Purchasing behaviour / Husband-Wife

The purpose of analysing family purchase behaviour  is important to assessing individuals' behaviour is often perceived as a homogeneous unit. Family purchasing behaviour is rather essentially a collection of individuals whose interrelationship affect substitutional assets and saving behaviour. It is important to study family purchases and to seek information from different individuals in the family as a basis for a better understanding of the factors influencing their financial attitude and thus their behaviour. 


General trends in the past have shown that for years the wife is the one in control of the money management and in many cases usually make the purchasing decisions. In fact recent research has found the wife exert the main influence on the house, holding 40% of control and authority. The husband on the other hand holds over a quarter of authority and the couple join in the rest (Sharpe and Mott 1996).


In conducting an overall assessment of purchasing recently,it was found that amongst younger more educated middle age couples, they both joined in  the decision making. The husband and wife roles not only vary with the product but with the decision itself. 

Marketing

"There is no doubt that we are in the midst of many changes in the world of marketing and advertising as new technologies are changing the way we view and interact with businesses and products" says Marentis (2009).
The text of a presentation to the American Marketing Association predicted changes in communications media by the year 2000 and their effects on marketing. The cost considerations in marketing distribution has encouraged major innovations through the use of computer systems. It was prdeicted that large-screen, colour, person-to-person television communication would be available well before the year 2000 and this new invention would also influence marketing. Coupled with a large automated information storage and processing base, and equipped with push buttons, the screen and computer has restructured merchandising concepts. Shopping is being done at home via TV display. Consumers are able to select items and compare advertising claims more rationally today than ever before.



It cannot be overemphasised how much the Internet and related new technology has changed the face of marketing communications. Similar to the inception of radio and television affected business communications years ago, the Internet is turning marketing methods of the past on their heads and recreating the environmental landscape of buying and selling. "History has shown there will be winners and losers in the midst of these changes, but you can stay on top by making sure your On-line Marketing and Advertising efforts are current and applicable to today's customer" (Marentis, 2009).



Video on the changes in technology in marketing (really interesting)

http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cellphones_twitter_facebook_can_make_history.html

This video shows how marketing has changed over the years:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NewrL-Tw_Wk&feature=related

With the advent of search engine optimization, video, social media, audio and RSS are just a few of the terms that are becoming an integral part of relevant marketing strategies. A shift in customer thinking and behaviour has required business owners to leave behind old advertising methods and learn how to use these aforementioned tools to reach customers.

While ten years ago a banner ad may have pulled in the customers, today many customers will immediately view the ad skeptically. Replacing traditional advertising are customer recommendations and word-of-mouth through blogs, message boards and other forums.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/3545805
http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Chris_J_Marentis 

Further reading:
http://changeoftechnologyinmarketing.blogspot.com/2011_04_01_archive.html

Tj"" Hard Talk

Hello my name is Ti-Jean Brown, a 1st year student at the Bucks New University studying Business management and marketing studies. I will be reporting on a series of blogs where I will discuss various topics which link with the marketing communication skills and operations within businesses.

The term blogger is used to describe "anyone with enough time or narcissism to document every tedious bit of minutia filling their uneventful lives". Possibly the most annoying thing about bloggers is the sense of self-importance they get after even the most modest of publicity. Sometimes it takes as little as a referral on a more popular blogger's website to set the lesser blogger's ego into orbit. 


Then if that blogger gets mentioned on CNN, it is possible that he/she might get more pious than a lesser known blogger. Suddenly the boring, mild-mannered blogger you once knew will turn into Mother Theresa, and will single handedly take it upon himself/herself to end world hunger with his stupid links to band websites and other smug blogger dipshits." - Maddox (2005)

Well I must admit that I had no idea of what blogging was, as I had never heard the term before this course. When I first heard the name, my initial thought was that blogging was similar to emails. However, once I started using it I was hooked. Being able to post information and reading comments left on my blog is very exciting.


Being a personal blogger is a brand new experience that will afford me new skills that should benefit me in the working environment in the future. I hope to be able to apply and transfer these skills to wherever they are needed and continue to practice my typing skills in the process practising my blogging skills!!!

values

Values can be defined as a belief  about some desirable end-state that transcends specific situations and guides selection of behaviour. Values are general and different from attitude in that they do not apply to specific situations only. A person's set of values plays a very important role in their consumption activities, since many products and services are purchased because it will help us to attain a value-related goal.  Two people can believe in the same behaviours (vegetarianism)  but their underlying belief systems may be quite different (animal activism VS health concerns).  The extent to which people may share a belief system is determined by individual social and cultural forces.

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUxiiKtdELk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH4rHTJztLU&feature=related

Real life examples
Every one wants to be clean, but some societies are more fastidious than others and will not accept products and services that they think cut corners. Italians spend an average of 21 hours a week on household chores other than cooking whereas in America women only spend 4 hours according to Gambles and Procter research. Italian women wash their bathroom and kitchen at least 4 times a week while American just once a week.  

Unilever thought the Italian market would be the perfect place to introduce a new all purpose cleaning product called 'Cif' which flopped.

When Unilever did a research to find out why their product flopped in Italy, they found that the women were not convinced that 'a mere spray would do the job on though kitchen grease; or that one product will adequietly clean different surfaces', (it turns out that 72% of Italians own more than eight different cleaning products). 

Every culture is characterised by its members and endorsed by their value system. These end-states may not be equally endorsed by everyone, and in some cases their values even seem to contradict each other.

Values in consumer behaviour  

Laues have not been as widely applied to direct examinations of consumer behaviour as might be expected.  The reason for these broad-based concepts such as freedon, security, or inner harmony, are more likely to affect general purchasing patterns rather than to differenciate between brands within a product category. For this reason, some researchers have found it convenient to make distinctions among board-based cutural values such as security or happiness; consumption-specific values such as convient shopping or prompt service, and product-specific values such as ease of use or durability, that affect the relative importance that people in different cultures place on possesions.  

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MEP2y6XEn8&feature=related

A recent study of product-specific values looked in depth at Australians who engage in extreme sports like surfing, snowboarding and skateboarding. These researches identified four dominant vales that drove brand choice: freedom, belongingness , excellence and connection. One example is one female surfer studied embraced the value of belongingness. She expressed these values by wearing popular brands of surfing apparel even when these major brands had lost their local roots by going mainstream. In contrast, another surfer in the study valued connection, he expressed this by selecting only locally made brands and going out of his way to support local surfing events.   

A number companies track changes in values through large-scale surveys. For instance one Young and Rubicam study tracked the new segment of single, professional career women without ambitions of having a family. They are among the highest consuming segments and are characterised by central values such as freedom and independent. Many companies use values inventories in order to adapt their strategies. SAS, the airline which for a long time addressed 'hard value' of their key segment, business travellers, realise that segments  had started to express more informal and 'softer' values, and they changed their communication profile strategy. 

Similarly P&G's best selling wet mop failed spectacularly. This was because both companies underestimated the market's desire for products that are tough cleaners, not time savers.
Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvu8J4UPjNg&feature=related

Group Conformity

Group Conformity 

Conformity refers to the change in beliefs and actions as  reaction to real or imagined group pressure. In order for a society to function, its members develop norms, or informal rules that govern their behaviour. If such a system of agreement and rules did not evolve, choas would result. Imagine the confusion if a simple norm such as sitting down to attend class did not exist?

The reason for conformity is not an automatic process, and many factors contribute to the likelihood that consumers will pattern their behaviours after others. Among the factors that affect the likelihood of conformity are as follows:

Cultural pressures- different cultures encourage conformity to a greater or lesser degree.

Fear of deviance- The individual may have reasons to believe that the group will apply sanctions to punish non-conforming behaviours. 

Commitment- The more people are dedicated to a group of values and their membership in it, the more motivated they are to do what the group wants. 

Group unanimity size- As groups gain in power, compliance increases. It is often harder to resist the demands of a large number of people than just a few, and this difficulty is compounded when the group members are perceived to know what they are thinking.

Susceptibility to interpersonal influence- This trait refers to an individual's need to have others think highly of them. 

Opinion Leadership


If you decide to buy a new stereo, you will most likely seek advice from a friend who knows a lot about sound-systems. This friend may own a sophisticated system, or they may subscribe to specialized magazines such as stereo review and spend free time browsing through electronics stores. On the other hand, you may have a friends who has a reputation of being stylish and who spends their free time reading fashion and life style magazines and shopping at trendy boutiques. While you might not bring up your stereo problem with them, you may take them with you to shop for a new wardrobe.  

Everyone knows people who are knowledgeable about products and whose advice is taken seriously by others. These individauls are opinion leaders. An opinion leader is a person who is frequently able to influence others' attitude or behaviours. Some people's recommendations carry more weight than others.

Peer Pressure 
When you were a little child, your parents usually choose your friends, putting you in playgroups or arranging playdates with certain children they know and liked. Now that you're older, you decide who you want for friends and what groups you spend time with.
Your friends and peers are people of your own age or people close to you who have experiences and interests similar to yours. You and your friends make dozens of decisions every day, and you influence each other's choices and behaviors. This is often positive, it is human nature to listen to and learn from other people your age group.
As you become more independent, your peers naturally play a greater role in your life. As school and other activities take you away from home, you may spend more time with peers than you do with your parents and siblings. You'll probably develop close friendships with some of your peers, and you may feel so connected to them that they are like an extended family.

Perception Theory

In order to receive information from the environment we are equipped with sense organs example eye, ear, and nose. Each sense organ is part of a sensory system which receives sensory inputs and transmits sensory information to the brain.

Hearing is the ability to perceive sound by vibrations through the ear. The inability to hear is known as deafness. Hearing involves the computationally complex task of separating the sources of interest (Moore 2009). Sound does not usually come from a single source, it may come from multiple sources and directions are superimposed as they arrive at the ears.

Taste is another of the five senses. It is the ability to detect flavour of substances including but not limited to food. The sensation can be categorised into five tastes: sweetness, bitterness, sourness, saltiness and umami. Humans receive tastes through sensory organs called taste buds (Daniel 2005).

Olfaction is the sense of smell and this sense is mediated by sensory cells of the nasal cavity. The inability to smell is known as anosmia.

Touch is a perception resulting from activation of the skin including hair follicles and also the tongue, throat and mucosa. The loss of impairment of the ability to feel is called tactile anaesthesia while paresthesia is a sensation of tingling, prinking or numbness of the skin.

Visual perception is the ability to interpret information and surroundings from the effects of light reaching the eyes, the result of this is known as eyesight or vision. The loss of vision is known as blindness. There are two schools of thought about how vision is carried into the body. The first "emission theory" postulates that vision occurs when rays emanate from the eyes and are intercepted by visual objects. The second school advocates the "intro-mission" approach which sees vision as coming from something entering the eyes which represent an object (Finger 1994).

Gestalt theory of visual perception:-
 

Gestalt means when parts identified individually have different characteristics to the whole (Gestalt means "organised whole") for example describing a tree, its parts are trunk, branches, leaves, perhaps blossoms or fruit. But when you look at an entire tree, you are not conscious of the parts, you are aware of the overall object, the tree. Parts are of secondary importance even though they can be clearly seen. There are six principles associated with the Gestalt theory which are: - proximity, similarity, common fate, good continuation, closure and finally area and symmetry.

A major theoretical issue on which psychologists are divided is the extent to which perception relies directly on the information present in the stimulus. Some argue that perceptual processes are not direct, but depend on the perceiver's expectations and previous knowledge as well as the information available in the stimulus itself.

This controversy is discussed by 2 theorists:-

Gregory (1970) who argues that perception is a constructive process which relies on top-down processing and Gibson (1966). He argued against the idea that perception involves top-down processing. Gibson criticises Gregory's suggestion of visual illusions as artificial examples and not images found in the normal environments. Instead Gibson argues that perception is direct and not subject to hypothesis testing as suggested by Gregory. He further postulates that there is enough information in our environment to make sense of the world in a direct way, "sensation is perception: what you see is what is what you get".


Further reading:
http://www.users.totalise.co.uk/~kbroom/Lectures/gestalt.htm

http://www.lumosity.com/landing_pages/42
http://www.simplypsychology.org/perception-theories.html

Gender Differences in buyer Behaviour

Gender differences in buyer behaviour 

There are many differences in males and females not only in body but in mind as well and with the way they react to different things. Females tend to take more interest in certain things than males.

Likewise males tend to take more interest in other things than females. Men and Women both are impressed and attracted to different things such as women are impressed by sentimental and emotional things such as a woman would be impressed with a man who: 

• Compliments her    • respects her  • honours her
• cuddles her            • kisses her     • loves her
• strokes her           • teases her     • comforts her
• protects her           • spends money on her, 
• wines and dines her, • buys things for her 
• listens to her,    • cares for her,

• stands by her, • supports her,        • holds her,
• goes to the ends of the Earth for her.

Whereas men are impressed easily by material things such as :

· Food
· Porn
· Cars


 Many companies use the gender to help them target the right audience. Gender plays a vital part in the world of marketing, Depending on what product and service a company is selling. 

The product and services may be directed at a certain gender type male or female. The form of advertising and attracting changes depending on which gender type is targeted. males and females respond and remember certain things differently to each other. Therefore the way advertisers market their product and services to the gender differ as the marketing communication methods and forms of Advertisements used are directly appealing to either males or females. females are more emotional and sentimental who are likely to remember the little simple things and are attracted by intimate things. Whereas males are likely to remember larger material things and would not seem to be interested in the little inmate things such as women. For example a .group of people were brought to a room and later asked to remember various items there. both genders would remember completely different things. The results where that : 

The men remembered the big picture of an office like the location of a desk or bookshelf. The women remembered more intimate details like a vase of flowers in the corner, or a picture of a husband and wife on a book case. Schiebe and Condry (1984) examined advertisements according to product type and found major gender differences in the values promoted in advertisements. Advertisements aimed at women seemed to be stressed over beauty and youth whilst adverts aimed at men were more valued by ambition and physical strength

Addd advert attracting men and females

When men are making purchasing decision they base their decision on partially digested information as they are less patience and not attracted to picture. They want simplicity and clarity . there for they purchase things quickly if it attracts them. They don’t spend time looking around for deals or finding out more about the product they are purchasing.


Whilse women are likely to spend time whilst purchase products finding out all the information, looking around for deals , reading through all the paper work , and less likely to make a quick decision when purchasing something. Women are more open minded than men, and are attracted by pictures and many other things.


For women adverts and products that attract them would be adverts with more colour and detail. E.g toiletry ads , make up ads etc.. Women may find humourous adverts rude, and are likly to purchase things direct from the shop rather then on-line as men are more lazy making quick desicions therefore would purchase things direct , and on-line. Also women appreciate very fine distinctions, such as 5 different variations of shampoo-for curly hair, straight hair, oily hair, dry hair, etc. Women are very detailed and likely to watch adverts rather than changing channels. 

For men:
Men are likely to pick up on one or two very salient and obvious kinds of cues. (Free)
Men think in a more macro way, and need to be shown the big picture.
Men are less likely to process complex metaphors.

also men tend to be attracted to ads with humour more likely to be cruder and aggressive