Page 143 - DMGT551_RETAIL_BUSINESS_ENVIRONMENT

Retail Business Environment

Notes Following factors are involved while mapping out the society for retail business:
Psychographics

Consumer psychographics has so far remained an interesting and integral part of retail
management. How can we explain this term in most simplistic terms. It is the “pick me up”
appeal in the product. Products vie among themselves with their designed or created appeals. It
is just a misunderstanding that by publicity, promotions and ads, products reach millions of
homes of the consumers. Moreover products carry cogent appeals to motivate buyers unto
buying.
“The motive is to drive the impulse to the heart of the buyer to buy, without leaving it just in his
ears because heart is near to pocket, not the ears”- Remarked an experienced marketing manager
in Indian industries. It is said that like the humans products are young today, old tomorrow and
dead day-after-tomorrow. So the focus has to be on designing a product having a strong “pick
me up” appeal. Like a human this appeal just remains for a limited period. As new innovations
are born, products grow in age; the appeal gets lost and fades gradually. Creating a strong
appeal to buy the product requires market knowledge- an in-depth analysis of situations in the
market.
What do you understand from the term “psychographics”? By psychographics we come to terms
with the psychological profiles of the buyers. The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as
means to study and measure attitudes, values, lifestyles and opinions of consumers for marketing
purposes. In plural it implies the data obtained from such studies.
By Psychographics, we mean a quantitative investigation about buyer’s personal characteristics
and lifestyles.

It describes the “Psychological make-up” of the buyers by knowing their following characteristics:
Attitudes
Values

Interests and activities
Demographics
Media patterns
Usage pattern
Attitudes: How attitudes form parts of consumer psychographics? Research has always shown
that people learn from belief and attitudes. Beliefs are descriptive thoughts about something.
Those may be based on knowledge, opinion and faith. For instance you have faith in Astrology
and therefore you believe in planets and their good and bad power. Gradually those beliefs
harden into attitudes and influence your behavior.

Now you take the same instance of your belief in Astrology. You have learnt from your belief
that eating non-vegetarian food on Saturday could produce evil effects. The same belief has
educated you that visiting a temple on Saturday produces good results.
You visit a temple with fruits and sweets as offering to God. Gradually those form your attitudes
and bring attitudinal changes within you. You will always tend to buy vegetarian food on
Saturday and avoid purchasing any kind of non-vegetarian stuff. This is how you learn things,
form beliefs and attitudes, which influence your purchase behavior tremendously.

Values: What role value plays in your purchase behavior? It is sure that you have lived within a
culture, which has got different values. Culture is defined as the sum total of learned beliefs,

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