Chapter 1: An Introduction to Consumer Behavior

Participate in a Mutual Experience

and Merge Self With Group

Marketing’s Impact on Consumers

• Marketing and Culture
• Popular Culture
• Intangible and Tangible Objects
• The Global Consumer
• Global Consumer Culture
• Virtual Consumption
• Business to Consumer Selling (B2C Commerce)
• Consumer to Consumer Selling (B2B Commerce)
• Virtual Brand Communities
• Blurred Boundaries: Marketing and Reality

Marketing Ethics

• Business Ethics are Rules of Conduct That Guide Actions in the Marketplace - the Standards Against Which Most People in a Culture Judge What is Right and What is Wrong, Good or Bad.

Other Marketing Ethics Issues

• Do Marketers Create Artificial Needs?
• Response: Marketing attempts to create awareness that these needs do exist, rather than to create them.
• Are Advertising and Marketing Necessary?
• Response: Yes, if approached from an information dissemination perspective.
• Do Marketers Promise Miracles?
• Not if they are honest; they do not have the ability to create miracles.

The Dark Side of Consumer Behavior

• Compulsive Consumption
• Behavior is Not Done by Choice
• Gratification is Short-Lived
• Strong Feelings of Regret or Guilt Afterwards

• Illegal Activities
• Consumer Theft (Shrinkage)
• Anti-consumption
• Culture Jamming
• Cultural Resistance

• Consumed Consumers
• People Who Are Exploited for
• Commercial Gain in the
• Marketplace.

• Addictive Consumption
• Gambling

Interdisciplinary Influences

• Experimental Psychology
• Clinical Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Human Ecology
• Microeconomics
• Social Psychology
• Sociology
• Macroeconomics
• Semiotics/Literary Criticism
• Demography
• History
• Cultural Anthropology

• Individual Focus

• Social Focus

Two Perspective on Consumer Research

• Positivist
• Approach

• Objective

• Prediction

• Independent

• Real Cause

• Separation

• Interpretivist
• Approach

• Socially
• Constructed

• Understanding

• Contextual

• Simultaneous
• Shaping

• Interaction

Taking it From Here: The Plan of the Book

• Section II: Consumers As Individuals
• Section III: Consumers As Decision Makers
• Section IV: Consumers and Subcultures
• Section V: Consumers and Culture

The Wheel of Consumer Behavior