This document provides an introduction to consumer behavior. It defines consumer behavior as the study of how individuals select, purchase, use, and dispose of products and services. The summary discusses key aspects of consumer behavior, including how marketers can segment consumers based on demographics and build long-term relationships. It also examines how marketing influences popular culture and consumer perceptions, and explores debates around whether marketing manipulates consumers or provides useful information. The document outlines the interdisciplinary nature of consumer behavior research and previews the structure of the book.

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Chapter 1
Buying, Having, and Being: An Introduction to Consumer Behavior
By Michael R. Solomon
Consumer Behavior
Buying, Having, and Being

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• What useful ways can marketers categorize
Gail as a consumer?
• How do others influence Gail’s purchase
decisions?
• What role did brand play in Gail’s surfing
habits?
• What other factors influence Gail’s evaluation
of products?
Opening Vignette: Gail

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What is Consumer Behavior?
• Consumer Behavior:
– The study of the processes involved when individuals or
groups select, purchase, use, or dispose of products,
services ideas, or experiences to satisfy needs and desires
• Role Theory:
– Identifies consumers as actors on the marketplace stage
• Consumer Behavior is a Process:
– Exchange: A transaction in which two or more
organizations give and receive something of value

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Some Issues That Arise During Stages in
the Consumption Process
Figure 1.1

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Consumer Behavior Involves
Many Different Actors
• Consumer:
– A person who identifies a need or desire, makes a
purchase, and then disposes of the product
• Many people may be involved in this sequence of
events.
– Purchaser / User / Influencer
• Consumers may take the form of organizations
or groups.

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Consumers’ Impact on
Marketing Strategy
• Market Segmentation:
– Identifies groups of consumers who are similar to
one another in one or more ways and then devises
marketing strategies that appeal to one or more
groups
• Demographics:
– Statistics that measure observable aspects of a
population
• Ex.: Age, Gender, Family Structure, Social Class and
Income, Race and Ethnicity, Lifestyle, and
Geography

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Consumers’ Impact on
Marketing Strategy (cont.)
• Relationship Marketing: Building
Bonds with Consumers
– Relationship marketing:
• The strategic perspective that stresses the long-term,
human side of buyer-seller interactions
– Database marketing:
• Tracking consumers’ buying habits very closely, and
then crafting products and messages tailored
precisely to people’s wants and needs based on this
information

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Marketing’s Impact on Consumers
• Marketing and Culture:
– Popular Culture:
• Music, movies, sports, books, celebrities, and other
forms of entertainment consumed by the mass
market.
– Marketers play a significant role in our view of the
world and how we live in it.

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Popular Culture
Companies often create product icons to develop an
identity for their products. Many made-up creatures and
personalities, such as Mr. Clean, the Michelin tire man and
the Pillsbury Doughboy, are widely recognized figures in
popular culture.

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Marketing’s Impact on Consumers: The
Meaning of Consumption
• The Meaning of Consumption:
– People often buy products not for what they do,
but for what they mean.
– Types of relationships a person may have with a
product:
• Self-concept attachment
• Nostalgic attachment
• Interdependence
• Love

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Marketing’s Impact on Consumers:
Virtual Consumption
• The Digital Revolution is one of the most
significant influences on consumer behavior.
• Electronic marketing increases convenience
by breaking down the barriers of time and
location.

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Blurred Boundaries
Marketing and Reality
• Marketers and consumers coexist in a
complicated two-way relationship.
• It’s increasingly difficult for consumers to
discern the boundary between the
fabricated world and reality.
• Marketing influences both popular culture
and consumer perceptions of reality.

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Marketing Ethics and Public Policy
• Business Ethics:
– Rules of conduct that guide actions in the
marketplace
– The standards against which most people in the
culture judge what is right and what is wrong, good
or bad
• Notions of right and wrong differ among
people, organizations, and cultures.

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Needs and Wants:
Do Marketers Manipulate Consumers?
• Do marketers create artificial needs?
– Need: A basic biological motive
– Want: One way that society has taught us that need can be
satisfied
• Are advertising and marketing necessary?
– Economics of information perspective: Advertising is an
important source of consumer information.
• Do marketers promise miracles?
– Advertisers simply don’t know enough to manipulate
people.

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Consumer Behavior
As a Field of Study
• Consumer behavior only recently a
formal field of study
• Interdisciplinary influences on the
study of consumer behavior
– Consumer behavior studied by researchers from
diverse backgrounds
– Consumer phenomena can be studied in different
ways and on different levels

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Taking it From Here:
The Plan of the Book
• Section I – Consumer Behavior
• Section II – Consumers as Individuals
• Section III – Consumers as Decision Makers
• Section IV – Consumers and Subcultures
• Section V – Consumers and Culture

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The Wheel of Consumer Behavior
Figure 1.3