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Chapter 11 Consumers in Situations What Do You Think Polling Question I never let anything get in the way of preparing for my consumer behavior class. _____ Strongly Disagree _____ Disagree _____ Somewhat Disagree _____ Neither Agree nor Disagree _____ Somewhat Agree _____ Agree _____ Strongly Agree Have students access Course Mate at www.cengagebrain.com to answer the polling questions for each chapter of CB. Ask them to take the online poll to see how their answers compare with other students taking a consumer behavior course across the country. Then turn to the last page of the chapter to find the “What Others Have Thought” box feature. This graph is a snapshot of how other consumer behavior students have answered this polling question so far. Learning Objectives After studying this chapter, the student should be able to: 11-1 Understand how value varies with situations. 11-2 Know the different ways that time affects consumer behavior. 11-3 Analyze shopping as a consumer activity using the different categories of shopping activities. 11-4 Distinguish the concepts of unplanned, impulse, and compulsive consumer behavior. 11-5 Use the concept of atmospherics to create consumer value. 11-6 Understand what is meant by antecedent conditions. Lecture Example Faced with customers stealthily scanning the prices of items in order to purchase them for less online, Target worked this trend to its advantage, encouraging customers to use the free Shopkick app on their phones to scan items in the stores. This allows the customers to accumulate points that can be traded for gift cards. This option was introduced at Target stores with the intention of getting customers to visit Target more often and look at a lot of items that they otherwise wouldn’t notice. This could lead to impulse buying. The app also displays all the in-store deals and promotions, and thus gives consumers an affordable and exciting shopping experience at the store. Source: “Scan This! Target Encourages Shoppers to Scan Items with Smartphones Nationwide,” Time Moneyland, May 25, 2012, http://moneyland.time.com/2012/05/25/scan-this-target-encourages-shoppers-to-scan-items-with-smartphones-nationwide/ Lecture Outline with PowerPoint® Slides LO: 11-1. Understand how value varies with situations. Q: Ask students to share how their experiences of shopping have varied due to constraints in time, place, and conditions? How would the value of shopping change otherwise? A: Students’ answers will vary. They would have experienced changes in decision making, their preference of purchasing or not purchasing a product. They would have felt how the value of the product had changed due to the situational influence. I. Value in Situations? Traveling presents consumers with a host of situations that can alter a service’s value. A partial list of considerations that might shape value for travelers, and other consumers, includes: Is someone else (a third-party payer) completely or partially subsidizing the consumption? Is the consumer alone or with others? What are the economic conditions like? How much time is the consumer spending in the location? If traveling abroad, what is the exchange rate? How is the consumer paying for things? Are any items like hotel rooms prepaid? A. Situations and Value Situational influences is the term that captures these contextual effects, meaning effects independent of enduring consumer, brand, or product characteristics. As can be seen in the CVF framework, situational influences directly affect both consumer decision making and the eventual value experienced. Situational influences are enduring characteristics of neither a particular consumer nor a product or brand. Indeed, situational influences are ephemeral, meaning they are temporary conditions in a very real sense. Contexts can affect communication, shopping, brand preference, purchase, actual consumption, and the evaluation of that consumption. Three categories of situational influences can be described based on these influences: Time Place Conditions Exhibit 11.1 illustrates situational influences with an example. The following sections discuss each category in more detail, with an emphasis on how value changes with each. LO: 11-2. Know the different ways that time affects consumer behavior. II. Time and Consumer Behavior In some ways, time is a consumer’s only real resource because when working, time is converted into economic resources. In addition, time is necessary for consumption to occur. Time can affect consumption in any of these forms: Time pressure Time of year Time of day The term temporal factor refers to situational characteristics related to time. Thus, each of the time forms listed here represents a different temporal factor. [Instructor PPT Slides 4, 5] A. Time Pressure Time pressure represents an urgency to act based on some real or self-imposed deadline. Time pressure affects consumers in several ways: When time is scarce, consumers process less information because time is a critical resource necessary for problem solving. Consumers experiencing time pressure are more likely to rely on simple choice heuristics than are those in less-tense situations. Time pressure can switch a consumer’s orientation from hedonic to utilitarian. Time pressure shapes the value consumers perceive in products by influencing both quality and price perceptions. Because consumers rely more on price-quality heuristics than they do beliefs about financial sacrifice, brands that position themselves as high quality might benefit from situations characterized by time pressure. Conversely, other consumers may simply choose the lowest-priced alternative and risk disappointment if a brand does not deliver the expected benefits. [Instructor PPT Slide 7] B. “Spare” Time Like discretionary income, discretionary (spare) time represents the days, hours, or minutes that are not obligated toward some compulsory and time-consuming activity. When consumers feel like they lack spare time, personalized services make their routine activities convenient. Whereas, consumers with a lot of spare time find little hedonic value in such things, and instead seek such services out only as a way of increasing utilitarian value. Service providers need to be able to detect whether consumers are time starved or time. Consider how different consumers with varying amounts of spare time will react. With little or no training, Internet-based communications allow consumers to “share” for hire. Thus, the consumer becomes the marketer. C. Time of Year Seasonality refers to regularly occurring conditions that vary with the time of year. Consumers’ value perceptions also vary with the time of year. Almost all products are susceptible to some type of seasonal influence. [Instructor PPT Slide 8] D. Cycles Whether it’s beverage consumption, attire, or choice of entertainment, the time of day affects the value of products and activities. Some of this influence is due to scheduled events during the day and partly biological. The circadian cycle refers to the rhythm (level of energy) of the human body that varies with the time of day. The circadian cycle is responsible for productivity in many activities. A host of products exists to try to aid consumers through the low-energy periods of the day. [Instructor PPT Slide 9] Q: Discuss examples which illustrate the relationship between time and product consumption. Look at all three categories A: Students’ answers will vary. For example, one could look at the higher amount of consumption of coffee during winter. E. Advertiming Advertiming is an advertising schedule that primarily runs an advertisement at times when customers will be most receptive to the message. Advertisers traditionally practice advertiming based on seasonal patterns and even on day-to-day changes in the weather. In addition, near-field communication (NFC) technologies using RFID, GPS, or Bluetooth capabilities alert marketers when someone, or at least someone’s smartphone or tablet, has entered an area. LO: 11- 3. Analyze shopping as a consumer activity using the different categories of shopping activities. [Instructor PPT Slides 11-12] III. Place Shapes Shopping Activities Many of the activities in the CVF and consumer behavior theory in general take place in the shopping process. The following questions can help put shopping in perspective. Do consumers have to buy to shop? Is a store necessary for shopping? What motivates consumer shopping? Marketers naturally hope that consumers will purchase things while shopping. But not every shopping act culminates in a purchase. Sometimes a consumer goes shopping only to find out that the desired product is out of stock and defers the buying indefinitely. A physical store is no longer required for shopping to take place. Consumers shop using their computers, tablets, phones, vending machines, or more traditional nonstore alternatives, like catalogs. Q: What motivates you as a consumer to buy things or postpone the act of buying? What is shopping in your view? A: Students’ answers may vary. It is a matter of perspective. What forces one customer to buy things might not appeal to another customer. A. What Is Shopping? Shopping can be defined as the set of potentially value-producing consumer activities that directly increase the likelihood that something will be purchased. Shopping is perceived as the inverse of marketing. Both marketing and shopping make purchase more likely, but one involves activities of marketing people and the other involves activities of shoppers. B. Virtual Shopping Situations Shopping via the Internet brings 24-7 access to shopping environments. Many effects seen in real bricks-and-mortar shopping environments. Online retailers enhance the shopping experience by making the site visually appealing. However, case should be taken, an aesthetics often take a backseat to the need for an easy-to-use site that facilitates easy transactions. People think of shopping as a volitional activity, meaning the consumer is the active decision maker. Smart-agent technology raises questions about how volitional shopping might be. Smart agent software is capable of learning an Internet user’s preferences and automatically searching out information and distributing the information to a user’s computer. Companies that purchase software hope to leverage the information that consumers leave behind into more customized and therefore more effective sales appeals. [Instructor PPT Slide 10] C. Shopping Activities Shopping activities take place in specific places, over time, and under specific conditions or contexts. Shopping thus occurs in situations that consumers and marketers cannot easily control. Shoppers are subject to many situational influences that affect decision-making and value. Four different types of shopping activities exist. At least one of these types characterizes any given shopping experience, but sometimes the shopper can combine more than one type into a single shopping trip. They are: Acquisitional shopping—activities oriented toward a specific, intended purchase or purchases Epistemic shopping—activities oriented toward acquiring knowledge about products Experiential shopping—recreationally oriented activities designed to provide interest, excitement, relaxation, fun, or some other desired feeling Impulsive shopping—spontaneous activities characterized by a diminished regard for consequences and a desire for immediate self-fulfillment Exhibit 11.2 lists each type of shopping activity and depicts the type of shopping value generally associated with each type. Acquisitional Shopping A consumer who has to get an airline ticket to go on a business trip begins checking options at airline websites and through online travel agents. Chances are, the task is not very gratifying in and of itself. Epistemic Shopping An epistemic orientation motivates the shopper to increase knowledge. Epistemic activities include finding information on some imminent purchase. Experiential Shopping Experiential activities include things done just for the experience. Experiential shopping can be motivated by boredom or loneliness. Outshopping is a term used to refer to consumers who are shopping in a city or town that they must travel to rather than in their own hometown. Outshopping is often motivated simply by the desire for the experience. Experiential shopping activities demonstrate that a lot of the reason for shopping lies in the experience itself. Impulsive Shopping Impulsive activities also illustrate how a single shopping trip can result in more than one type of activity. A body of knowledge known as reversal theory tries to explain how environmental elements can lead to near 180-degree changes in shopping orientation. Reversal theory suggests consumers can switch from the pursuit of utilitarian to the pursuit of hedonic value. [Instructor PPT Slide 11] D. Shopping Value All shopping activities are aimed at one key result—value. Personal shopping value (PSV) is the overall subjective worth of a shopping activity when considering all associated costs and benefits. Like value overall, PSV can be usefully divided into two types: Utilitarian shopping value represents the worth obtained because some shopping task or job is completed successfully. Hedonic shopping value represents the worth of an activity because the time spent doing the activity itself is personally gratifying. E. Value and Shopping Activities All shopping activities provide value in different ways to different consumers. The old term window shopping is used by consumers to find information to gauge the success of a shopping trip or it is simply a way of passing time. Window shopping can provide utilitarian and/or hedonistic shopping value as the case may be. Situational influences can also affect the type of shopping value desired by consumers. Time pressure, for example, may lead to be more concerned with simple product acquisition than they might otherwise be. On the other hand, consumers who are in a bad mood may choose to change it by going shopping. Retail Personality Retailers specializing in things like a wide selection of goods, low prices, guarantees, and knowledgeable employees can provide high proportions of utilitarian shopping value. The type of positioning emphasizes the functional quality of a retail store by facilitating the task of shopping. In contrast, retailers specializing in a unique environment, impressive décor, friendly employees, and pleasant emotions can provide relatively high hedonic shopping value. This type of positioning emphasizes the affective quality of a retail store. The affective quality can be managed to create an emotionally rewarding environment capable of producing high hedonic shopping value. More specifically, retail personality is the way a retail store is defined in the mind of a shopper based on the combination of functional and affective qualities. Q: Discuss examples of shopping experiences where the functional quality was more important than the affective quality. For which type of products or services, is the affective quality important? A: Students’ answers will vary. Shopping for groceries may be based on functional quality whereas buying an exclusive wedding dress might require the fulfillment of the affective quality. LO: 11-4. Distinguish the concepts of unplanned, impulse, and compulsive consumer behavior. IV. Impulsive Shopping and Consumption Impulsive consumption is largely characterized by three components: They are spontaneous and involve at least short-term feelings of liberation. They are associated with a diminished regard for any costs or consequences (negative aspects) associated with the act. They are usually motivated by a need for immediate self-fulfillment and are thus usually highly involved emotionally and associated with hedonic shopping value. A. Impulsive versus Unplanned Consumer Behavior Impulsive purchasing is not synonymous with unplanned purchasing behavior. Unplanned shopping, buying, and consuming share some, but not all, characteristics of truly impulsive consumer behavior. Exhibit 11.3 illustrates the relationship between impulsive and unplanned consumer activity. The unplanned consumer acts by: Situational memory—it characterizes unplanned acts because something in the environment usually triggers the knowledge in memory that something is needed. Utilitarian orientation—it allows the customers to fulfill a need to maintain items needed to work efficiently. Spontaneity—is defined by unplanned and therefore done without any significant deliberation or prior decision making. [Instructor PPT Slide 12] B. Distinguishing Impulsive and Unplanned Consumer Behavior The line between impulse and unplanned is not always clear because some unplanned acts are impulsive, and many impulsive acts are unplanned. Simple unplanned purchases usually lack any real emotional involvement or significant amounts of self-gratification or even negative consequences. [Instructor PPT Slide 13] C. Susceptibility to Situational Effects All consumers are susceptible to unplanned and impulsive behavior but not all consumers are equally susceptible. Impulsivity is a personality trait that represents how sensitive a consumer is to immediate rewards. Online retailers can facilitate impulse buying process by making the transaction a simple one-step process. D. Consumer Self-Regulation A key personality trait that affects a consumer’s tendency to do things that are unplanned or impulsive is self-regulatory capacity. Consumer self-regulation in this sense refers to a tendency for consumers to inhibit outside, or situational, influences from interfering with shopping intentions. Consumers with a high capacity to self-regulate their behavior are sometimes referred to as action-oriented, whereas consumers with a low capacity to self-regulate are referred to as state-oriented. Action-oriented consumers are affected less by emotions generated by a retail atmosphere than are state-oriented consumers. Likewise, state-oriented shoppers’ spending behavior is strongly affected by feelings of dominance in the environment which increase hedonic shopping value and decrease utilitarian shopping value. In contrast, action-oriented shoppers’ purchasing and shopping value perceptions are unaffected by dominance. Self-regulation is related to a consumer’s desire, and intention, to purchase such new products. Retailers with a high proportion of state-oriented consumers in their target market are more likely to thrive on consumers’ impulse purchases. Exhibit 11.4 lists some questions that help distinguish consumers based on self-regulatory capacity. The exhibit shows a statement and then demonstrates the way a consumer would respond to the situation. Unplanned purchases are often simply things consumers would indeed intend to buy if they had remembered them before they started shopping. Impulse purchases can also be a relatively harmless way that consumers control their emotions and improve their outlook on life. E. Impulsive versus Compulsive Behavior Impulsive and compulsive consumer behavior share many of the same characteristics. Compulsive behavior can be emotionally involving and certainly entails the possibility of negative consequences. Compulsive consumer behavior can be distinguished from impulsive consumer behavior. The three distinguishing characteristics are: Compulsive consumer behavior is harmful. Compulsive CB seems to be uncontrollable. Compulsive CB is driven by chronic depression. Q: Discuss examples of impulsive buying and compulsive buying. A: Students’ answers will vary. For example, buying a bar of chocolate at the checkout counter would be an example of impulsive buying. Compulsive buying would be purchasing things you don’t need and don’t really want. LO: 11-5. Use the concept of atmospherics to create consumer value. V. Places Have Atmospheres All consumer behavior takes place in some physical space. Sometimes marketing managers easily forget that the physical environment can play a significant role in shaping buying behavior and the value a consumer receives from shopping or service. A. Retail and Service Atmospherics In consumer behavior, the term atmospherics pertains refers to the emotional nature of an environment or, more precisely, to the feelings created by the total aura of physical attributes that comprise the physical environment. Exhibit 11.6 provides a summary of the dimensions and what they can create. The term servicescape refers to the physical environment in which consumer services are performed. Each servicescape has its own unique environment. [Instructor PPT Slide 19] Functional Quality The functional quality of an environment describes the meaning created by the total result of the attributes that facilitate and make efficient the function performed there. In a shopping environment, this includes convenience in all of its forms: the number and helpfulness of employees, ease of parking and movement through the environment, and breadth and depth of merchandise, along with other characteristics that facilitate the shopping task. In a service environment, the amount and expertise of service employees, the convenience of the environment, and the capability of the support staff, among other things, all contribute to the functional quality of the service environment. These core benefits greatly facilitate utilitarian value. Affective Quality The affective quality represents the emotional meaning of an environment, which results from the sum effect of all ambient attributes that affect the way a consumer feels in that place. All consumers are susceptible to the effects of affective quality, but female consumers appear much more demanding based on how they react to a place with a negative affective quality. Functional quality and affective quality are positively related. An environment with a favorable functional quality tends to be associated with some degree of positive affect. B. Atmosphere Elements The way an atmosphere makes a consumer feel is really determined by the consumer’s perception of all of the elements in a given environment working together. Two factors help merchandisers and retail designers create just such an atmosphere: Fit refers to how appropriate the elements of an environment are for a given environment. Congruity refers to how consistent the elements of an environment are with each other. [Instructor PPT slide 15] Odors Odors are prominent environmental elements that affect both a consumer’s cognitive processing and affective reaction. Olfactory is a term that refers to a human’s physical and psychological processing of smells. Designers need to keep in mind that a scent, like other elements, works best when it fits with the setting. Music Both foreground and background music affect consumers, but they do so in different ways. Foreground music is music that becomes the focal point of attention and can have strong effects on a consumer’s willingness to approach or avoid an environment. From a consumer behavior standpoint, background music, which is music played below the audible threshold that would make it the center of attention, is perhaps more interesting than foreground music. Service providers and retailers generally provide some type of background music for customers. The speed of background music determines the speed at which consumers shop. Slower music means slower shopping. Faster music means faster shopping. The tempo of music affects the patience of consumers. Faster music makes consumers less patient. The presence of background music enhances service quality perceptions relative to an environment with no background music. Pop music used in the background contributes to discount store perceptions. Incongruent music lowers consumers’ quality perceptions. The fit of the music to other elements in the environment and to the type of service offered shapes consumer reactions. These factors are important for retail managers interested in managing quality and value perceptions. The fit of the music to the environment helps explain consumer reactions. Color Color is another tool that marketing managers can use to alter consumer reactions by enhancing visual appeal. Some colors are more liked than other colors, but liking isn’t really the key to understanding consumer reactions to color. Color affects both quality and price perceptions. Lighting Lighting can have dramatic effects on the environment and even reverse the effect of color. Change a store’s lighting to soft lights and consumers’ opinions regarding the product with a warm background change considerably. Fluorescent lights not only provide bright white light that can seem unnatural, but they oscillate, meaning they turn off and on about a hundred times per second. Some people find the lighting very annoying and claim that it leads to eye-strain and headaches. Merchandising Merchandising’s point is to provide the customer with the best opportunity to purchase something. This is done by the placement of goods and store fixtures, along with the use of signage. Q: How important is the ambiance of a store to you as a consumer? A: Students’ answers will vary. Students can describe layout, odor, use of music, and colors used by stores to encourage consumers to buy. Social Settings Crowding refers to the density of people and objects within a given space. A space can be crowded without any people. However, shopper density, meaning the number of consumers in a given space, can still exert relatively strong influences on consumer behavior. Crowding actually exerts a nonlinear effect on consumers, meaning that a plot of the effect by the amount of crowding does not make a straight line. Exhibit 11.8 illustrates the way crowding works, particularly with respect to shopper density. Generally, consumers are not particularly attracted to an environment with no other consumers. The lack of consumers might signal poor quality or, in other cases, an absence of other consumers is simply awkward. Crowding affects utilitarian shopping value less strongly than hedonic shopping value in part because of the negative affect caused by crowding. Both the number and type of salespeople can also affect shoppers. In particular, salespeople and service providers should have an appropriate appearance for the type of product sold. Salespeople and service providers are an important source of information and influence. Source attractiveness is defined as the degree to which a source’s physical appearance matches a consumer’s prototype (expectations) for beauty and elicits a favorable or desirous response. Emotional ability refers to a salesperson who is capable of conveying emotional information to shape a more valuable outcome for consumers. Social comparison is a naturally occurring mental personal comparison of the self with a target individual. An upward comparison means the target is better and a downward comparison means the target is inferior. LO: 11-6. Understand what is meant by antecedent conditions. VI. Antecedent Conditions The term antecedent conditions refers to situational characteristics that a consumer brings to a particular information-processing, purchase, or consumption environment. Events occurring prior to this particular point in time have created a situation. Antecedent conditions include economic resources, mood, and other emotional perceptions such as fear. They can shape the value in a situation by framing the events that take place. [Instructor PPT slide 16] A. Economic Resources Buying Power The economic resources a consumer brings to a particular purchase setting refer to the consumer’s buying power. Buying power can be in the form of cash on hand, credit, or money available by draft or debit card systems like Paypal, iTunes, or debit card. Among all methods of payment, cash payments have a way of emphasizing the sacrifice required for purchase. Overall, the method of payment represents a situational influence on consumers in several ways. Third Party Payments Sometimes, consumers need not spend their own money to make purchases. Instead, some third party provides the financial backing for the purchase. Sometimes another consumer, like a parent or guardian, an institution, like an insurance company or charity. The consumer’s employer or even the government sometimes pays for expenses or other items, particularly if the employee is travelling. When consumers are in essence spending somebody else’s money, they tend to be less price sensitive. Consumer Budgeting Most consumers do not prepare a formal budget and instead rely on mental budgeting. Mental budgeting is simply a memory accounting for recent spending. One result is that a consumer who has recently splurged on spending in one category will tend to make up for the exuberance through under-consumption in another category. Gift (Prepaid) Cards U.S. consumers report purchasing an average of nearly five and one-half gift cards per year, and apparently consumers like getting them. For some consumers, gift cards offer no great allure and are either forgotten or seen as too much trouble to redeem, illustrating that costs beyond money costs are involved in the total value equation. B. Orientation Gift shopping can change a consumer’s orientation. When gift shopping, things that might otherwise be pleasant distract the consumer. Employees who sense the orientation and can adjust their approach will create higher value for the consumer. C. Mood Consumers bring their current mood to the particular consumption situation. Consumers in particularly bad moods may have a tendency to binge consume. Mood can also affect shopping. The mood that consumers bring to the shopping environment can exaggerate the actual experience. Mood can also affect spending and consumer satisfaction. Shoppers who go shopping in a bad mood are particularly likely to buy only what they absolutely need and experience lower consumer satisfaction than consumers in good moods. D. Security and Fearfulness Consumers today live with the ever-present reminders of vandalism, crime, and even terrorism. Shopping malls, markets, airports, and other places where large numbers of consumers gather are consistently mentioned as potential terrorist targets, providing another reason for consumers to feel less secure. Fearfulness can affect consumers in multiple ways: Consumers who go shopping in a fearful mood will not go about their shopping in the same manner. Fearful consumers will tend to buy less and enjoy the experience less. Consumer may cope with the fear of shopping by utilizing non-store outlets, such as the Internet, as a seemingly safer means of doing business. Thus, retailers who pay attention to making their parking and shopping environments more secure can help eliminate the feelings of fear some shoppers may have otherwise. Exhibit 11.9 lists some ways fearfulness may be reduced among consumers. Video material for this chapter is starting on page 27 of this IM.fa Instructor Manual for CB Consumer Behaviour Barry J. Babin, Eric G. Harris 9781305403222, 9781305577244
