Marketing and Consumer Behavior: Strategies and Insights

Posted on Dec 15, 2024 in Arts and Humanities

Theme 6: Marketing

6.1 Concept of Marketing

  • The term marketing comes from the English language and is used and accepted by virtually all languages. In Spanish, there is a similar word: “mercadotecnia,” which refers to a set of marketing techniques.
  • The most accepted definition is a set of activities designed to achieve, for a profit, the satisfaction of consumer needs with a product or service.
  • The more classical definition of marketing states that it is a series of activities that direct the flow of goods or services from producer to consumer.

6.2 Determinants of Marketing

All activities conducted within the field of marketing are influenced in their results by a variety of external conditions, called determinants of marketing.

  • Consumer: The final recipient of all marketing activities. Also, the primary determinant of these actions.
  • The market: In which the company operates, the competition is, the company itself.
  • The situation
  • The socio-economic framework: Where you have to do business and the legal framework that affects you.

6.3 The Four Major Marketing Policies

The company has the means to achieve the expected results in this area. These are known as marketing techniques. All of these techniques can be grouped into four policies, known as the four Anglo-Saxon “P’s”: Product, Place (distribution), Promotion, Price.

6.4 Forms of Understanding Marketing: The Evolution of This in the Workplace and in Society

  1. For economists, it is an instrument whose purpose is the conquest of sales and markets. Joint action to sell more.
  2. For others, it is a tool for analysis and investigation of problems related to marketing or selling products.
  3. For others, it constitutes a means of establishing and understanding society based on consumption and the exchange of goods and services. A model of thinking.

From a business standpoint, there has been unevenness over time, but the company has focused in different ways depending on the circumstances of each era. Marketing was founded with the 20th century. And these are the 5 major thrusts:

  • Towards production: Occurred early in the century when there was excess demand and the concern of business was to produce.
  • Towards the sale: In the ’20s and ’30s of the 20th century, emerging commercial equipment companies, the concern is to sell what is produced.
  • Towards the market: In the ’50s and ’60s of the 20th century, there were very competitive markets where there are many products of the same demand. Their concern was to produce what sells.
  • Strategic: Time of crisis and the marketing emphasis is placed on the analysis of new products and markets. It is characterized by change.

6.5 The Role of Marketing in the Economic System

Marketing is linked to the market economy.

  • Market research
  • Sales organization
  • Organization of communication

6.6 Organization of the Marketing Department

Consists of providing it with a set of human and material resources. It can be done in several ways, the most common:

  • Functional organizational structure: There is a primary responsibility to designate various people responsible for functions within the company.
  • Decentralized structure: Consider that the company has several divisions (one per product), every function has a person.
  • Matrix structure: Similar to the decentralized, but related by function.
  • Product division structure: Similar to the functional, but adds about responsible for each product.

Theme 7: The Consumer

7.1 The Theories That Explain Consumer Behavior Are:

  • The behavior of “homo economicus”: The consumer is maximizing utility, is behaving rationally, and has perfect information. This is valid for objects that are too expensive or too complex.
  • Conductive Pavlov: The behavior is based on learning habits and conditions certain reflex actions before concluding that a series of identical external stimuli will react similarly. It is valid for commercials.
  • Freud’s Psychoanalytic: An explanation for certain behaviors in the subconscious of man. It is valid for the world of advertising and product design and packaging.
  • Model of social behavior: A man develops in social groups and their behavior is conditioned by the group and social experiences.
  • Genetic transmission: This behavior is inherited.

But in reality, human behavior is a mixture of all these theories.

7.2 The Individual Buying Process

Marketing uses the acquired knowledge about the consumer to investigate the individual buying process and the prerequisites for such purchase. It distinguishes three groups:

1. Personal Factors

  • Knowledge of needs: In marketing, needs are said to condition the product design. With the aid of the Maslow Pyramid of Needs:
    • Self-actualization needs
    • Need for prestige and esteem
    • Need for group membership
    • Security needs
    • Physiological needs

Depending on the stage a consumer is in, the company must address them in very different ways.

  • Knowledge of motivation: Motivation is the reason that a consumer buys a product or goes to a particular service. In marketing, product design conditions.
  • Research of habits: Habits are the habits of people, who for reasons of education, personality, or culture, usually buy one product over another, in one place or another. In marketing, policy conditional distribution.
  • Analysis of attitudes: Relating these to the set of biases or prejudices that are at the time of purchase.
  • Study of lifestyle: From a marketing standpoint, it is the set of variables that define the lifestyles that these constitute homogeneous groups in society who have specific preferences, forming what is known as consumer groups.

2. Social Factors

  • The family: It is the basic nucleus of society, the fundamental vehicle of behavior and preferences for consumption.
  • Groups of coexistence: They are those to which the person belongs and where they perform their work or study.
  • Reference groups: They are groups with which, despite the individual not living with them, have some identification with them.
  • Social class: Belonging to one class or another used to influence what was consumed and the location of consumption. Today this is a term that is not used.
  • Culture: Alters consumer tastes through preferences, folklore, etc.

3. Economic Factors

  • The level of disposable income: The money available.
  • The level of indebtedness
  • The cost of money or interest rate: What they charge for lending money.

7.3 The Stages of the Buying Decision

These are the various phases through which a consumer passes from when a need for a product or service arises until they make such a purchase. The stages are:

  • Emergence of the need
  • Search for alternatives
  • Buying process
  • Use or usage of the product
  • Result later (Satisfaction)

Marketing variables that influence each of these stages are:

  • On the emergence of the need and the search for alternatives, influence advertising, promotion, and personalized communication (word of mouth).
  • In the purchasing process, influences the price distribution and promotion at the point of sale.
  • On the use and possible influences, the product in all its versions, as well as the design of packaging.
  • In influencing the outcome after-sales service, warranty, etc.