W3 Video ‘Positioning a Brand: Best Practices for Marketing Product Features with Humor’ https://lms.grantham.edu/webapps/blackboard/execute/content/blankPage?cmd=view&content_id=_5110292_1&course_id=_61406_1 W3 Lecture 1 ‘Consumer Behavior’ One of the most important topics this week is the study of consumer behavior. The marketing concept you studied about in Chapter One emphasizes that profitable marketing begins with the discovery and understanding of consumer needs and then developing a marketing mix to satisfy these needs. Thus, an understanding of consumers and their needs and purchasing behavior is integral to successful marketing.Unfortunately, there is no single theory of consumer behavior that can totally explain why consumers behave as they do; of course, if we did, we’d all be like robots. Instead, there are numerous theories, models, and concepts making up the field. In addition, many these notions have been borrowed from a variety of other disciplines, such as sociology, psychology, social psychology, and economics, and they must be successfully integrated to really understand consumer behavior. Like any study of human behavior, it’s not an easy job.A MODEL OF CONSUMER BEHAVIORAt one time, marketers could understand consumers through the daily experience of selling to them. But the growth of companies and markets has removed many marketing managers from direct contact with customers. Given this detachment, one needs a framework for analyzing the many aspects of consumer behavior.THE BUYING PROCESSThe buying process can be viewed as a series of five stages: problem recognition, information search, alternative evaluation, purchase decision, and post purchase feeling. It should be noted at the outset that this is a general model for depicting a ‘logical’ sequence of buying behavior. Clearly, individuals will vary from this model because of personal differences in such things as personality, self-concept, subjective perceptions of information, the product, and the purchasing situation. Still, however, the model provides a useful framework for organizing our discussion and understanding of consumer behavior.Need RecognitionThe starting point for this model of the buying process is the recognition of an unsatisfied need by the consumer. Any number of either internal or external stimuli may activate needs or wants and the recognition of them. Internal stimuli are such things as feeling hungry and wanting some food, feeling a headache coming on and wanting some Excedrin, or feeling bored and looking for a movie to go to. External stimuli are such things as seeing a McDonald’s sign and then feeling hungry, or seeing a sale sign for winter parkas and remembering that last year’s coat is worn out.It is the task of marketing managers to find out what needs and wants a product can and does satisfy, and what unsatisfied needs and wants consumers have for which a new product could be developed. To do so, we’ve got to understand what types of needs consumers may have.Let’s stop here in the buying process and I’ll pick up later on the rest of the important stages we all go through as we enter the marketplace to buy something. Learning the frameworks marketers use in exploring consumer behavior is vitally important if we’re ever going to understand this thing we call ‘the market’. https://lms.grantham.edu/webapps/blackboard/execute/content/blankPage?cmd=view&content_id=_5110291_1&course_id=_61406_1 Reading for this week: Chapter 6 https://ng.cengage.com/static/nb/ui/evo/index.html?eISBN=9780357165539&id=350243183&snapshotId=899247& Chapter 7 https://ng.cengage.com/static/nb/ui/evo/index.html?eISBN=9780357165539&snapshotId=899247&id=350243184& W3 DiscussionMarketing ManagementBranding StrategiesHow do customer relationships fit into a vision for a given product and the overall organization? How does an organization use this relationship to meet customer satisfaction through branding and advertising?In your initial post…Provide a synopsis for your case and evaluation of your results, using a scholarly article found on EBSCOhost as your basis for your reasoning. Be sure to cite your source.Follow up posts…After your initial post, read over the responses posted by your peers and your instructor. Select at least two different posts, and address the following in your responses: Is there a common theme in your peer’s responses?
