Consumer Behavior Essay Example for Free

Consumer Behavior Essay Consumer behavior is an attempt to understand predict human actions in the buying role. It has assumed growing importance under market-oriented or customer oriented marketing planning management. Consumer behavior is defined as â€Å"all psychological, social physical behavior of potential customers as they become aware of, evaluate, purchase, consume, tell others about product services†. * Each element in this definition is important. * Consumer behavior involves both individual (psychological) processes group (social processes). * Consumer behavior is reflected from awareness right through post-purchase evaluation indicating satisfaction or non-satisfaction, from purchases * Consumer behavior includes communication, purchasing consumption behavior * Consumer behavior is basically social in nature. Hence social environment plays an important role in shaping buyer behavior. * Consumer behavior includes both consumer business buyer behavior In consumer behavior we consider not only why, how, what people buy but other factors such as where , how often, and under what conditions the purchase is made. An understanding of the buyer behavior is essential in marketing planning programmes. In the final analysis buyer behavior is one of the most important keys to successful marketing. MAJOR FACTORS INFLUENCING BUYER BEHAVIOUR CULTURAL FACTORS Cultural factors exert the broadest and deepest influence on consumer behavior. The roles played by the buyers culture, sub culture and social class are particularly important. * CULTURE- Culture is the most fundamental determinant of a person’s wants and behavior. The growing child acquires a set of values, perceptions, preferences, and behavior through his or her family or other key institutions. * SUB-CULTURE- Sub-culture includes nationalities, religions, racial groups, and geographical regions. Many sub-cultures make up important market segments, and marketers often design marketing programs tailored to their needs. * SOCIAL CLASS- Social classes are relatively homogenous and enduring divisions in a society, which are hierarchically ordered and whose members share similar values, interests, and behavior. Social classes do not reflect income alone but also other indicators such as occupation, education, and area of residence. SOCIAL FACTORS * REFERNCE GROUPS- A Person’s reference groups consist of all the groups that have a direct or indirect influence on the person’s attitudes or behavior. Groups having direct influence on a person are called membership groups. * FAMILY- The family is the most important consumer buying organization in society, and has been researched extensively. Family members constitute the most influential primary reference group. * ROLE AND STATUSES- A person’s position in each group that he participates throughout his life –family, clubs, and organizations can be defined in terms of role and status. A role consist of activities that a person is expected to perform. Each role carries a status. Marketers are aware of the status symbol potential of products and brands. PERSONAL FACTORS A buyer’s decisions are also influenced by personal characteristics. These include the buyer’s age stage in the life cycle, occupation, economic circumstances, lifestyle, personality self concept. * AGE STAGE IN THE LIFE CYCLE- People buy different goods services over their lifetime. They eat baby food in the early years, most foods in the growing mature years special diets in the later years. People’s taste in clothes, furniture recreation is also age related. * OCCUPATION- A person’s occupation also influences his or her consumption pattern. Marketers try to identify the occupational groups that have above – average interest in their products and services. A company can even specialize its products for certain occupational groups. * ECONOMIC CIRCUMCTANCES- Product choices are greatly affected by one’s economic circumstances. Economic stability consist of their spend able income (its level, stability and time pattern), saving and asse ts (including the percentage that is liquid), debts, borrowing power, attitude toward spending versus saving. * LIFESTYLE- People coming from the same subculture, social class occupation may lead quite different lifestyles. A person’s lifestyles the person’s pattern of living in the world as expressed in the persons activities, interests opinions. * PERSONALITY AND SELF-CONCEPT- Each person has a distinct personality that influences his or her buying behavior. By personality, we mean a person’s distinguishing psychological characteristics that lead to relatively consistent and enduring responses to his or her environment. Personality can be a useful variable in analyzing consumer behavior, provided that personality type can be classified accurately and that strong correlations exist between certain personality types and product or brand choices. PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS A person’s buying choices are influenced by four major psychological factors-motivations, perception, learning, beliefs and attitudes. * MOTIVATION- A person has many needs at any given time. A need becomes motive when it is aroused to a sufficient level of intensity. Motivational researchers hold that each product is capable of arousing a unique set of motive in consumers. * LEARNING- When people act they learn. Learning involves changes in an individual’s behavior arising from experience. Learning theory teaches marketers that they can build up demand for a product by associating it with strong drives, using motivating cues and providing positive reinforcement. * PERCEPTION- Perception is the process by which an individual selects, organizes, interprets information inputs to create a meaningful picture of the world. A motivated person is ready to act. How the motivated person actually acts is influenced by his or her perception of the situation. * BELIEFS ATTITUDES- A belief is a descriptive thought that a person holds about something. Through doing learning, people acquire beliefs attitudes. These in turn influence their buying behavior. Particularly important to global marketers is the fact that buyers often hold distinct disbeliefs about brands or products based on their country of origin. An attitude is person’s enduring favorable or unfavorable evaluations, emotional feelings, and action tendencies towards some object or idea. People have attitude toward almost everything: religion, politics, clothes, music, food, and so on. Attitude put them into a frame of mind of liking or disliking an object, moving toward or away from it.

Service Learning :: Teaching Education

Service Learning How did a departmental faculty generated 12,000 hours of student community service in one semester? The following is a qualitative analysis of conversations with faculty members in a department that recently instituted a service learning requirement for all student majors. The campus is a large urban comprehensive university with a multi-ethnic student body. Approximately fifteen faculty members were interviewed for this study. While most of those interviewed included service learning components in their courses, interviews with faculty members who resisted or refused to incorporate service learning were conducted as well in order to understand varying faculty attitudes towards service learning. BACKGROUND Following participation in an Engaged Department Institute sponsored by Campus Compact, a service-learning requirement was instituted for all majors in the department studied beginning Fall 2002. All faculty were encouraged to incorporate service-learning in their courses. A training session on service-learning was the centerpiece of a departmental retreat in January 2002. In order to develop closer relationships with community agencies, the department hosted a faculty-partnership luncheon the following fall semester. Potential community partners were invited to meet with faculty in an effort to forge new relationships with the University. In order to institutionalize service-learning, all recruitment advertisements specifically mention service-learning and all new hires are expected to include service-learning components in their courses. As a consequence of these efforts, this department has gone from teaching only a few courses with service-learning components to offering tw enty five different classes (thirteen courses) by Fall 2002. A number of facilitators helped this department achieve these accomplishments. Mini-grants available on campus funded the faculty-partnership luncheon. In addition, four faculty members were awarded mini-grants to develop service-learning components in their courses. Departmental leadership has been a very strong advocate for service-learning. Recognition from discipline enhanced the image of this department on campus when the discipline newsletter highlighted the advances in service-learning in the department. The Office of Community Service-learning was helpful in training and assisting faculty interested in developing service-learning components in their courses. The campus generally recognizes service-learning and provides awards for those involved in service-learning. Two such campus awards have been given to members of the department studied. Challenges have been encountered while implementing this requirement. For example, many faculty members do not live in the area and have no knowledge of the local community and its resources and thus have had difficulty developing community partnerships.

Bonny Lee Bakley Essay

In May 4, 2001, Bonny Lee Bakley, wife of Robert Blake, was found dead in the passenger seat of Blake’s car.   The facts based on the investigation of the police are as follows: Robert Blake and Bonny Lee Bakley have just had dinner and are on their way to Blake’s car parked just outside the Italian restaurant Vitello.   Blake returned to the restaurant which was a few blocks away after he remembered that he left his licensed firearm inside the restaurant.   When he returned, he found his wife shot in the head.   There was no eyewitness.   There was no confession. Subsequently, charges for murder and two counts of solicitation of murder were filed against Blake.   According to the prosecution, Blake killed his wife to keep their 4-year old daughter away from Bakley.   It appeared that Bakley had been engaged in mail-order porn business and lonely hearts scams in the past.   She also had enemies after he defrauded some individuals.   Prosecutors attempted to prove that Blake initially persuaded two former stuntmen to kill Bakley but they refused prompting Blake to kill Bakley himself.   The Defense team however argued that there was no direct evidence that will link Blake to the murder of Bakley. In view of the nature of the controversy, the pieces of evidence that will play an important role in the resolution of the dispute are: physical evidence and testimonial evidence.   In general, documentary evidence also plays an important role in criminal trials, however, it was not important in this case. Physical evidence refers to any tangible object that may be used to prove a particular fact.   An example of physical evidence is the murder weapon used to kill the victim such as the gun or the knife.   In this case, the physical evidence is 9mm Walther P-38 which was found the following day thrown into a dumpster near the front of Blake’s car. Under the rules of admissibility, this piece of evidence is relevant to the case as it tends to prove or disprove who killed Bonny Lee Blake. It is also material because it will establish whether the murder weapon was used and fired by Robert Blake, the primary suspect.   The evidence however was rendered incompetent by the court since examination showed that while the gun was fired, there was no fingerprint on it indicative of the fact that the murderer was wearing thick glove (Lisa Sweetingham, 2005, â€Å"Jurors see gritty crime scene photos in actor Robert Blake’s murder trial p.2).   For this reason, this evidence was not useful at all for the prosecution. Testimonial evidence is the kind of evidence that makes use of testimonies of competent witnesses to prove a particular fact.   In this case, testimonial evidence of Ronald Hambleton and Gary McLarty were presented in court to prove that Robert Blake solicited their help to murder Bakley.   These pieces of evidence are both relevant and material to the case as it tends to prove the allegation of a fact, that is, Blake is guilty of solicitation of murder. This evidence was however considered by the court to be incompetent because the defense successfully introduced its own testimonial evidence that will prove that their testimonies are not reliable.   According to some of the jurors, they found the testimony of Hambleton incompetent because he had prior history of drug-influenced delusional behavior (Sweetingham, 2005, â€Å"Actor Robert Blake acquitted of his wife’s murder†, p.3).   McLarty’s testimony was also questioned based on the testimony of his wife and child that his years of cocaine abuse had made him paranoid and delusional (Sweetingham, 2005, â€Å"Actor Robert Blake acquitted of his wife’s murder†, p.3). The testimony of expert witness was likewise presented in this case.   Steven Dowell of the LA County Department of Coroner was asked to testify about the presence of gun-shot residue.   According to Dowell, he found the presence of gunshot residue (GSR) on the clothes Blake was wearing on the night of the murder. While the evidence was both relevant and material as his testimony tends to prove the possibility that Robert Blake may have murdered his wife, its competence was however not given very much weight by the court in view of his additional testimony that mere presence of GSR not coupled by additional evidence does not prove that Blake was responsible for the shooting and that it is possible that Robert Blake may have picked up the GSR from guns other than the murder weapon. As a result, in 2005, Robert Blake was finally acquitted for murder charges in view of the failure of the prosecution to prove its case (Greg Risling, 2005, p.1).   The said decision is based on the lack of direct evidence that will directly link Blake to the murder of his wife and the unreliability of the testimonies of the prosecution’s witnesses. Bibliographies Risling, Greg. (2005).   â€Å"Actor Robert Blake Acquitted of Murder.† AP Online. 2005. Retrieved March 22, 2009 from HighBeam Research: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-106449186.html Sweetingham, Lisa. (2005).   â€Å"Jurors see gritty crime scene photos in actor Robert Blake’s murder trial.†Ã‚   Courttv.com.   Retrieved 22 March 2009, from: http://www.courttv.com/trials/blake/011105_ctv.html#continue Sweetingham, Lisa (2005).   â€Å"Actor Robert Blake acquitted of his wife’s murder.†Ã‚   Courttv.com. Retrieved 22 March 2009, from: http://www.courttv.com/trials/blake/031605_verdict_ctv.html#continue

Importance Of Ethics Essay - 728 Words

1. Introduction Ethics is a crucial part of employment because we want businesses to be fair, clean and beneficial to the society. For the reason, organizations have to establish ethics or rule of law, engage themselves in fair practices and competition. These things will give benefit to the consumer, the society and organization. This report will introduce about the ethics. Especially reasons of the importance of ethic and influences on workplace will be represented in the report. 2. Importance of ethics Following topics show the reasons of importance of ethics. †¢ Satisfying Basic Human Needs: Being fair, honest and ethical is one the basic human needs. Every employee wants that employees possess these things and work for an organization†¦show more content†¦Following topics are common important parts of workplace ethics. Behaviour When company hire an employee, all companies present what acceptable behaviour is. Many even summarize expected conduct in job descriptions or during the interview process. Typically behaviour contains some topics, such as harassment, work attire and language. If some employee who doesn’t follow behaviour which is part of ethics, they may make troubles. It reads harmful effect on the company. Integrity One of the important components of workplace ethics is Integrity. All employees have to be honest and do right thing in the workplace. For example, employee who work and manage with money has to possess a high degree of integrity. Employees with integrity also avoid gossip and sneakiness while on the job. Accountability Taking responsibility in your workplace is major factor of improving company and yourself. Taking responsibility means giving priority to your job and putting in an honest effort while on the job. Employees who have accountability are honest when things go wrong, then work toward a resolution while remaining professional all the while. 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