Consumer response to marketing actions

What this session entails

• Explain techniques that encourage consumers to act upon marketing activities.

• Explain impulse buying and customer satisfaction as important concepts.

• Apply cognitive dissonance theory to help explain how consumers can respond after purchase.

• Explain involvement and discuss implications of levels of involvement for consumer behaviour and for the relevance of sequential models of response to marketing activity.

Sequential model of marketing

Post-purchase

ActionAttitude

Learning

Perception

Attention

Exposure

Impulse buying

a sudden but powerful and persistent urge to buy a product offering immediately with diminished regard to the consequences of buying the offering (Rook, 1987)

Four styles of impulse buying

• Accelerator Impulse

• Compensatory Impulse

• Breakthrough Impulse

• Blind Impulse

Four forms of impulse buying

• Pure impulse buying

• Reminder impulse buying

• Suggestion impulse buy

• Planned impulse buy

Airport impulse buying Illustration

The holiday effect Consumer is going on a holiday with high levels of

excitement and more disposable income is at hand than

normal

The family effect Consumers think of buying gifts for family and friends

The guilt effect Business travellers buying for spouse and children to

compensate for the loss of family time due to business

travel

The reward effect Consumers’ self indulgence

The occasion effect Easter, Christmas, Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day,

Birthday

The exclusivity effect You can only buy certain products in specific travel

related environment such as airport

The effect of forgetting I forgot to bring my umbrella

The effect of confusion Information overload causing impulse buying

The effect of disposing I need to get rid of some left over foreign currency

Customer satisfaction

An attitude/feeling of a customer towards a product or service after it has been used.

Cognitive dissonance

A kind of psychological tension resulting from perceived inconsistencies in cognitions. (Festinger 1957)

Dissonance exampleTake the example reported by Jones (1996) concerning the missing ash-tray from his BMW.

The BMW dealer had forgotten to replace the ashtray after a service, but a chance call to a Lexus dealer resulted in them collecting the ashtray from BMW and delivering it to Jones! Even though he had been a loyal BMW owner for 12 years, this seemingly minor incident over the ash-tray raised dissonance in his mind. The Lexus dealer’s actions suggested to him that there would be less dissonance if he were a Lexus customer, so that’s what he became.

Dissonance reducing strategies in smoking

Change one’s behaviour

Stop smoking .Switch to cigar or pipe

Distort the dissonant information

Refuse to accept cancer connection

Minimise the importance of the issue

To say there is more chance of death in a car crash

Ignore dissonant information and seek consonant information

Seek social support

Unethical reassurances from marketers

Overcoming dissonance: healthy women smoke (seeking social support) and it’s good for you! Using positive cognitions.

© Rbert Opie. Reproduced by Permission

Comparative advertising

Negative advertising

A seminal example of negative political advertising attempting to raise dissonance over the competing political party.

Photograph: Martin Evans

Reassurance

© Vauxhall Network Q. Reproduced by permission

Involvement

Consumers can be involved with:

• A brand (e.g. Nokia).

• An Advertisement (e.g. print ad for Nokia).

• A Medium (e.g. the internet).

• A purchase decision (e.g. deciding between alternatives when buying a mobile phone).

Involvement

• Enduring Involvement• Situational Involvement

Involvement and hierarchy of effects (sequential) models

Inertia

Classical Conditioning

Loyalty

Instrumental conditioning

Habit

Less evidence for sequential models

Passive learning

Sequential models

Cognitive learning

Decision Making

Low involvementHigh involvement

Increasing involvement

This advertisement encourages emotional and physical involvement beyond merely eating ice cream…try this for yourself at home

Source: General Mills UK

Routes to persuasion

High involvement leads to central route to persuasion, which ‘views attitude change, resulting from a person’s diligent consideration of information that she or he feels is central to the true merits of a particular attitudinal position’ (Petty, Cacioppo, and Schumann, 1983, p.135).

Low involvement leads to peripheral route to persuasion whereby consumers pay limited attention to non-product features and feelings. Here the information processing is largely unconscious with no or very limited elaborative activities.

The FCB Grid

Berger (1986)Evans, Jamal, Foxall, Consumer Behaviour© 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Soft Drinks

Burgers

Washing and Cleaning Products

Low

Sports Car

Cosmetics

Pension scheme

Economy Car

FeelThink

High

MotivesInvolvement

Involvement and Motivation

Type of motivation

Examples: vacations, fashion clothing, cars

Examples: microwave oven, insurance, home renovations

High-involvement decision-making

Examples: candy, regular beer, fiction novels

Examples: aspirin, light beer, detergent,

Low-involvement decision-making

Transformational(positive motivations)

Informational(negative motivations)

Summary• Ways of encouraging consumers to ‘act’ and to respond positively after

purchase. • Impulse buying is pervasive and characteristic feature of most of our

purchases. • Customer satisfaction is a post-purchase attitude like feeling and is an

important theoretical as well as practical concept. • Antecedents of customer satisfaction include expectations, disconfirmation

of expectations, performance, affect, equity and attributions whereas complaining behaviour, negative word of mouth and repurchase intension are outcomes of satisfaction.

• Cognitive dissonance can occur before purchase as well as after purchase and marketing can help reduce dissonance.

• Consumers can become involved with product categories, brands, advertisements, communication mediums and even purchase decisions. Involvement reflects a consumer’s self-relevance and can be enduring, situational and response driven.