Marketing Chapter 11 Consumers Situations Learning Objectives After Studying This Students Should Able

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Chapter 11

Consumers in Situations

Learning Objectives

After studying this chapter, students should be able to accomplish the following objectives.

11-2 Know the different ways that time affects consumer behavior.

11-4 Distinguish the concepts of unplanned, impulse, and compulsive consumer behavior.

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.

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 the

following:

• 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?

A. Situations and Value [Instructor PPT Slides 3 and 4]

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

LO: 11-2. Know the different ways that time affects consumer behavior.

II. Time and Consumer Behavior [Instructor PPT Slide 5]

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

A. Time Pressure [Instructor PPT Slide 6]

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.

B. Spare Time [Instructor PPT Slide 7]

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 that make their routine

activities convenient, such as getting service on the car or, house cleaning, or electronic

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. The

consumer becomes the marketer as part of the sharing economy.

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.

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 such as one’s working hours. But part is also biological. In fact, human bodies have a

Q: Discuss examples which illustrate the relationship between time and product

consumption. Look at all three categories.

E. Advertiming [Instructor PPT Slide 8]

Companies sometimes buy advertising with a schedule that runs the advertisement primarily

at times when customers will be most receptive to the message. This practice is known as

advertiming. Advertisers traditionally practice advertiming based on seasonal patterns and

even on day-to-day changes in the weather.

LO: 11-3. Analyze shopping as a consumer activity using the different categories of

shopping activities.

III. Place Shapes Shopping Activities

Many of the activities involved 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?

Q: What motivates you as a consumer to buy things or postpone the act of buying? What

is shopping in your view?

A. What Is Shopping? [Instructor PPT Slide 9]

Shopping can be defined as the set of potentially value-producing consumer activities that

directly increase the likelihood that something will be purchased. Shopping represents 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 exist in the virtual shopping world too. Images

play a key role in shaping the virtual shopping experience. However, care should be taken, as

that purchase software hope to leverage the information that consumers leave behind into

more customized and therefore more effective sales appeals.

C. Shopping Activities [Instructor PPT Slides 10 and 11]

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. The following are the four types of shopping activities:

• Acquisitional shopping—activities oriented toward a specific, intended purchase or

purchases

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

Experiential Shopping [Instructor PPT Slide 12]

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 experience can result in more

than one type of activity. A body of theory known as reversal theory tries to explain how

D. Shopping Value [Instructor PPT Slide 13]

All shopping activities are aimed at one key result—value. Personal shopping value (PSV)

is the overall subjective worth of a shopping activity considering all associated costs and

E. Value and Shopping Activities

All shopping activities provide value in different ways to different consumers. The old term

window shopping illustrates this point. Some consumers window-shop to find information so

that an upcoming shopping trip might be more successful. Consumers may also window-shop

Retail Personality [Instructor PPT Slide 14]

Retailers specializing in things like a wide selection of goods, low prices, guarantees, and

knowledgeable employees can provide high proportions of utilitarian shopping value. This

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?

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:

• Impulsive acts are usually spontaneous and involve at least short-term feelings of

liberation.

• Impulsive acts are usually associated with a diminished regard for any costs or

A. Impulsive versus Unplanned Consumer Behavior [Instructor PPT Slide 15]

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 are characterized by the following:

• Situational memory—it characterizes unplanned acts because something in the

environment, such as a point-of-purchase display, usually triggers the knowledge in

deliberation or prior decision making.

B. Distinguishing Impulsive and Unplanned Consumer Behavior

The line between impulse and unplanned purchases is not always clear because some unplanned

acts are impulsive, and many impulsive acts are unplanned. Simple unplanned purchases usually

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

D. Consumer Self-Regulation [Instructor PPT Slides 16 and 17]

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

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. Further, feelings of 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.

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 [Instructor PPT Slides 18 and 19]

Impulsive and compulsive consumer behavior share many of the same characteristics.

Compulsive behavior can be emotionally involving and certainly entail negative

consequences. Compulsive consumer behavior can be distinguished from impulsive consumer

behavior. The following are the three distinguishing characteristics:

Q: Discuss examples of impulsive buying and compulsive buying.

LO: 11-5. Use the concept of atmospherics to create consumer value.

V. Places Have Atmospheres

All consumption 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 [Instructor PPT Slides 20 and 21]

In consumer behavior, the term atmospherics refers to the emotional nature of an

environment or, more precisely, to the feelings created by the total aura of physical attributes

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 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.

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

B. Atmosphere Elements [Instructor PPT Slides 22 and 23]

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.

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.

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

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: As a consumer, how important is the ambience of a store to you?

Social Settings [Instructor PPT Slide 24]

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.

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

LO: 11-6. Understand what is meant by antecedent conditions.

VI. Antecedent Conditions [Instructor PPT Slide 25]

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.

A. Economic Resources

Buying Power

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, the third party is

another consumer, like a parent or guardian, or an institution, like an insurance company or

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

Gift (Prepaid) Cards

Surveys suggest gift cards are the most frequently requested gift item in the United States

which explains in part why over two billion of them are sold annually. Not all cards get

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 affects shopping

behavior. Consumers in good moods find more hedonic shopping value, but they can be more

prone to buy as well.

D. Security and Fearfulness

Consumers today live with the ever-present reminders of vandalism, crime, and even

terrorism. Shopping malls, markets, airports, cafés, and other places where consumers

frequently gather are all too often the site of terrorist attacks. Some consumers give fear of

terrorism as one reason why they prefer to do their holiday shopping online rather than in

crowded shopping venues.

End of Chapter Material

Review Questions

(*) Indicates material on prep cards.

1. How does a travel situation influence the value of certain things? List at least five

considerations that might shape value for a traveling consumer.