Customer Behaviour & Decision Making Report
Spyros Langkos
Sign up for access to the world's latest research
checkGet notified about relevant papers
checkSave papers to use in your research
checkJoin the discussion with peers
checkTrack your impact
Abstract
09/2014; DOI: 10.13140/2.1.1920.4489 This report concentrates on providing a balanced view about the benefits and drawbacks of approaching customers as group segments or as individual consumers, by providing academic underpinning from reputable sources & personal critique. “...Our DNA is as a consumer company - for that individual customer who's voting thumbs up or thumbs down. That's who we think about. And we think that our job is to take responsibility for the complete user experience. And if it's not up to par, it's our fault, plain and simply. “ Steve Jobs The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of multiple actors in the customer behaviour and STP process, while observing the impact of key areas, such as: culture, globalisation, current marketing trends, postmodernism and brand affection. This study aims to contribute to the understanding of complexity, regarding market segmentation. The paper discusses the various problems that today’s marketer’s face and focuses on the emerging challenges of the new marketing reality. This paper mainly deals with the concepts and issues surrounding the matter of consumption. Consumption is a complex social phenomenon, in which people consume goods or services for reasons beyond their basic use. A consumer society is one in which the entire society is organized around the consumption and display of commodities, through which individuals gain prestige and identity. Given the above context, globalization brings about diverse trends, cultural differentiation and cultural hybridization (Pieterse, 1996). The term “consumer culture” refers to cultures in which mass consumption fuels the economy and shapes perceptions, values, desires, and personal identity. Consumers do not make their decisions in a blank moment. Their purchases are highly influenced by cultural, social and psychological factors. Therefore, a customer’s want has to be identified and his expectations must be matched with the other economic and social factors. The world is moving and changing at a pace that is both positive and negative in a way. Britain is an exceptional example of this ongoing situation. London is now more diverse than any city that has ever existed. Altogether, more than 300 languages are spoken by the people of London, and the city has at least 50 non-indigenous communities with populations of 10,000 or more. (www.statistics.gov.uk) People are changing from time to time, so do their tastes and preferences. Marketers are always concerned about cultural shifts and keen to discover new products or services that consumers may want. Understanding the ingredients and drivers of global consumer culture is the key to gaining insight regarding consumer behavior. In a diversified country like UK, culture not only influences consumer behavior but also reflects it. Marketing strategies are unlikely to change cultural values, but marketing does influence culture.
Related papers
An integrative framework for cross-cultural consumer
The world economy is becoming increasingly cross-cultural. During the next decades, as marketers enter new international markets, an understanding of how culture influences consumer behavior will be crucial for both managers and consumer researchers. This article presents a framework that integrates and reinterprets current research in cross-cultural consumer behavior. The framework also serves to identify areas that need further research and can be used as a template for marketers seeking to understand their foreign consumers. The article also attempts to integrate from an applied perspective two distinct traditions in the study of culture and consumer behavior: the anthropological approach and the cross-cultural psychology tradition.
On becoming a culturally plural consumer
Journal of Consumer Marketing, 2011
Purpose -This paper aims to examine consumption behavior to understand how individuals become culturally plural consumers through exploratory research conducted in one of the world's most urban multi-cultural environments, the UAE. As a starting point consumption was deemed as "consummatory" in accord with Holbrook. Design/methodology/approach -The data were collected through 20 interviews with UAE residents. This included men and women, ages ranging from 20s to 60s, representing 11 countries from five continents. Broadly a hermeneutic approach was followed in eliciting how culturally plural consumption behaviors emerged and interpreting how the process unfolded. The study examined multicultural habits pertaining to products or services chosen by the respondents. These covered food, cuisine, books, beverages, music, dance, clothes, TV and health treatments among others. Findings -Patterns of consumption acts create a consumption behavior that may be described as extemporaneous, expedient and emergent. The nature of the consumption process depends on a host of triggers that includes culturally diverse predisposition of the consumer, multi-cultural identities, social cues, contextual factors and individuals' proclivity towards experimentalism. Taken together it is found that the praxis of becoming a culturally plural consumer is a learning process that has an emergent quality. Research limitations/implications -This study is exploratory and qualitative in nature with no firm conclusions. Practical implications -In culturally plural markets consumers have to be approached with a fine brush. Many of the current taken-for-granted ideals of marketing will be questioned by the approach suggested in this paper. As Stewart aptly said, understanding of praxis "would allow for practical action, based on edifying philosophy". Originality/value -While Holbrook's idea of consummation is a metaphor for consumption that is well-known, it is not adequately understood nor followed up with research. This inquiry into consumption praxis is a contribution to that end with significant implications for twenty-first-century marketing.
Consumer cultural studies
Catálogo editorial
This collaborative publishing project was built following those trends; it embraced the participation of diverse international authors, whose perception, rationale and research development helped signify the interest and need for an in-depth approach in consumer cultural studies to provide perspectives to tackle the market’s influence over popular culture, its diverse identity resources and intersections between influential analytical categories, such as surroundings, organizations and circulation and distribution of tangible and intangible products
1.3 Intercultural Marketing
Handbook of Intercultural Communication and Cooperation, 2010
Everyone wants to have "Billy". That's why the Swedish furniture manufacturer IKEA embarked on the long journey to the "Middle Kingdom" and opened its 150th branch in Beijing (Wenderoth and Schmitz 2002). The step onto the Chinese market is entirely in tune with the spirit of globalizationassuming that practically anything can be sold anywhere in the global marketplace. Hence, the 5000 items in the Beijing branch are identical to the ones in Hamburg or Stockholm (Wenderoth and Schmitz 2002). As convincing as IKEA's sales strategy may be, the limits of globalization become evident again and again where culture-specific aspects are involved. The following examples appear both amusing and bizarre: Chinese children don't wear diapers. Instead a hole is left in the crotch of their pants to allow the contents of the diaper free access to nature. This situation causes concern for those responsible for childcare on the ground floor as they wonder if it's advisable to "fill the basin with thousands of red plastic balls" (Wenderoth and Schmitz 2002, p. 172). Western observers find the way Chinese customers settle down matterof-factly for a nap in one of the comfortable exhibition beds or sofas equally odd. Toward noontime, when things begin to slow down, the sales floor turns into a regular dormitory (Wenderoth and Schmitz 2002, p. 169). Examples like these do not yet pose serious problems for marketing. They do indicate, however, that consumer behavior is far from reflecting global behavior-just one of the cultural characteristics that marketing must be aware of. Considerations of this kind will be discussed here. The emphasis in this contribution will be on the psychological aspects of marketing, in particular on the conformity of market participants and less on the logistics required in implementing the marketing mix. 1.3.1 Standardization and Differentiation A key question in international marketing is often: Can the marketing strategy be the same for all targeted countries? Can the advertising be the same? Does product design or labeling need to be changed depending on
Multicultural perspectives in customer behaviour
Journal of Marketing Management, 2010
With globalisation taking centre stage in the business world and multiculturalism affecting markets and societies, there is a need to understand the ways that customers respond to the changing marketplace from international and multicultural perspectives. This special edition comprises a set of papers on the theme of 'Multicultural Perspectives in Customer Behaviour', emerging from the 6th Customer Research Academy Workshop Series (CRAWS) hosted by Manchester and Lancaster Universities in April 2008.
Cross Cultural Perceptive of
Consumer Behavior-An Overview
Shanlax publication, 2018
Culture is everything that is socially learned and shared by the people from an overall population. Culture contains material and nonmaterial components. Nonmaterial culture joins the words people use; and the inclinations they look for after. Material culture involves all the physical substance that have been changed and used by people, for instance, gadgets, auto mobiles, lanes and farms. In an advancing and client direct setting, doodads of the material culture would fuse each one of the things and organizations which are made and exhausted. Displaying associations, for instance, safe way stores. Nonmaterial culture would consolidate the way by which customers shop in super markets, our need for fresher and better things, and our response to the word bargain. Introduction As the broadest part of the full scale social condition, culture has an unavoidable impacts customer. However in spite of expanding research consideration, culture stays troublesome for advertisers to get it. Many definitions have confounded specialists about what "culture" is or how culture attempts to impact shoppers. Luckily late hypothetical advancement help clear up the idea of culture and how it influences individuals. We regard culture as the implying that are shared by the vast majority in a social gathering. In an expansive sense, social importance incorporate basic emotional responses. run of the mill perception, and trademark examples of conduct. Simple society sets up its own vision of the world and develops that social world by making and utilizing implications to speaks to essential social refinements.
How globalisation affects consumers: Insights from thirty years of CCT globalisation research
2019
Understanding how globalisation affects consumers is a key concern of international marketing research. Consumer culture theory (CCT) studies contribute to this stream of research by critically examining how globalisation affects consumers under different cultural conditions. We offer a systematic narrative synthesis of thirty years of CCT globalisation research to gain perspective on this important stream of research. We identify three theoretical perspectives – i.e., homogenisation, glocalisation and deterritorialisation – that have shaped the ways in which CCT scholars have approached globalisation phenomena. We discuss each perspective with regards to its underlying notion of culture, its assumptions of power relations between countries and the role that it ascribes to individuals in globalisation processes. We problematise these perspectives and show how CCT research has challenged and extended each perspective, focusing specifically on consumer empowerment, consumer identity a...
Related papers
Cultural Influences on Representations of the Consumer in Marketing Theory
… of marketing theory, 2009
Consumer Culture Theory
Journal of Consumer Research, 2005
This article provides a synthesizing overview of the past 20 yr. of consumer research addressing the sociocultural, experiential, symbolic, and ideological aspects of consumption. Our aim is to provide a viable disciplinary brand for this research tradition that we call consumer culture theory (CCT). We propose that CCT has fulfilled recurrent calls for developing a distinctive body of theoretical knowledge about consumption and marketplace behaviors. In developing this argument, we redress three enduring misconceptions about the nature and analytic orientation of CCT. We then assess how CCT has contributed to consumer research by illuminating the cultural dimensions of the consumption cycle and by developing novel theorizations concerning four thematic domains of research interest. T he past 20 yr. of consumer research have produced a flurry of research addressing the sociocultural, experiential, symbolic, and ideological aspects of consumption. In this article, we offer a thematic overview of the motivating interests, conceptual orientations, and theoretical agendas that characterize this research stream to date, with a particular focus on articles published in the Journal of Consumer Research (JCR). Owing to the length constraints of this forum, we regrettably cannot give due consideration to the full spectrum of culturally oriented consumer research that appears in other publication venues such as the Euro
Consumer Culture Studies, a Glance at the Literature’s Contributions to the Concept
2020
Publishing a book on consumer culture studies originates from the need to review research conducted on this subject. Among the expectations of Politecnico Grancolombiano Institucion Universitaria, and as a result of reviews on the subject, this opportunity was identified within scientific literature. This book intends to be useful for readers by identifying international research trends in this field. It also aims to support the deci sion- making of marketing managers, with respect to consumers, and to have important input that fosters future research. To do so, the institution introduces the structure of this editorial project, which first identified relevant authors and made an initial call to authors based on an ap proach to the state of the art by implementing a systematic literature review (SLR) (Kitchenham, 2004). The call made in August 2017 proposed that a select group of authors participate in the project with a chapter of its structure, given that they have indicated thei...
A Framework for Cross-Cultural Consumer Research
2011
The aim of this paper is to construct a conceptual framework for cross-cultural consumer behaviour research. A conceptual background of cross-cultural consumer research was investigated based on McCracken’s culture and consumption theory and Hofstede’s national culture theory. Two theories are compared and then an integrated framework is proposed for cross-cultural consumer research. The proposed framework suggests that Hofstede’s cultural dimensions can be used to classify different cultural groups for macro level analysis and McCracken’s cultural categories, principles, and movement of meaning can be applied to explain individuals’ consumption behaviour for micro level analysis. The proposed conceptual framework offers considerable advantages for both marketing practitioners and researchers who are interested in studying consumption behaviour in two or more different culture groups.
Cross-cultural and cross-national consumer research: psychology, behavior and beyond
International Marketing Review, 2015
Globalization leads to a need to understand consumer behavior across national boundaries. The call for this special issue noted: "Consumers from different countries and cultures may be similar on some dimensions but differ on others. This provides researchers with the opportunity to explore how changes in multiple aspects of the cultural and national context can influence consumer theory." This special issue is particularly relevant given the blurring of geographic cultural boundaries and the reshaping of society though global flows relating to mediascapes, ethnoscapes, ideoscapes, technoscapes, and finanscapes . The blurring of boundaries and the associated emergence of a 'global consumer culture allows companies to standardize their branding and communication strategies. Nevertheless, meaningful cultural differences can still be found in consumer psychology and behavior across countries (e.g., . The extent to which consumer behaviors are influenced by culture is worthy of study from different approaches. The social collective, biological and cognitive approaches discussed by Briley et al.
Cross-Cultural Consumer/Consumption Research: Dealing with Issues Emerging from Globalization and Fragmentation
Qut Business School School of Advertising Marketing Public Relations, 2004
To understand the effects of globalization and fragmentation, macromarketing scholars need insights about links between individual consumer behavior and societal outcomes. The challenge in this regard is to create a program of macrooriented cross-cultural research. This article offers a crosscultural consumer behavior research framework for this purpose. The framework encompasses four key areas of consumer behavior that are related to the forces of globalization and fragmentation, including the environment, identity, wellbeing, and market structure and policy. A discussion of these substantive areas is followed by a suggested macro-microoriented research agenda and a call for paradigm plurality in pursuing this agenda.
Consumer Lifestyle Forming Under the Influence of National Culture
Management:Journal of Sustainable Business and Management Solutions in Emerging Economies, 2021
Research Question: This paper examines the influence of femininity and collectivism as a dimension of Serbian national culture on activities, interests and opinions, i.e., consumer lifestyle components. Motivation: Consumer lifestyle is largely shaped by the effects of the culture to which consumers belong. Starting from the relevant Kotler & Keller (2017) consumer behaviour model that demonstrates the previously given fact, as well as identified research gap related to investigating the influence of Hofstede's national culture dimensions on activities, interests and opinions as lifestyle components, the study gives useful insights into the importance of knowing and respecting cultural differences when defining marketing strategies that aim to shape or influence a particular consumer lifestyle. The study contributes to the existing literature by providing a new idea for developing a research framework that could be used in cross-cultural or consumer behaviour studies. Idea: The ...
Consumer Culture
The SAGE Encyclopedia of the Sociology of Religion , 2020
Consumer culture is a concept that defines our contemporary societies by highlighting the importance of consumption as a dominant social ethos—that is, as a system of dispositions that orients and structures actors’ conduct and thus shapes relations to the self, others, community, society, and the world. It is intimately linked to the concept of consumerism, which emphasizes the ideological, normative, and encompassing dimensions that are constitutive of consumption in industrial and postindustrial economies. The concept posits the novelty and distinctive nature of modern consumption. Although modern consumption emerged in the West, the last wave of globalization has extended the penetration of consumerism to virtually all non-Western societies, and to an increasing spectrum of social classes, to the extent that the concept of consumer culture is now a powerful definer of life in the global age. This entry follows the trajectory of consumer culture and its global dissemination, with particular attention to its manifestations in the realm of the religious and spiritual dimensions of the self, as discussed in the work of a number of scholars specializing in the sociology of religion. (...)
Introduction (Chapter 1) for The SAGE Handbook of Consumer Culture
The SAGE Handbook of Consumer Culture is a one-stop resource for scholars and students of consumption, where the key dimensions of consumer culture are critically discussed. The editors have organised contributions from a global and interdisciplinary team of scholars into six key sections: Part 1: Sociology of Consumption Part 2: Geographies of Consumer Culture Part 3: Consumer Culture Studies in Marketing Part 4: Consumer Culture in Media and Cultural Studies Part 5: Material Cultures of Consumption Part 6: The Politics of Consumer Culture
Culture and consumption II: Markets, meaning, and brand management
2005
Reviewed by John F. Sherry, Jr. Freakonomics, meet brandthropology. In this concise volume (a companion to his watershed 1998 effort) of articulate introspection and insightful ethnographic essays, the author exhorts anthropologists to take back their culture. This reclamation requires more than merely wresting control from the pundits, critics, and celebrities of the contemporary cultural scene. It demands a plumbing of the ontological status of consumer culture before engaging in reflexive critique. Such a project should be close to the heart of every museologist and material culture specialist.[1] Grant McCracken, a former curator, active industry consultant, and peripatetic professor, is an unrivalled stylist. His conversational eloquence, self-deprecating humor (he is, he admits, Canadian), and incisive wit engage the reader throughout the book. He has structured the volume to rock the reader from the intensely personal to the analytically universal. He anticipates the themes of his elegant interpretations-many reprinted from other sources-in his autobiographical musings as an active participant in consumer culture. It is little wonder that Business Week has recommended his blog (cultureby.com) to anyone who would comprehend contemporary consumer behavior. While Culture and Consumption II is not as intellectually dense as its predecessor, it is a more immediately accessible work that will reinvigorate interest in the original.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.