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Consumer Behaviour

Notes Whenever consumer behaviour occurs in the context of a multi-person household, several
different tasks or roles as mentioned in the table below may be performed in acquiring and
consuming a product or service.
Table 1.1: Selected Consumer Behaviour Roles

Role Description
Initiator Initiator is the individual who determines that some need or want is not being
fulfilled and authorises a purchase to rectify the situation.
Gatekeeper Influences the family’s processing of information. The gatekeeper has the greatest
expertise in acquiring and evaluating the information.
Influencer Influencer is a person who, by some intentional or unintentional word or action,
influences the buying decision, actual purchase and/or the use of product or service.
Decider The person or persons who actually determine which product or service will be
chosen.
Buyer Buyer is an individual who actually makes the purchase transaction.
User(s) User is a person most directly involved in the use or consumption of the purchased
product.

Task Whom should the marketers target – Buyers or Users? Does the decision depend
on the type of products?

Different household members can perform each of the roles singly or collectively. For example,
in deciding which videocassette to rent for entertainment, parents might decide on the movie
but children may play a role directly by making their preferences known, or indirectly when
parents keep the children’s likes in mind. One parent may actually go to the store to get the
video, but the entire family may watch it.

1.4 Origin and Development in the Field of Consumer Behaviour

For a variety of reasons, the study of consumer behaviour has developed as an important and
separate branch in marketing discipline. Scholars of marketing had observed that consumers
did not always behave as suggested by economic theory. The size of the consumer market in all
the developed and rapidly developing economies of the world was extensive. A huge population
of consumers was spending large sums of money on goods and services. Besides this, consumer
preferences were shifting and becoming highly diversified. Even in case of industrial markets,
where the need for goods and services is generally more homogenous, buyers’ preferences were
becoming diversified and they too were exhibiting less predictable purchase behaviour.
Marketing researchers involved in studying buying behaviour of consumers soon appreciated
the fact that though there were many similarities, consumers were not all alike. There were
those who used products currently in vogue while many consumers did not like using “me too”
types of products and showed a preference for highly differentiated products that they felt met
their special needs and reflected their personalities and lifestyles.

These findings led to the development of market segmentation concept, which required dividing
the total heterogeneous but potential market into relatively smaller homogenous groups or
segments for which they could design a specific marketing mix. They also used positioning
techniques and developed promotional programmes to vary the image of their products so that
they were perceived as a better means to satisfying the specific needs of certain segments of
consumers.

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