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Influences on consumer behavior
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Oftentimes when we walk by an aisle looking for a bottle of dish soap or a box of cookies, we are given two options – a generic option that costs $4.49 and a brand name option that costs $6.39. The only difference between the two may just be its physical attributes. However, as consumers, we are often unaware of the possible similarities and often opt for the known brand name product. These decisions often reflect consumers’ perceptions of a product’s quality and in turn, affect their purchase behavior. With the rising question of whether consumers’ perceptions of product quality differ from measures of objective quality, companies are growing increasingly interested in developing and changing their marketing strategies. With the available options today, consumers may perceive two products with similar, if not the same claims, differently, and thus will affect their purchase behavior.
While the quality of a product can be perceived differently among consumers today, consumers often place qualities onto products based on its price, brand reputation, store image, market share, produc...
Nordstrom and Nordstrom Rack are different retail operations in terms of their choice, pricing, store service, and store atmosphere customer intimate firms, which excel in serving the specific needs of the individual customer well. There is less emphasis on efficiency, which is sacrificed for giving more precisely what is wanted by the customer. Reliability is also stressed. Nordstrom is an example of this discipline. Nordstrom must meet some standards of cost-effectiveness. When customers evaluate the quality of a product, they commonly measure it against two kinds of attributes: those related to quality as excellence and those related to the quality of reliability. From a quality as excellence perspective, the important qualities are things such as a product’s design and styling, its aesthetic appeal, its features and functions, the level of service associated with the delivery of the product,
Today’s society is full of products that have numerous varieties. But, little do customers know about the time before when there was one type of each product. In Malcolm Gladwell’s “Ketchup Conundrum” article, he offers many different situations providing an explanation on how some products came to be, and how some name brands made their way into the business world. Consumers are lucky today that there is almost any variety of product to fit their wants or needs.
We are all consumers, and we buy diverse products every day. But, do you know what the main factor is that influences us to choose a product? If someone selects a cloth, maybe he pays attention to its quality! Customers’ decisions can be changed depending on what the main factors they are looking at. Various influences can cause consumers to select different products.
When the consistency of the information is built, the credibility of the brand becomes higher (Bengtsson, Bardhi and Venkatraman, 2010). It is suggested that asymmetric information leads to consumer uncertainty, which would therefore have a negative impact on brand image (Erdem and Swait, 1998, p. 138). Accordingly, consistency of the information has become a key factor that leads to the successfulness of a global brand since it reduces the uncertainty and the thinking process time of consumers (Lee et al., 2007). Several effects have been found regarding to standardization of a brand (Erdem and Swait, 1998, p. 138). Marketers will have a better control of the brand if the brand meaning has been consistent over the time (Erdem and Swait, 1998, p. 138). First of all, it increases brand equity, which would therefore improve consumer’s brand awareness (Erdem and Swait, 1998, p. 138). Second, it would reduce consumers’ uncertainty of the brand, which would thus increase the reliability of the brand and brand loyalty (Erdem and Swait, 1998, p. 138). Third, it greatly reduces the conflict of consumers’ cognitive structures, which would lead them to trust more on the brand (Erdem and Swait, 1998, p.
When people go shopping there are limitless choices of one product made by different companies, all choices of this product basically do the same thing, but what makes them different is the brand’s name. Companies with brands are trying to get their consumers by presenting their commodities in ways
A customer’s response falls in two categories, judgment and feelings. Consumers are constantly making judgments about a brand. These judgments fall into four categories: quality, credibility, consideration, and superiority (Keller, 2001). Customers judge a brand based on its actual and perceived quality, and customers judge credibility using the perception of the company’s expertise, trustworthiness, and likability. To what extent is the brand seen as “competent, innovative, and a market leader,” “dependable and sensitive to the interest of customers,” and “fun, interesting, and worth spending time with” (Keller,
Tanner and Raymond (2014) describe branding activity as “strategies that are designed to create an image and position in the consumers’ minds” (c.6). When branding messages coincide with its offerings’ characteristics, it establishes consumer trust, and brand strength. For example, when first introducing Dove brand in 1957, by labeling its product as a “beauty cleansing bar . . . [with] ¼ moisturizing cream, that rinses cleaner than soap” (Unilever, 2016), we can see that marketers associated the brand to moisturizing and beauty, and disassociated the brand from common soap. Over the years, this consistent message coinciding with product performance has strengthened the Dove brand. Strong brand equity is derived from consistent, strategic branding that establishes perceived quality and emotional attachment (Entrepreneur, 2016); therefore, consumers are more likely to pay higher prices, as well as purchase new offerings connected to the
In this world, creating a new product, as good as it may be, is not enough. The success of any product, in this day and age, depends grandly on the way it is presented to the market. Marketing is responsible in assuring a successful launch of a product, new or reinvented, and to assure its sustainability in this competitive world. For those reasons, billions of dollars are spent each year on tools and strategies to improve marketing research and predict the success of a product: many marketing firms form focus groups, do trials and conduct many tests just to end up with a fairly high percentage of failures.
An insignificant point of difference can often go overlooked by consumers for the reason that their current used product has met their needs (Kerin, 2011). Why would they want to change, from one brand to another? Consumers must be informed and given an alternative reasoning for them to switch from one product to another. Manufacturers and their development group must ensure the success of new products that there is a significant difference between their product and their competitor.
For example, most people who would want a candy similar to M&M’s, would buy M&M’s, not Hershey’s unique version of M&M’s. While Hershey’s tried to convey to its consumers that Kissables could be an alternative to M&M’s, its message fell short because of consumers’ interpretation of the message. Simply put, consumers could not comprehend Hershey’s Kissables because they interpreted it as merely a knock-off product. The taste also fell short to the standards of consumers. Moreover, Hershey’s had altered the taste of the product awhile after it was released, making it undesirable to many people.
Subsequently, “source credibility” was being further developed into a new field of study, “brand credibility” (Aaker & Brown, 1972). Undoubtedly, the researchers have noticed the growing importance of branding. Kotler and Armstrong (2010) asserted that the items that used to distinguish among sellers are name, term, sign, symbol, or design. In short, these items are the composition of a brand. As mentioned above, Wang and Yang (2010) indicated that brand credibility may influence the intention to purchase, therefore, it implied that brand credibility will indirectly influence the buying decision through affecting the purchase intention.
Defining the product strategy and pricing are the most critical activities for every company. These activities include the creation of such a product that meets the needs and desires of specific groups of customers. In order to satisfy customers' needs, it is crucial to identify optimal combination of marketing mix elements. In succeeding that, managers have to find the answer to the questions like: What product's characteristics are relevant for the customers? Is there a need for designing variety of same products? How to differentiate a product? What price the customers are willing to pay for a given product? The answers to these questions are particularly important if we bear in mind that in today's business environment it is necessary to make it attractive to a particular target market, which means to distinguish a product or offering from the similar ones. Product differentiation is the process of distinguishing a product both from the offering of competitors and firm’s own product offering. These differences may lead to competitive advantage if customers perceive the difference and have a preference for the difference. It is therefore necessary to elicit the preferences of customers prior to product differentiation.
INSIDE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT As said by Shaveta Pujara of Fashion Technology, “Product development captures the mood or flavor of the design project, as well as reflects the target customer. The in depth study and close examination of the inspiration stimulates the ideas about colors and textures which influence the choice of fabrics.” Product development deals with improving an existing product or developing new kinds of products. Companies creating products have the choice of producing organic green clothing or inorganic.
For instance, Hess, Singh, Metcalf, & Danes (2014) who conducted a qualitative, experimental and structural modelling analysis technique of water bottles, wanted to establish a primary role of packaging quality in consumer product satisfaction. Thicker water bottles were perceived to be of higher quality than thinner bottles, and these perceptual differences impact how customers view a brand on aspects such as reliability and value offered by the brand’s products and ultimately intentions to of the customers to re-purchase the brand’s products. For a major part of consumers’ attraction size of package and material are the main visual elements, whereas, product information is the main verbal elements while purchasing milk and washing powder (Ahmed et al., 2014). For low involvement product categories such as chocolates, an informational element on packages has a positive influence on purchase decisions rather than visual elements (Shekhar & Raveendran, 2013). Hence, particularly in self-serving sales, promoting the contents is a vital packaging objective and a package should serve as a silent employee and attract the shopper's attention (Chaudhary,
Product launch not only helps company increase the sale revenue but also expand their customer base by targeting new segments. A successful launch involves the contribution and collaboration of all departments, from R&D, Logistic, Sale, Marketing and so on.