Financing and Marketing Management

Unit 14 - Marketing Environment-Consumer Behaviour

14.5. Social factors
A consumer’s behaviour is also influenced by such social factors as reference groups, family and social roles and statuses.
Reference Groups
Many groups influence a person’s behaviour. A person’s reference group consists of all the groups that have a direct (face to face) or indirect influence on the person’s attitudes or behaviour. Groups having a direct influence on a person are called membership groups. These are groups to which the person belongs and interacts. Some are primary groups with which there is fairly continuous interaction, such as family, friends, neighbors and coworkers. Primary groups tend to be informal. A person also belongs to secondary groups, which tend to be more formal and where there is less continuous interaction. They include religious, professional and trade union groups.
People are also influenced by groups in which they are not members. Groups to which a person would like to belong are called aspirational groups. A dissociative group is one whose values or behaviour an individual rejects.
Marketers try to identify the reference groups of their target customers. People are significantly influenced by their reference groups in at least three ways. Reference groups expose an individual to new behaviors and lifestyles. They also influence the person’s attitudes and self concept because he or she normally desires to fit-in. And they create pressures for conformity that may affect the person’s actual product and brand choices.
The importance of reference group influence varies among products and brands. When a product is first introduced, the decision to buy it is highly influenced by others, but the brand chosen is less influenced by others. In the market growth stage, group influence is strong on both product and brand choice. In the product maturity stage, brand choice but not product choice is heavily influenced by others. In the decline stage, group influence is weak in both product and brand choice.
Margaret’s interest in a computer and her attitudes towards various brands will be strongly influenced by some of her membership groups. Her coworker’s attitude and brand choices will influence her. The more cohesive the group is, the more effective its communication process is, and the higher the person esteems it, the more influential it will be in shaping the person’s product and brand choices.
Family
Family members constitute the most influential primary reference groups shaping a buyer’s behaviour. We can distinguish between two families in the buyer’s life. The family of orientation consists of ones’s parents. From parents a person acquires an orientation toward religion, politics and economics and a sense of personal ambition, self-worth and love. Even if the buyer no longer interacts very much with his or her parents, the parents influence on the unconscious behaviour of the buyer can be significant. In countries where parents continue to live with their grown children, their influence can be substantial.
A more distinct influence on everyday buying behaviour is one’s family of procreation, namely, one’s spouse and children. The family is the most important consumer buying organization in society, and it has been researched extensively. Marketers are interested in the roles and relative influence of the husband, wife and children in the purchase of a large variety of products and services.
Husband-wife involvement varies widely by product category. The wife has traditionally acted as the family’s main purchasing agent, especially for food, sundries and staple clothing items. This is changing with the increased number of working wives and the husbands doing more family shopping. Convenience goods marketers would therefore make a mistake to think of women as the main or only purchasers of their products.
In the case of expensive products and services, husbands and wives engage in more joint decision making. The marketer needs to determine which member normally has the greater influence in choosing various products. Often it is a matter of who has more power or expertise than being husband or wife per se. The husband may be more dominant, or the wife may be, or they may have equal influence
Here are typical product patterns

• Husband dominant : Life insurance, automobiles, television
• Wife dominant: Washing machines, carpeting, non-living-room furniture, kitchenware
• Equal: Living-room furniture, vacation, housing, outside entertainment

In case of Margaret’s purchase of a personal computer, her husband will play an influencer role. He may have initiated the suggestion. He may offer advice on the brand and features. His influence will depend on how strongly he makes the case for buying a computer and how much Linda values his opinion.
Roles and Statuses
A person participates in many groups throughout life- family, clubs, organizations. The person’s position in each group can be defined in terms of role and status. With her parents, Margaret plays the role of a daughter; in her family she plays wife; in her corporation, she plays brand manager. A role consists of the activities that a person is expected to perform according to the person around him or her. Each of Linda’s roles will influence some of her buying behaviour.
Each role carries a status reflecting the esteem accorded to it by society. A Supreme Court justice has more status than a brand manager has more status than an office clerk. People choose products that communicate their role and status in society.