CLARO, STEFFI ANNE D.

3MKTG-3 (TF 1:00 PM-2:30 PM)

Assignment in Consumer Behavior Module 1: In no less than 200 words, summarize the module
1.
The title of Module 1 in the subject Consumer Behavior is Consumer Behavior: It’s
Origin and Strategic Application. In the Introduction of Module 1, it tackles about the meaning
of consumer behavior and the kinds of consuming entities. Consumer behavior is the behavior
that consumers show in seeking, buying, utilizing, assessing, and disposing of products and
services that consumers expect will satisfy their needs and wants. It concerns on how individuals
make decisions to spend their available resources on consumption-related items. Being
consumers, we play an important role in health of the economy—local, national, and
international. There are two different kinds of consuming entities: the personal consumer and the
organizational consumer. The personal consumer purchases goods and services for his or her
personal, for household's use, or as a gift for a friend while the organizational consumer includes
businesses for profit and non-profit agencies and institutions of the government, where buying
products, equipment, and services is a must in order to run their organizations. In Module 1
Lesson 1, it tackles about the development of the marketing concept and the discipline of
consumer behavior. Marketing concept is a business orientation that evolved in the 1950s
through various alternative approaches toward doing business namely the production concept,
the product concept, and the selling concept. The first concept is the production concept, that is
described as the concept used by Henry Ford in the early 1900s. It surmises that consumers are
mostly interested in product availability at low prices. The second concept is the product concept
that assumes that consumers will purchase the product that offers the highest quality, the best
performance, and the most characteristics. A product orientation enables the company to
continuously strive to improve the product's quality and add new characteristics that are
technically realistic without knowing whether or not consumers really want these features. This
leads to "marketing myopia," concept that is, a focus on the product rather than on the consumer
needs it presumes to satisfy. The third concept is the selling concept, the concept that marketing's
primary focus is selling the product(s) that it has unilaterally decided to produce. In Module 1
Lesson 2, it tackles about the marketing concept. The marketing concept states in the module that
“Marketing-oriented firms found that it was a lot easier to produce only products they had first
confirmed, through research, that consumers wanted, instead of convincing customers to buy
what the firm had already produced.” The assumption of the marketing concept is that the older
selling concept focused on the seller's needs while the marketing concept focuses on the buyer's
needs. In implementing the marketing concept, the need to study consumer behavior came about
due to widespread adoption of the marketing concept by American businesses. They found out
that consumers were highly complex individuals, subject to a variety of psychological and social
needs quite apart from their survival needs. In Module 1 Lesson 3, it tackles about the three
elements of this strategic framework: market segmentation, targeting, and positioning. The first
element is the market segmentation which is the process of grouping a market into subsets of
consumers with everyday needs or features. The second element is the market targeting which is
the selection of one or more of the parts identified for the company to pursue. The last element is
the positioning that refers to the development of a particular image for the product or service in
the consumer's mind, an icon that will differentiate the offering from competing ones and
directly communicate to the target audience that the particular product or service will satisfy
their needs better than competing brands. In Module 1 Lesson 4, it tackles about the marketing
mix. The marketing mix consists of a company's service and/or product offerings to consumers
and the methods and tools it selects in order to accomplish the exchange. There are seven Ps of
marketing mix: product, price, place, promotion, people, process, and physical evidence. The
product features designs, brands, packaging, etc. The price is the list price that includes
discounts, allowances, and payment methods. The place is the logistics or distribution of the
product or service. Promotion includes advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and sales
pitches made to build awareness of and demand for the product or service. The people are the
frontline and sales staff and the store manager. The process is how the products are being
delivered. The physical evidence is the physical context and stuffs such as offering “thank you
card” and “confirmation emails”, this creates a consistent, convincing experience for the
customer. In Module 1 Lesson 5, it tackles about the three drivers of successful relationships
between marketers and consumers: customer value, high levels of customer satisfaction, and
building a structure of customer retention. Customer value is defined as the ratio between the
customer's perceived benefits (economic, functional, and psychological) and the resources
(monetary, time, effort, psychological) used to obtain those benefits. Customer satisfaction is the
individual's perception of the product's performance or service in relation to his or her
expectations. There are several types of customers with respect to customer satisfaction:
loyalists, the completely satisfied customers who keep purchasing; apostles, those customers
whose experiences exceed their expectations and who provide very positive word of mouth about
the company to others; defectors, those customers who feel neutral or merely satisfied and are
likely to stop doing business with the company; terrorists, those customers who have had
negative experiences with the company and who spread negative word of mouth; hostages, those
unhappy customers who stay with the company because of no choice (or other reasons); and
mercenaries, those very satisfied customers but who have no real loyalty to the company and
may defect. In customer retention, to have and retain highly satisfied customers is the overall
objective of providing value to customers continuously and more effectively than the
competition. Customer profitability focuses on marketing tracks costs and revenues of individual
customers and then ranks them into segments based on consumption behaviors that are specific
to a company's offerings. In Module 1 Lesson 6, it tackles about the impact of digital
technologies on marketing strategies. Digital technologies enable much greater customization of
products, services, and promotional messages than older marketing tools. They allow marketers
to adapt the elements of the marketing mix to consumers' needs more quickly and efficiently and
build and maintain relationships with customers on a much greater scale. There are several
drastic changes into the business environment that were introduced through online and emerging
digital technologies. Consumers are having more power in the involvement of digital
technologies. Consumers are also have an access to the information and have constant
communication in the today’s involvement of digital technologies. In Module 1 Lesson 7, it
tackles about the marketing ethics and social responsibility. All marketers are required to adhere
to social responsibility principles in the marketing of their goods and services under the societal
marketing concept. The societal marketing concept follows a long-term perspective recognizing
that all companies that incorporate ethical behavior and social responsibility in all of their
business dealings attract and maintain loyal consumer support over the long term. The purpose of
studying consumer behavior as part of marketing curriculum is to understand why consumers
make their purchase decisions. Marketing ethics is important in order to get out of abusing
consumers. In marketing ethics, it is better to self-regulate than to be controlled by the
government.