Маркетинг и менеджмент

In general, it has been found that reference group influence is very strong in an information vacuum where the consumer has little or no direct knowledge about the attributes of a product or service. A most important factor is how conspicuous the product is. This means both visibility and noticeability. With a conspicuous product, reference group influence is usually the strongest.

Family buying is a particular type of face-to-face reference group. Important considerations include: who makes the purchase decision; what is the purchase agent; who is the ultimate user; what are the power positions within the family.

O ther factors also influence the consumer’s purchase behavior. T hese include personality, attitude, learning, and willingness to adopt or innovate. P ersonality pervades many aspects of the consumer behavior process. V arious segmentations have been proposed and used, for example, life-style — how individuals live — and psychographics — how people think.

I n some cases psychological tests have been given to establish the boundaries of these segments. H owever, marketing managers should be cautious in utilizing data pertaining only to personality and relating it to consumer behavior. There may be other factors or combinations of factors that are more important than personality that seems to have a great impact on how the consumer behaves in buying.

A ttitude consists of a predisposition to respond in a certain way. S ome scientists theorize that attitude has three basic components: (1) an effective component, (2) a cognitive component, and (3) a behavioral component. T he effective component is that aspect that evaluates an object on the basis of its goodness or badness. T he cognitive component is that element of attitude that predisposes the consumer to perceive the product and differentiate it from other products.

T he behavioral component predisposes the consumer to act toward the product or something representing that product in a certain way. T hus, a consumer with a positive attitude toward a product might be predisposed to defend it or, if possessing a negative attitude, to attack it. I n general, two different approaches might be used to take note of the influence of attitude.

First, a marketing manager might attempt to change the attitude of the consumer, or second, a marketing manager might attempt to change the product or service so as to be more in conformity with the consumer’s predisposition.

Closely aligned with attitude is learning, since attitudes can themselves be learned. If we want to induce repeat purchase through learning, we might initiate a sequence of events starting with product trial and then proceeding to an initial purchase with little financial obligation. Next, we would induce purchase with moderate financial obligation. For the final step, we would induce purchase at the full amount.

O ne of the more challenging aspects of new product introduction is that of the adoption process. O ne marketing scientist categorized people adopting a new product or service as innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. E

ach group represents a percentage of the total population and has certain characteristics. I nnovators are the first to adopt, but they are sometimes ridiculed by their more conservative associates. E

arly adopters furnish a disproportionate amount of formal leadership and are respected as good sources of information. T he early majority must be certain an idea will work before they adopt it, and they may look to the early adopters for the information. T he late majority adopts new products or services after the average have already been using it.

W hile they participate less actively in formal groups, they may form the bulk of the membership in formal organizations. Finally, the laggards participate least in formal organizations and other programs concerning groups, and this group may include the nonadopters as well if the new product or service is not adopted by everyone.

Organizational buyer behavior

The behavior of consumers is not a constant and marketing managers must maintain a pulse on these changes to be successful. They must do, combined with research to determine how the consumer is behaving in the marketplace. But buyer behavior of organizational buyers and consumer buyers is not identical. While there are psychological dimensions to organizational buying, there are other elements to be considered, such as:

There may be more than one individual making the purchase decision.

Most individual buyers for organizations place the needs of their organization above those of their own.

Organizations and individual consumers may have widely differing needs for similar products or services.

O rganizational buyer behavior can be categorized as having three distinct elements. T he first is the psychological environment of the individuals who are involved in making organizational buying decisions.

T here are certain product expectations including product quality, delivery time, quantity of supply, an after-sale service, price, and even these have a psychological dimension. A n even greater psychological dimension has been found in certain implicit criteria, including reputation, size of the firm, its location, the relationship between buyer and seller, and personality, technical expertise, and salesmanship and even life-style of the sales representative, not to mention the background of the buyer decision makers, their past satisfaction or dissatisfaction with past purchases, and so on. B esides the organizational buyer or buyers sometimes select a design or special part based more on psychological reasons and emotion rather than rational fact. Marketing managers must consider the psychological environment in which the purchase decision is being made as well as all psychological aspects of the individual concerned with this decision.

The second element has to do with conditions that lead to joint decisions among these decision-making individuals. The organizational buying decision may be made by many individuals at different locations, or in some cases the decision can be made by a single individual. It depends on such product-specific factors as perceived risk, type of purchase, and time pressure, as well as on such companies specific factors as the company orientation, company size, and degree of centralization. It is frequently useful to stimulate an individual in the buyer’s organization to take on the role of advocate. These individuals can be motivated to adopt a more aggressive posture in their organizations in favor of a company’s product or products and further that these advocates can have a significant effect on the purchase decision.

The last element is the process of joint decision making itself. There is a common process of buyer purchase behavior. This process is much affected by the assimilation of information, deliberations on it, and any conflict that results from the fact that the decision is made jointly. It is also affected by characteristics of the organizational buying center, including the degree of formal structure, the relative power positions of the members, the relative strengths of the task and nontask interdependencies, the permanence of the group interaction, and the size of the group.

The purchase process for organizations can be divided into eight definite stages. These are: 1) Anticipation or recognition of a problem and a general solution; 2) Determination of characteristics and quantity of needed item; 3) Description of characteristics and quantity of needed item; 4) Search for and qualification of potential sources; 5) Acquisition and analysis of proposals; 6) Evaluation of proposals and selection of suppliers; 7) Selection of an order routine; 8) Performance feedback and evaluation.

The acquisition of product or service information by the organizational buyer provides insights as to how best to market the product to the organization and affects both strategy and tactics. Information sources can be classified as personal, which include salespeople, trade shows, an information systems department, top management, a using department, terminal users, outside consulters, colleagues, and a purchasing department, and impersonal users including advertising in trade publications, sales literature, news publications, trade associations, and rating services.

CONCLUSION

The competition is the most dangerous of the marketing environs because the competition is intelligent, can react to affect your strategy and tactics adversely, and in nongrowth markets your growth or even survival must be at the expense of a competitor. The basic principles of competition involve universal laws and relationships, which are necessary to understand. Winning out over our competition is based on the concept of a unique competitive differential advantage. The competition may actually be useful and accomplish some good. So, even the competition might be incorporated into our overall marketing strategy.

The analysis of the competition is always important, and in situations of scarcity or where markets are no longer growing or actually shrinking, competitive analysis is critical to success in the marketplace. Therefore, the notion of competition, competitive action and reaction, and other concepts can be used in developing marketing strategies and tactics.

As for buyer behavior, it is usually categorized into consumer buyer behavior and organizational buyer behavior. Consumer buyer behavior is influenced by basic motivations and other important factors such as personality, attitude, learning, and the process of adoption of new products. Any study of buyer behavior must conclude that both consumer buyer behavior and organizational buyer behavior are complex and must be analyzed by the marketing manager to take advantage of the opportunities and avoid the threats inherent in the marketing situation.