Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having and Being

Perception can be defined as the process of recognition of sensory stimuli such as touch, vision, smell, sound etc. and interpreting them (Solomon, 2015). The needs, want and demands of each and every customer is unique as their perception is different towards the same product or services. For instance, one customer can perceive iphone as luxurious product and can be one of the loyal customers of this brand. In the same time, another customer may not like the features of iPhone and rather he loves to use the Samsung mobile. They have different perception towards the same product, so, they tend to show different preferences. The customer’s perception towards a product can be influenced by his/her own experiences with that product, and also his/her family and friend’s opinions towards that product. In addition, the packaging and brand name of product, price and quality of the product and services also influences the perception of consumer (Rawat, 2014). For instances, if we saw a high...

Consumer behavior can be defined in three words: buying, having and being. It is the study of the process which involves how, why and what an individual or group select, purchase, use and dispose the product, services, experiences or ideas to satisfy their needs and desires (Solomon, 2015). In simple word, Consumer behavior is the process consumers go through when they make purchases (Lombardo, n.d.). The exchange goods and services with monitory value occur in the market, in which two or more organizations or people try to satisfy their needs. It is an ongoing process. While purchase or exchange valuable items, the consumer goes through pre-purchase, purchase and post purchase stages while decision making. Consumer behavior is the study of how consumers behave in the market physically and psychologically, but the actual buying process depends on the decision made by the consumer. The decision making process of a consumer depends on his/her behavior which involves the steps such as...

Social media is a platform in which numbers of people unite, build and maintain a site (Solomon, 2015). Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Instagram, Tumbler, Linkedin etc. has been an important part of our daily life. The evolution and uses of the internet and social media have changed the behavior of consumer day by day. In the perspective of business people, the social media has very important role to connect and gather millions of people in one platform along with effective space for advertisement, marketing and to flow the message from upper class to lower class people. In the same manner, from the perspective of consumer, social media has provided a huge platform to share their experiences, leave their feedback, buy products online etc. A few years back, people buy a newspaper to update themselves about the current situation but nowadays, they tend to login social media and get the desired information within a minute.       ...

Social class can be defined as the hierarchical group of people which is mostly based on the occupation, income, education level, wealth or social network (Boundless, 2016). Most of the people classified the social class into three categories i.e. upper class, middle class, and lower class. Although social class is indicated by the one’s sense of taste and style, one of the best indicators to categorize these social classes is the type of occupation he or she is holding.  The occupation of a person determines the income level, time allocation for families, behavior while purchasing products, political orientation, as well as aesthetic preferences (Solomon, 2015). For example, The position of CEO in the government owned company is considered as one of the prestigious things in Nepal.  One person of our society is holding the position of CEO in one of the government bank of Nepal. The buying pattern and living behavior signify him as an upper class person. So, most of the peo...

Body language, eye movement, facial expression, conversation style, nuances of life experience differs from culture to culture which makes communication more challenging. So, it is very necessary to understand the context of culture to make the business profitable. Now, let’s define what high context culture actually is. High-context culture can be defined as the means of communication which is primarily broadcasted through the use of body language, tone of voice, or a person’s status (Williams, n.d.). We can find this kind of culture in Asia, Middle East, South America, Africa etc. The people who follow the high context culture emphasize on the interpersonal relationship and trust building is very important for them before starting any business. The people of Asia, Middle East, South America, and Africa preferred groups during learning and solving problems. For instance, people of India, China, and Nepal love to organize the family gathering, host a friend in our home overnight, an...

Attitude can be defined as the way we feel or think about objects, groups, symbols, events, or person which tend to affect our behavior towards that object or person. For instances, If a person likes J-series mobile of Samsung, then, we can say that he has positive attitude towards that product of Samsung. This will lead him to purchase the product which belongs to behavior aspect. Researchers traditionally believed that we form attitudes in fixed series, i.e. first, we form belief about objects, symbol or group, then, we evaluate them and we take some decisions to do some action.                                                                  Belief/ Cognition/knowledge The first path of attitude formation is creation of belief towards object, event or person. This belief can be inbuilt by processing information i.e....

Most of the people in the world are connected with virtual world. Some people are posting  their photos in Facebook, at the same time, some people are tweeting, some are searching partner for online dating, and some are fighting for cyber bullying. They are leaving their social footprints in virtual world. So, the digital self is a concept which expresses our online identities. Exploring of obstacle, convenience and conflicts via technology of professional and personal relationship also defines the digital self.  Consumer’s self-concept can be defined as the belief that a consumer holds about attributes of himself such as positivity, attractiveness, stability, intensity etc (Solomon, 2015). The self concept of consumers guides most of the purchase decision of him/her. If a consumer believes him as sporty person in his self concept, then, he love to purchase products which are mostly related with sports such as football club name in his mobile cover to football club’s st...

Halo effect is a psychological phenomenon (or cognitive bias) which allows people to give opinion of something due to favorable experience with another product made by the same producer or by the different one (Halo effect, 2009).  Halo effect has been used in most of the arena of management which can affect productivity and morale of a person, object or organization positively or negatively. For instance, if interviewer saw a smart and good looking lady, then halo effect allows the interviewer to assume that she is intelligent, smart, and proficient. Halo effect can create positive as well as negative influence in the consumer behavior. Example of marketing Halo effect in marketing Coca cola has been one of the most powerful brand in soft drink field in overall world. We can find coke in different varieties such as normal coke, diet coke, cherry coke, vanilla coke, caffeine free coke etc. These varieties of coke have been successful to make their reputation in the market....

Every second, we are exposed to different kinds of stimuli such as light, heat, color, sound, texture, odor, etc. The process of grabbing such stimuli by our sense organs is known as sensation and perception is defined as the procedure by which human being choose, organize and interpret these sensations (Solomon, 2015). Our brain clutches the external stimuli through numbers of channels i.e. sense organs and processes it to generate meaningful values. The perception process comprises of exposure to stimuli, the attention of stimulus and interpretation of that. Interpretation simply means the action of explaining something from the sensed information and organizing them and turning that into something we can categorize. We interpret stimuli based on our attention level according to our learned patterns and expectations. The meanings we use to explain a single and same event can differ depending on the individual’s past experiences, knowledge, self-concept, needs, and expectation. We ...

            Claude Lévi-Strauss, father of modern anthropology, has come up with the idea of Binary opposition. According to him, a binary opposition is a pair of related terms or concepts that are opposite in meaning (Swan, 2011). It is the key concept of anthropology, sociology, and structuralism to know how the human being are interrelated with each other, system and the environment and how they work together.  In the society, we can find the concept of binary opposition in each and every sector, for instances, if we found rich person in particular area then poor person also exists in that place. In the same manner, low culture and high culture people stays in the same society. The principle of binary opposition has increased competition among each other and also, has created gap among people leading to prejudice and discrimination (Marinaro, n.d.)            Nowadays, marketers also started to use the principles and...

Perception can be defined as the process of recognition of sensory stimuli such as touch, vision, smell, sound etc. and interpreting them (Solomon, 2015). The needs, want and demands of each and every customer is unique as their perception is different towards the same product or services. For instance, one customer can perceive iPhone as luxurious product and can be one of the loyal customers of this brand. In the same time, another customer may not like the features of iPhone and rather he loves to use the Samsung mobile. They have different perception towards the same product, so, they tend to show different preferences. The customer’s perception towards a product can be influenced by his/her own experiences with that product, and also his/her family and friend’s opinions towards that product. In addition, the packaging and brand name of product, price and quality of the product and services also influences the perception of consumer (Rawat, 2014). For instances, if we saw a hi...