1. Personal Factors
These are unique personal characteristics of the buyer that affect the buying decisions. They include demographic variables such as age , gender, family , lifecycle stages ,occupation , lifestyle, personality and self – concept/image.
1. Lifestyle: This is a person’s pattern of living as expressed by his/her activities, interests and opinions..It is a profile of one’s whole pattern of acting and interacting with the world.
• Recent Kenyan trends in lifestyles are a shift towards personal independence and individualism and a preference for a healthy, natural lifestyle.
• Lifestyles are the consistent patterns people follow in their lives. For example healthy foods for a healthy lifestyle.
• A marketer needs to know how consumer changing values and interest affect their buying behaviour
2. Age, gender and life cycle stages : age and the stages that families go through create different consumer demands. Young people purchase things for different reasons than older people.
3. Occupation: a consumer’s occupation , whether of manual work ( mechanic) or company executive, air travel workers, memberships to clubs affect the goods and services he/she buys. A marketer needs to identify the occupation group and design a marketing mix that befits their group.
4. Economic situation: of the consumer affects product choices. One’s income, borrowing and saving power influence the purchase of expensive tem. A marketer of income sensitive products should closely watch trends in personal incomes, saving and interest rates. During recessions , marketers may redesign , reposition and re-price their products.
2. Psychological factors:
Psychological factors include:
1. Motives: A motive is an internal energizing force/drive that orients a person's activities toward satisfying a need or achieving a goal. . Actions are effected by a set of motives, not just one. A marketers needs to identify motives then they can better develop an appropriate marketing mix. MASLOW hierarchy of needs include : Physiological , Safety, Love and Belonging , Esteem , Self Actualization Marketer needs to determine what level of the hierarchy the consumers are so as to determine what motivates their purchases. Motives often operate at a subconscious level therefore are difficult to measure.
2. Perception: Perception is the process of selecting, organizing and interpreting information inputs to produce meaning. I.e. we choose what information we pay attention to, organize it and interpret it. Information inputs are the sensations received through sight, taste, hearing, smell and touch.
3. Learning: Learning is the process through which a relatively permanent change in behavior results from the consequences of past behavior. Learning, changes in a person's behavior caused by information and experience. Therefore to change consumers' behavior about your product, need to give them new information. The marketer needs to understand individuals capacity to learn.
• When making buying decisions, buyers must process information. Knowledge is the familiarity with the product and expertise.
• Inexperience buyers often use prices as an indicator of quality more than those who have knowledge of a product.
• Marketer needs to provide cues ( minor stimuli that determine when, where and how a person responds to messages of products) and reinforcement through rewarding consumer’s buying behavior.
4. Attitudes: An attitude is a person’s relatively consistent evaluations , feelings and tendencies toward and object or activity ( product or idea) .It puts people in the frame of mind of liking or disliking things.
• Individual learns attitudes through experience and interaction with other people.
• Consumer attitudes toward a firm and its products greatly influence the success or failure of the firm's marketing strategy.
• Attitudes and attitude change are influenced by consumers personality and lifestyle.
• Consumers screen information that conflicts with their attitudes and distort information to make it consistent and selectively retain information that reinforces our attitudes.
• There is a difference between attitude and intention to buy (ability to buy).
• Marketers must research information into various customer attitudes that might affect purchase their products even though attitudes are very difficult to change
5. Personality: It refers to all the internal traits and behaviors that make a person unique i.e. unique psychological characteristics that lead to relatively consistent and lasting responses to the environment. This uniqueness comes from a person's heredity and personal experience. Examples include: Workholism, Compulsiveness, Self confidence, Friendliness, Adaptability, Ambitiousness, Dogmatism, Authoritarianism, Introversion, Extroversion, Aggressiveness, competitiveness.
• Traits effect the way people behave.
• Marketers try to match the store image to the perceived image of their customers.
3. Social Factors
Consumer wants, learning, motives etc. are influenced by person's roles, family, reference groups, social class and culture.
1.Roles: A role refers to things people should do based on the expectations of the position(s) they hold within a group. People have many roles. For example, a man can be a husband, father, employer/ee. Individuals role are continuing to change therefore marketers must continue to update information. Marketers must design marketing mix that reflects the roles played by consumers.
2. 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.
• Two Income Marriages Are Now the Norm. Because 2 income families are becoming more common,
• There is need to know who in the family is responsible for the decision making. The decision maker within the family unit is changing
• Parents have less time for children and therefore tend to let them influence purchase decisions in order to alleviate some of the guilt.
• Children also have more money to spend themselves. They have their own incomes to spend.
3. Reference Groups: Individual identifies with the group to the extent that he takes on many of the values, attitudes or behaviors of the group members. Groups may include families, friends, sororities, civic and professional organizations. Groups may consist of :
• Membership groups (belong to)
• Aspiration groups (want to belong to)
• Disassociate groups (do not want to belong to)
Any group has a positive or negative influence on a persons attitude and behavior.
Groups put pressure for conformity and this affects product and brand choices
Marketers focus on the desires of consumers that belong to reference groups.
Marketers get the groups to approve the product and communicate that approval to its members.
Lellah answered the question on November 5, 2021 at 06:28