Effort

High MagnitudeHigh Ego InvolvementHigh Physical Shopping Effort

Perception

What is Perception?

Perception is “how we see the world around us.”

“Perception is the process by which an individual selects, organises and interprets stimuli into a meaningful and coherent picture of

the world.” Schiffman et al 2001, p. 148

“Perception is a process through which individuals are exposed to information, attend to the information, and comprehend the

information” J. C. Mowen 1995, p. 73

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The Customer as Perceiver

• Perception – The process by which an individual selects, organises and

interprets information received from the environment• Sensation

– attending to an object/event with one of five senses• Organisation

– categorising by matching sensed stimulus with similar object in memory, e.g. colour

• Interpretation– attaching meaning to stimulus, making judgements as to

value and liking, e.g. bitter taste

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Individual Differences in Perception

Two people may be exposed to the same stimuli under apparently the same conditions, but they may

• Select

• Organise and

• Interpret

these stimuli in quite different ways, depending on their own needs, values and expectations

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We Perceive The Environment as Follows:

Us

The outside world:

external stimuli

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Perception

SENSATION (EXPOSURE) - occurs when a stimulus comes within our reach. (sensory receptors).

May be random or deliberate.

– Sensory Receptors: eyes, ears, nose, mouth, skin etc.

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Perception

• Sensitivity to stimuli varies by:

• the quality of the individual’s sensory receptors

• the amount or the intensity of the stimuli

• the interest in the stimuli

• its ability to catch attention

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The Way We Perceive Things Is Related To:

• Personality • Culture

• Upbringing (socialisation) • Economic factors • Needs and wants

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Perception

•Perception is not a function of sensory input alone, but is the result of 2 different kinds of input and conditions:-

–Physical stimuli - e.g. sight, smell, sound etc.

–Inherent predispositions - experience, expectations, motives & learning

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Information Processing Stages

• Exposure

– Target customer is in proximity of message when delivered

• Attention

– Target customer allocates cognitive processing capacity

• Comprehension

– Target customer interprets the message

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Information Processing Stages (cont.)

• Acceptance

– Does the target customer believe, agree with, or is s/he persuaded by message, or do they disagree and dismiss it?

• Retention

– Target customer stores the advertisement and message in memory so can be accessed when needed.

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Factors That Shape Perception

• Stimulus characteristics

• Sensory characteristics:

• Information content

• Context

• Customer characteristics

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Perceptual Interpretation

The assignment of meaning to sensations consists of:

• both a cognitive and affective (emotional) component

• is individual and personal

• is based on what we expect to see

• stimuli is often ambiguous, may be weak due to interference

• the narrower our experience the more limited our interpretation

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Perceptual Interpretation• Distorting Influences Physical Appearances

Stereotypes Irrelevant Cues

First Impression - Tend to be lasting. Jumping to Conclusions –

Halo Effect (Stimulus Generalisation) - Brand name associations tend to link a number of different

products. True of famous brands.

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Perceptual Interpretation

Cognitive interpretation

• process whereby stimuli are placed in known categories of meaning

– Lexical or semantic meaning

– Semiotic meaning - symbols

– Psychological meaning

• Affective interpretation

• the emotional or feeling response triggered by a stimulus

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Biases in the Perceptual Process

• Selective exposure

– Customers only allow exposure to a small number of the 3000 daily marketing communications

• Selective attention

– Customers ignore ads that do not relate to their interests

• Selective interpretation

– Customers use perceptual distortion to make information more congruent with existing beliefs

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We select what we perceive influenced by:

The nature of the stimulus factor such as size and intensity, colour and

movement, contrast, position, format etc.

Individual factors such as interest, need, expectation, previous experience etc

Situational factors such as time pressure, contrast of the stimulus etc. We also block what we don’t want to see or to avoid overload. We have

defences against what we don’t like or wish to know about.

Marketers need to be aware of this (i.e. in the road safety advertising campaigns).

Perceptual Selection

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Buyer Imagery

• Buyers judge products related to their own personal self image

• Self-Image Actual self-image - how buyers actually see themselves

Ideal self-image - how buyers would like to see themselves

Social self-image - how buyers feel others see them Ideal social self-image - how buyers would like others

to see them

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Buyer Imagery (cont’d)

• Marketers deal with this issue by Positioning product - to target buyer market niches.

Maintaining or enhancing brand image - to target consumer self image.

Using perceptual mapping to compare products to competitors.

And other aspects of marketing mix to satisfy buyer image And other aspects of marketing mix to satisfy buyer image related to product related to product

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Buyer Imagery

Positioning

• the image/perception of the Product in the mind of the buyer

• marketers position goods/services/brands to fit a specific target market through differentiation

• different positioning strategies can be used for the same product targeting different segments

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