D3MKT
3.1 Model of Consumer Behavior
Please follow the directions from Learning Activity 3.1. If you have not been able to dine at an upscale restaurant on account of being a poor college student, choose something mid-scale or interview someone who recently went to an upscale restaurant and write about their experience as it relates to the marketing concept. The idea is to explore the concept.
Learning Activity 3.1
Let's take the Model of Consumer Behavior for a spin. Consider the last time you purchased a nice dinner at an upscale restaurant. What was your choice of restaurant? Go through all the variables outlined in the first two columns of the model, environmental factors, and consumer factors, and identify the factors that influenced your decision. Note how they resulted in your purchase decision. (Hint: You might have to read ahead for more thorough explanations of each factor.)
Required: Post your thoughts on this topic in the Week 3 Discussion Forum under the thread Topic 1: Model of Consumer Behavior. Be sure to check out some classmates' posts and see how different (or the same) some of your classmates are influenced by the same factors (or not).
3.2 Role Involvement
Follow the instructions for Learning Activity 3.2. Please note that this is a continuation of your experience from 3.1.
Learning Activity 3.2
As illustrated in Figure 3.2 in the main text, there are six steps in a consumer decision-making process. It looks like quite a bit of work considering the number of purchase decisions we make in the course of a week. So consumers have developed a shorthand for making purchases, which we have categorized into types of consumer buying decisions based on the level of involvement. The course readings explain the role of involvement in decision making, and refer to those readings to get a better understanding of routine, complex, and limited problem solving.
Consider the restaurant purchase you made in Topic 1. What was your decision-making behavior? Was it a routine, complex, or limited problem-solving situation? Identify which behavior and explain how the level of involvement played into your decision.
Required: Post your response to the Discussion Forum for Week 3 under Topic 2, Role of Involvement. Check out your classmates' posts and see if you can explain how different people use different behaviors for essentially the same decision.
Now think about how happy you were with the restaurant experience. Did it meet your expectations, making you a satisfied customer? Or did it exceed your exception, making you a delighted customer? Or did it not meet your expectations, making you a dissatisfied customer? Did you experience cognitive or post-purchase dissonance, that feeling in the pit of your stomach that you wish you had made a different choice, but now it's too late to do anything about it?
3.5 Psychological Factors
Please follow the directions for the Learning Activity 3.5 about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. You might feel that you are not solidly in one, but mostly there. That's ok. Just explain your thinking. And yes, we can move up and down that pyramid depending on what is going on with our lives that changes our thinking and emotions. You can be on top of the world, solidly in esteem building, and suddenly get laid off which threatens you so severe that you are now striving for safety.
The main point here is to explore the concept. customer needs are at the heart of all marketing so we should understand how needs form and this is one tool to assist with that understanding.
Learning Activity 3.5
Our friend Maslow and his hierarchy of needs is the model for studying the psychological factors that affect decision making. Review the model and take a shot at identifying at which stage you are currently located (fortunately, our stage changes over time). Essentially, your stage affects your consumer decision making.
Based on the stage you are in, what types of purchases have you been making that are consistent with this stage? For example, have you switched to buying only organic food because you are mostly concerned with fulfilling your social needs? Or, are you still searching for the lowest-priced foods because you are still filling your basic need for food? Or, do you find yourself donating time or money to charities because you are trying to reach self-actualization?
Required: Share your thoughts with us in Discussion Forum for Week 3, Topic 3: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Scroll through other postings and comment as appropriate.
Recap of Week 3 Learning Activities
Consumer behavior is so important to marketing that UMUC has an entire course devoted to it. If you are a marketing major, it is a required course. For nonmarketing majors, the big takeaway for this week is that marketers need to know as much as they can how their customers think, and the primary way of finding out is through marketing research.
Unfortunately, since a lot of consumer decision making is irrational, there are no guarantees that no matter how precise the marketing mix is designed to meet consumers' needs and wants based on the way they make decisions, there are no guarantees of sales success.
