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

Postpurchase Action
Attitude
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 The guilt effect Consumers think of buying gifts for family and friends Business travellers buying for spouse and children to compensate for the loss of family time due to business travel The reward effect The occasion effect Consumers self indulgence Easter, Christmas, Mothers Day, Valentines Day, Birthday The exclusivity effect You can only buy certain products in specific travel related environment such as airport The effect of forgetting The effect of confusion The effect of disposing I forgot to bring my umbrella Information overload causing impulse buying 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 example
Take 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 dealers actions suggested to him that there would be less dissonance if he were a

Lexus customer, so thats what he became.

Dissonance reducing strategies in smoking

Change ones behaviour

Stop smoking . Switch to cigar or pipe Distort the dissonant Refuse to accept cancer connection information Minimise the To say there is more importance of the chance of death in a issue car crash Ignore dissonant Seek social support
information and seek consonant information

Unethical reassurances from marketers

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

Rbert Opie. Reproduced by Permission

Comparative advertising

Negative advertising

Photograph: Martin Evans

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

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

High involvement Decision Making Sequential models

Low involvement Less evidence for sequential models Passive learning

Cognitive learning

Habit

Loyalty
Instrumental conditioning

Inertia
Classical Conditioning

Increasing involvement

Source: General Mills UK

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

Routes to persuasion
High involvement leads to central route to persuasion, which views attitude change, resulting from a persons 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

Involvement Think

Motives Feel Sports Car

High

Pension scheme Economy Car

Cosmetics Low Washing and Cleaning Products Soft Drinks Burgers

Evans, Jamal, Foxall, Consumer Behaviour 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Berger (1986)

Involvement and Motivation

Type of motivation Informational (negative motivations) Low-involvement decision-making Examples: aspirin, light beer, detergent, Transformational (positive motivations) Examples: candy, regular beer, fiction novels Examples: vacations, fashion clothing, cars

High-involvement decision-making

Examples: microwave oven, insurance, home renovations

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 consumers self-relevance and can be enduring, situational and response driven.