MARKETING APPLICATION OF

REFERENCE GROUPS , FAMILY & CULTURE

Consumer behavior Process through which buyers make decisions.

Marketers borrow extensively from psychology and sociology to better understand consumer behavior.

Consumer behavior is usually understood as a function of interpersonal influences and personal factors.

WHAT IS CONSUMER BEHAVIOR ?

An individual or group who serve as points of comparison or reference and have a significant relevance on an individual's evaluations, aspirations or behaviour

A group consists of two or more people who interact with each other to accomplish some goal.

A reference group involves one or more people used as a basis for comparison or point of reference in forming affective and cognitive responses and performing behaviors.

WHAT IS REFERENCE GROUP?

Play a vital role in socializing the consumer and transmitting society’s norms and values

Influence a person’s values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors.

About :- products and brands

What product attributes are important

What lifestyles are desirable

purchase/consumption decisions

What do they do?

Reference groups are cultural groups in that members share certain common cultural meanings.

Marketers try to determine the content of the shared meanings of various reference groups.

Reference groups can have both positive and negative effects on consumers.

ANALYZING REFERENCE GROUPS

FACTORS INFLUENCING BUYING DECISIONS

Social Factors

Individual Factors

Psycho-logical Factors

Cultural Factors CONSUMER

DECISION-MAKINGPROCESS

BUY /

DON’T BUY

Reference groups People or institutions whose opinions are valued and to whom a person looks for guidance in his or her own behavior, values, and conduct, such as family, friends, or celebrities.

Influence of reference group depends on two conditions:

• Purchased product must be seen and identifiable.

• Purchased product must be conspicuous, something not everybody owns.

REFERENCE GROUPS

A group consists of two or more people who interact with each other to accomplish some goal.

A reference group involves one or more people used as a basis for comparison or point of reference in forming affective and cognitive responses and performing behaviors.

CONTINUE……

CULTURAL INFLUENCES

Culture Set of values, norms, attitudes, and

other meaningful symbols that shape

human behavior and the artifacts, or

products, of that behavior as they are

transmitted from one generation to the

next.

Culture Values, beliefs, preferences, and tastes handed down from one generation to the next.

Culture is a broad environmental determinant of behavior.

Culture:

The values, ideas, attitudes, and symbols that people adopt to communicate, interpret, and interact as members of society.

CONTINUE….

COMPONENTS OF CULTURE

Myths

Language

Values

Customs

Rituals

Laws

Material artifacts

CULTURE IS. . .

Learned

Functional

Pervasive

Dynamic

Culture is learned and transmitted from one generation to the next.

Groups within a culture that have their own modes of behavior.

• In U.S. subcultures can differ by ethnicity, nationality, age, rural versus urban location, religion, and geographic distribution.

• Population mix in U.S. is changing as the Hispanic, African American, and Asian populations grow.

SUB-CULTURES

Ethnic Patterns:

The norms and values of specific groups or subcultures within a society. Demographic characteristics used to identify subcultures:

Nationality - Hispanics, Italians

Race - African-American, American Indian, Asian

Region - New England, the South

Age - Elderly, teenager

Religion - Catholic, Jewish, fundamentalist

ETHNIC PATTERN

Everyone belongs to multiple social groups: family, neighborhood, clubs, and sports teams.

 Group membership influences buying decisions.

SOCIAL INFLUENCES

Groups establish norms of behavior—values, attitudes, and behaviors that a group deems appropriate for its members.

 Differences in status and roles within groups also influence behavior.

 Some Americans make purchases to enhance their status within social groups, and others work to reduce their consumption dramatically.

CONTINUE…..

Six classes: upper-upper, lower-upper, upper-middle, lower-middle, working class, lower class.

 Income not always a primary factor.

 Individuals’ buying habits sometimes reflect the class to which they aspire

Social Classes:

Relatively homogeneous divisions within a society that contain people with similar values, needs,

lifestyles, and behavior

SOCIAL CLASSES

A family has at least two people, the householder and someone who is related to the householder by blood, marriage, or adoption.

Like other influences, families have norms of expected behavior, status relationships, and roles.

FAMILY INFLUENCES

Family decision making refers to how family members

interact and influence one another

when making purchase choices for the household.

CONTINUE…..

Thank you