Stimulus Response Theory
The stimulus-response model is the first thing you need to know to understand how buyers act. The buyer is affected by marketing and environmental factors. Some purchases are made because of the buyer’s traits and the way they make decisions. According to marketers, their job is to figure out what goes on in the buyer’s mind between outside stimuli and the decision to buy.
There are cultural, social, and personal factors that affect what people buy. The biggest and most important effect is caused by cultural factors. Culture is the main thing that determines what people want and how they act. Each culture is made up of smaller subcultures that help people identify and connect with others in more specific ways. Subcultures are made up of people from the same country, religion, race, or region.
A lot of research into marketing showed that mass-market ads didn’t always work well with certain racial and demographic groups. This led to the development of multicultural marketing. Almost all human societies have different levels of social status. This kind of segregation can happen in the form of a caste system, where people from different castes are raised to play certain roles and can’t leave their caste.
Usually, stratification comes in the form of social classes, which are long-lasting, mostly similar groups in society whose members share similar values, interests, and behaviours and are arranged in a hierarchy.
There are a few things that social classes have in common:
(a) People from the same social class act more like each other than people from two different classes.
According to a person’s social class, they are seen as being in a lower or higher position.
- c) A group of variables, like occupation, income, etc., rather than a single variable, show social class.
It is possible for people to move up or down the social ladder.
- e) In many areas, people from different social classes have different tastes in products and brands.
- f) Different social classes like different kinds of media. One of them speaks a different language.
Besides cultural factors, a consumer’s actions are also affected by social factors like family, friends, and their social roles and statuses. Your reference group is made up of all the people or groups that have an effect on your behaviour or attitudes, either directly or indirectly. What are membership groups? They are groups that have a direct effect on a person.
Some membership groups are very important, like family, neighbours, and coworkers, with whom a person interacts regularly and informally. Religious and professional groups, for example, tend to be more formal and are not the main ones that people join.
The people in your reference group have a big effect on you in at least three ways. One, they expose a person to new behaviours and ways of life, which can change their attitudes and ideas about themselves (how one views oneself). Two, they put pressure on people to follow the rules, which could change the products and brands people choose. Third, people are also affected by groups they are not a part of. People join aspirational groups when they want to, and they leave associative groups when they don’t agree with their values or behaviours. These things are looked at by the buyer along with the price to get the total customer cost.
When making products that are heavily influenced by groups, companies need to figure out how to reach and sway the opinion leaders in those groups. An opinion leader is someone who, through casual conversations about a product, gives advice or information about a certain product or group of products. Marketers try to get in touch with opinion leaders by finding out what demographic and psychological traits are linked to opinion leadership and which media outlets opinion leaders like to use.
Consumer decision-making behaviour includes buying roles and decisions about what to buy. A customer can be an initiator, an influencer, a decider, a buyer, a preparer, a maintainer, or a disposer when they buy something. A buyer’s choices are also affected by things about them personally.
Some of these are the buyer’s age and stage in life, their job and finances, their personality and sense of self, and their lifestyle and values. Everybody has different personality traits that affect how they buy things. Kotler says that a brand’s personality is the unique mix of human traits that people can connect with that brand.
The following five traits were found by Jennifer Aaker:
- Being honest (down-to-earth)
- The thrill of (daring)
- Ability to Do (reliable)
- Getting smarter (upper class)
- A toughness (outdoorsy).
People choose to buy and use brands whose personalities match how they see themselves. In some cases, the match is based on the consumer’s ideal self-concept, or how he wants to see himself. In other cases, it is based on how others see themselves (how he thinks others see him).
A person’s way of life, shown through their activities, interests, and beliefs, is called their lifestyle. Lifestyle shows how a person interacts with their surroundings as a whole. Marketers try to find links between their goods and groups of people with certain lifestyles. How people live their lives is affected by whether they are short on money or time. People who are short on time often do more than one thing at once.