MODEL OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

In earlier times, marketers could understand consumers well through the daily experience of selling to them. But as firms and markets have grown in size, many marketing decision makers have lost direct contact with their customers. Most marketers have had to turn to consumer research. They are spending more money than ever to study consumers, trying to learn more about consumer behavior. The company that really understands how consumers will respond to different product features, prices, and advertising appeals has a great advantage over its competitors. Therefore, companies and academics have heavily researched the relationship between marketing stimuli and consumers response. PERSONAL CHRACTERISTICS AFFECTING CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

Consumer purchases are strongly influenced by cultural, social, personal, and psychological characteristics. Cultural Factors:
Cultural factors exert the broadest and deepest influence on consumer behavior. The marketer needs to understand the roles played by the buyer’s culture, subculture, and social class. Culture is the most basic cause of a person’s wants and behavior. Growing up in a society, a child learns basic values, perceptions, wants, and behaviors from the family and other important institutions.
Subculture - each culture contains smaller subcultures, or groups of people with shared value systems based on common life experiences and situations. Nalionality groups such as the Irish, Polish, Italians, and Hispanics are found within larger communities and have distinct ethnic tastes and interests. Racial groups such as the blacks and Asians have distinct culture styles and attitudes. Many of these subcultures make up important market segments, and marketers often disign products and marketing programs tailored to the needs of these segments.
Social class - almost every society has some form of social class structure. Social classes are relatively permanent and ordered divisions in a society whose members share similar values, interests, and behaviors. Social class is not determined by a single factor such as income but is measured as a combination of occupation, income, education, wealth, and other variables. Marketers are interested in social class because people within a given social class tend to exhibit similar behavior, including buying behavior.