Consumer behaviour is influenced by many things, including environmental and marketing factors, the situation, personal and psychological factors, family, and culture. Businesses try to figure out trends so they can reach the people most likely to buy their products in the most cost-effective way possible. Businesses often try to influence a consumer’s behaviour with things they can control such as the layout of a store, music, grouping and availability of products, pricing, and advertising. While some influences may be temporary and others are long lasting, different factors can affect how buyers behave—whether they influence you to make a purchase, buy additional products, or buy nothing at all. Let’s now look at some of the influences on consumer behaviour in more detail.

Situational Factors

Have you ever been to an IKEA and couldn’t find your way out?  No, you aren’t necessarily directionally challenged. Marketing professionals take physical factors such as a store’s design and layout into account when designing their facilities. Presumably, the longer you wander around a facility, the more you will spend. Grocery stores frequently place bread and milk products on the opposite ends of the stores because people often need both types of products. To buy both, they have to walk around an entire store, which of course, is loaded with other items they might see and purchase.

Store locations also influence behaviour. Starbucks has done a good job in terms of locating its stores. It has the process down to a science; you can scarcely drive a few blocks without passing a Starbucks. You can also buy Starbucks coffee at many grocery stores, in shopping malls, and in airports—virtually any place where there are people.

Physical factors that firms can control, such as the layout of a store, the music played at stores, the lighting, the temperature, and even the smells you experience are called atmospherics. Research shows that “strategic fragrancing” results in customers staying in stores longer, buying more, and leaving with better impressions of the quality of stores’ services and products. Mirrors near hotel elevators are another example. Hotel operators have found that when people are busy looking at themselves in the mirrors, they don’t feel like they are waiting as long for their elevators (Moore, 2008).^[1]

Not all physical factors are under a company’s control, however. Take the COVID-19 pandemic, for example. COVID-19 was a boon to some companies, like delivery companies Uber Eats and Doordash, bike manufacturers, online shopping retailers, and companies that sell health items, but a problem for others. Hotels, airlines, and tourism suffered greatly during the onset of the pandemic.

Firms often attempt to deal with adverse physical factors such as bad weather by offering specials during unattractive times. For example, many resorts offer consumers discounts to travel to beach locations during hurricane season. Having an online presence is another way to cope with weather-related problems. What could be more comfortable than shopping at home? If it’s raining too hard to drive to Lululemon, MEC, or Chapters Indigo, you can buy products from these companies and many others online. You can shop online for cars, too, and many restaurants take orders online and deliver.

Crowding is another situational factor. Have you ever left a store and not purchased anything because it was just too crowded? Some studies have shown that consumers feel better about retailers who attempt to prevent overcrowding in their stores. However, other studies have shown that to a certain extent, crowding can have a positive impact on a person’s buying experience. The phenomenon is often referred to as “herd behaviour” (Gaumer & Leif, 2005).^[2]

If people are lined up to buy something, you want to know why. Should you get in line to buy it too? Think of the lineups in front of the Apple Store days before the release of the new iPhone and the related media coverage.

Social Situation

The social situation you’re in can significantly affect your purchase behaviour. Perhaps you have seen Girl Guides selling cookies outside grocery stores and other retail establishments and purchased nothing from them, but what if your neighbour’s daughter is selling the cookies? Are you going to turn her down or be a friendly neighbour and buy a box (or two)?

Video 3.1. Thin mints, anyone? Source: Funny Dairy Queen Commercial on SLTV98.

Companies like Epicure that sell their products at parties understand that the social situation makes a difference. When you’re at a friend’s Epicure party, you don’t want to look cheap or disappoint your friend by not buying anything. Likewise, if you have turned down a drink or dessert on a date because you were worried about what the person you were with might have thought, your consumption was affected by your social situation (Matilla & Wirtz, 2008).^[3]

Time

The time of day, time of year, and how much time consumers feel like they have to shop affect what they buy. Researchers have even discovered that whether someone is a “morning person” or “evening person” affects shopping patterns. Have you ever gone to the grocery store when you are hungry or after payday when you have cash in your pocket? When you are hungry or have cash, you may purchase more than you would at other times. 7-Eleven Japan is a company that’s extremely in tune to time and how it affects buyers. The company’s point-of-sale systems at its checkout counters monitor what is selling well and when, and stores are restocked with those items immediately—sometimes via motorcycle deliveries that zip in and out of traffic along Japan’s crowded streets. The goal is to get the products on the shelves when and where consumers want them. 7-Eleven Japan also knows that, like Americans, its customers are “time starved.” Shoppers can pay their utility bills, local taxes, and insurance or pension premiums at Seven-Eleven Japan stores, and even make photocopies (Bird, 2002).^[4]

Companies worldwide are aware of people’s lack of time and are finding ways to accommodate them. Some doctors’ offices offer drive-through shots for patients who are in a hurry and for elderly patients who find it difficult to get out of their cars. Tickets.com allows companies to sell tickets by sending them to customers’ mobile phones when they call in. The phones’ displays are then read by barcode scanners when the ticket purchasers arrive at the events they’re attending. Likewise, if you need customer service from Amazon.com, there’s no need to wait on the telephone. If you have an account with Amazon, you just click a button on the company’s website and an Amazon representative calls you immediately.

Reason for the Purchase

The reason you are shopping also affects the amount of time you will spend shopping. Are you making an emergency purchase? What if you need something for an important dinner or a project and only have an hour to get everything? Are you shopping for a gift or for a special occasion? Are you buying something to complete a task/project and need it quickly? In recent years, emergency clinics have sprung up in strip malls all over the country. Convenience is one reason. The other is sheer necessity. If you cut yourself and you are bleeding badly, you’re probably not going to shop around much to find the best clinic. You will go to the one that’s closest to you. The same thing may happen if you need something immediately.

Purchasing a gift might not be an emergency situation, but you might not want to spend much time shopping for the gift either. Gift certificates have been popular for years. You can purchase gift cards for numerous merchants at your local grocery store or online. By contrast, suppose you need to buy an engagement ring. Sure, you could buy one online in a jiffy, but you probably wouldn’t do that. What if the diamond was fake? What if your significant other turned you down and you had to return the ring? How hard would it be to get back online and return the ring (Hornik & Miniero, 2009)?^[5]

Mood

People’s moods temporarily affect their spending patterns. Some people enjoy shopping. It’s entertaining for them. At the extreme are compulsive spenders who get a temporary “high” from spending.

A bad mood can spoil a consumer’s desire to shop. The crash of the U.S. stock market in 2008 left many people feeling poorer, leading to a dramatic downturn in consumer spending. Penny pinching came into vogue, and conspicuous spending was out. Costco and Walmart experienced heightened sales of their low-cost Kirkland Signature and Great Value brands as consumers scrimped (Birchall, 2009).^[6] Saks Fifth Avenue wasn’t so lucky. Its annual release of spring fashions usually leads to a feeding frenzy among shoppers, but spring 2009 was different. “We’ve definitely seen a drop-off of this idea of shopping for entertainment,” says Kimberly Grabel, Saks Fifth Avenue’s senior vice president of marketing (Rosenbloom, 2009).^[7] To get buyers in the shopping mood, companies resorted to different measures. The upscale retailer Neiman Marcus began introducing more mid-priced brands. By studying customers’ loyalty cards, the French hypermarket Carrefour hoped to find ways to get its customers to purchase nonfood items that have higher profit margins.

The glum mood wasn’t bad for all businesses, though. Dollarama saw their sales surge. So did seed sellers as people began planting their own gardens. Amazon saw its best sales ever. Apparently, consumers who weren’t able to go on vacation or shop in stores were instead watching Netflix and shopping online.

Psychological Factors

Motivation

Motivation is the inward drive we have to get what we need. In the mid-1900s, Abraham Maslow, an American psychologist, developed the hierarchy of needs shown in figure 3.4.  At the base of the pyramid are the lowest-level motivations, including hunger, thirst, safety and belongingness. Maslow argued that only when people are able to meet the lower-level needs are they able to move on to achieve the higher-level needs of self-esteem and eventually self-actualization, which is the motivation to develop our innate potential to the fullest possible extent.

Maslow believed that human behaviour is driven and guided by a set of basic needs: physiological needs, safety needs, belongingness and love needs, esteem needs, and the need for self-actualization. Maslow theorized that people have to fulfill their basic needs—food, water, and sleep—before they can begin fulfilling higher-level needs. Have you ever gone shopping when you were tired or hungry? Even if you were shopping for something that would make you the envy of your friends (maybe a new car), you probably wanted to sleep or eat even more (forget the car. Just give me a nap and a candy bar).

Individuals must move through the hierarchy in order, satisfying the needs at each level before moving on to a higher level.

• Physiological: Food, Water, Air, Sleep
• Safety: Security, Employment, Health
• Love/Belonging: Relationships, Friends, Social Connection
• Esteem: Respect, Status, Esteem, Recognition, Freedom, Confidence
• Self-Actualization: Reaching your highest potential

The need for food is recurring. Other needs, such as shelter, clothing, and safety, tend to be enduring. Still other needs arise at different points in time in a person’s life. For example, during grade school and high school, your social needs probably rose to the forefront. You wanted to have friends and get a date. Perhaps this prompted you to buy certain types of clothing or electronic devices. After high school, you began thinking about how people would view you in your “station” in life, so you decided to pay for college and get a professional degree, thereby fulfilling your need for esteem. If you’re lucky, at some point you will realize Maslow’s state of self-actualization. You will believe you have become the person in life that you feel you were meant to be.

While achieving self-actualization may be a goal for many individuals in North America, consumers in Eastern cultures may focus more on belongingness and group needs. Marketers look at cultural differences in addition to individual needs. The importance of groups affects advertising (using groups versus individuals) and product decisions.

Chances are, Maslow’s hierarchy will cross your path many times in your life. Let’s practice the order of categories so that you can be a pro!

Perception

Perception is how you interpret the world around you and make sense of it in your brain. You do so via stimuli that affect your different senses—sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. How you combine these senses also makes a difference. For example, in one study, consumers were blindfolded and asked to drink a new brand of clear beer. Most of them said the product tasted like regular beer. However, when the blindfolds came off and they drank the beer, many of them described it as “watery” tasting (Ries, 2009).^[9]

Consumers are bombarded with messages on television, radio, magazines, the Internet, and even bathroom walls. The average consumer is exposed to about three thousand advertisements per day (Lasn, 1999).^[10] Consumers are online, streaming shows, and checking their cell phones for messages simultaneously. Some, but not all, information makes it into our brains. Selecting information we see or hear is called “selective exposure.”

Have you ever read or thought about something and then started noticing ads and information about it popping up everywhere? Many people are more perceptive to advertisements for products they need. Selective attention is the process of filtering out information based on how relevant it is to you. It’s been described as a “suit of armor” that helps you filter out information you don’t need. At other times, people forget information, even if it’s relevant to them, which is called selective retention. In many cases, this information contradicts the person’s beliefs. A longtime chain smoker who forgets much of the information communicated during an antismoking commercial is an example. To be sure their advertising messages get through to you and you remember them, companies use repetition. How tired of iPhone commercials were you before they tapered off? How often do you see the same commercial aired during a single television show?

Another potential problem that advertisers (or your friends) may experience is selective distortion or misinterpretation of the intended message. Promotions for weight loss products show models that look slim and trim after using their products, and consumers may believe they will look like the model if they use the product. They misinterpret other factors such as how the model looked before or how long it will take to achieve the results. Similarly, have you ever told someone a story about a friend and that person told another person who told someone else? By the time the story gets back to you, it is completely different. The same thing can happen with many types of messages.

Video 3.2. Kelloggs – Special K – Pinch More Than An Inch – UK Advert  by Nina Perez.

Learning

Learning refers to the process by which consumers change their behaviour after they gain information or experience. It’s the reason you don’t buy a bad product twice. Learning doesn’t just affect what you buy, as it also affects how you shop. People with limited experience about a product or brand generally seek out more information than people who have used a product before.

Companies try to get consumers to learn about their products in different ways. Car dealerships offer test drives. Pharmaceutical reps leave samples and brochures at doctor’s offices. Other companies give consumers free samples. To promote products, Costco offered customers free samples to try. While sampling is an expensive strategy, it gets consumers to try the product and many customers buy it, especially right after trying it in the store.

Video 3.3. Coca-Cola Sunset by Coca-Cola Nederland.

Attitude

Attitudes are “mental positions” or emotional feelings, favourable or unfavourable evaluations, and action tendencies people have about products, services, companies, ideas, issues, or institutions (AllBusiness, 2007).^[11] Attitudes tend to be enduring, and because they are based on people’s values and beliefs, they are hard to change. Companies want people to have positive feelings about their offerings. Subway’s Eat Fresh Refresh campaign launched in 2021 is a good example. Fast food has a negative connotation, so Subway is trying to get consumers to think about its sandwiches as being better. In the ad above, Coca-Cola is enlightening people about Ramadan and inspiring people to see each other through their similarities.

Lifestyle

To better understand and connect with consumers, companies interview or ask people to complete questionnaires about their lifestyles or their activities, interests, and opinions (often referred to as AIO statements). Consumers are not only asked about products they like, where they live, and what their age is but also about what they do—that is, how they spend their time and what their priorities, values, opinions, and general outlooks on the world are. Where do they go other than work? Who do they like to talk to? What do they talk about? Researchers hired by Procter & Gamble have gone so far as to follow women around for weeks as they shop, run errands, and socialize with one another (Berner, 2006).^[12] Other companies have paid people to keep a daily journal of their activities and routines.

A number of research organizations examine lifestyle and psychographic characteristics of consumers. Psychographics combines the lifestyle traits of consumers and their personality styles with an analysis of their attitudes, activities, and values to determine groups of consumers with similar characteristics. One of the most widely used systems to classify people based on psychographics is the Values, Attitudes, and Lifestyles (VALS) framework. Using VALS to combine psychographics with demographic information such as marital status, education level, and income provides a better understanding of consumers.

Societal Factors

Situational factors and psychological factors influence what you buy but only on a temporary basis. Societal factors are a bit different. They are more outward and have broad influences on your beliefs and the way you do things. They depend on the world around you and how it works.

Culture

Culture refers to the shared beliefs, customs, behaviours, and attitudes that characterize a society. Culture is a handed down way of life and is often considered as having the broadest influence on a consumer’s behaviour. Your culture prescribes the way in which you should live and has a huge effect on the things you purchase. Marketers must understand how strategies that have worked in Canada may not work well in China or India because their cultures are different.

Subcultures

A subculture is a group of people within a culture who are different from the dominant culture but have something in common with one another such as common interests, vocations or jobs, religions, ethnic backgrounds, and geographic locations. British Columbia is home to many minorities. In Richmond, many businesses display bilingual signs.

Subcultures, such as university students, can develop in response to people’s interests, similarities, and behaviours, and marketing professionals design specific products for them. You have probably heard of the sneakerhead subculture, people who engage in extreme types of sports such as rock climbing or people who go to Comic-Con.

Reference Groups

Reference groups are groups (social groups, work groups, family, or close friends) a consumer identifies with and may want to join. They influence consumers’ attitudes and behaviours. If you have ever dreamed of being a professional player of basketball or another sport, you have an aspirational reference group. That’s why, for example, Nike hires celebrities such as LeBron James to pitch the company’s products.

Family

Most market researchers consider a person’s family to be one of the most important influences on their buying behaviour. Like it or not, you are more like your parents than you think, at least in terms of your consumption patterns. Many of the things you buy and don’t buy are a result of what your parents bought when you were growing up. Products such as the brand of soap and toothpaste your parents bought and used and even the “brand” of politics they leaned toward are examples of the products you may favour as an adult.

Companies are interested in which family members have the most influence over certain purchases. Children have a great deal of influence over many household purchases. For example, in a 2019 survey, 87% of parents said that their children influence their purchase decisions.

The practice of marketing to children has come under increasing scrutiny. Some critics accuse companies of deliberately manipulating children to nag their parents for certain products. For example, Lucky Charms commercials on children’s TV channels seek to get children to influence their parents to buy the cereal.