What do you call the study of how individuals groups and organizations buy use and dispose goods/services ideas or experience to satisfy needs or wants?

Why Do We Buy?

The field of consumer behavior covers a lot of ground: It is the study of the processes involved when individuals or groups select, purchase, use, or dispose of products, services, ideas, or experiences to satisfy needs and desires. Consumers take many forms, ranging from an 8-year-old child who begs her mother for a Frozen Elsa doll to an executive in a large corporation who helps to decide on a multimillion-dollar computer system. The items we consume include anything from canned peas to a massage, democracy, Juicy jeans, Reggaeton music, or a celebrity like Taylor Swift. The needs and desires we satisfy range from hunger and thirst to love, status, and even spiritual fulfillment.

Marketing practitioners rely heavily on consumer behavior research to guide strategic decisions that may range from the most effective way to phrase an advertisement to the optimal way to configure a store environment or how to design a public policy campaign to encourage responsible consumption.

In its early stages of development, consumer behavior researchers referred to the field as buyer behavior; this reflected the emphasis at that time (1960s and 1970s) on the interaction between consumers and producers at the time of purchase. Most marketers now recognize that consumer behavior is in fact an ongoing process, not merely what happens at the moment a consumer hands over money or a credit card and in turn receives some good or service.

A consumer is a person who identifies a need or desire, makes a purchase, and/or then disposes of the product. In many cases, however, different people play a role in this sequence of events. The purchaser and user of a product might not be the same person, as when a parent picks out clothes for a teenager (and makes selections that can result in “fashion suicide” in the view of the teen). In other cases, another person may act as an influencer when he or she recommends certain products without actually buying or using them. A friend’s grimace when you try on that new pair of pants may be more influential than anything your mother might say.

Finally, consumers may take the form of organizations or groups. One or several persons may select products that many will use, as when a purchasing agent orders a company’s office supplies. In other organizational situations, a large group of people may make purchase decisions: for example, company accountants, designers, engineers, sales personnel, and others—all of whom will have a say in the various stages of the consumption process.   One important type of organization is the family, in which different family members weigh in about products and services that all will use.

Successful companies understand that needs are a moving target. No organization—no matter how renowned for its marketing prowess—can afford to rest on its laurels. Everyone needs to keep innovating to stay ahead of changing customers and the marketplace. BMW is a great example of a company that carefully tracks consumer behavior. The automaker’s engineers and designers know they have to understand how drivers’ needs will change in the future—even those loyal owners who love the cars they own today. The company is highly sensitive to such key trends that affect consumer behavior as:

• A desire for environmentally friendly products
• Increasingly congested roadways and the movement by some cities such as London to impose fees on vehicles in central areas
• New business models that encourage consumers to rent products only while they need them rather than buying them outright.

BMW’s response: The company committed more than $1 billion to develop electric BMWi models such as its new i3 commuter car and i8 sports car.  In addition, BMW started a car-sharing service (now in several European cities as well as San Francisco) it calls DriveNow: Drivers use a computer chip in their licenses to hire a car and leave it wherever they are when they no longer need it.

Why should managers, advertisers, and other marketing professionals bother to learn about consumer behavior? Simply, it’s good business. The basic marketing concept states that organizations exist to satisfy needs. Marketers can satisfy these needs only to the extent that they understand the people or organizations that will use the products and services they sell. Voila! That’s why we study consumer behavior.

Our society is evolving from a mass culture in which many consumers share the same preferences to a diverse one in which we each have almost an infinite number of choices—just think about how many shades of lipstick or necktie patterns compete for your attention. This change makes it more important than ever to identify distinct market segments and to develop specialized messages and products for those groups.

Building loyalty to a brand is a smart marketing strategy, so sometimes companies define market segments when they identify their most faithful customers or heavy users. As a rule of thumb, marketers use the 80/20 rule: 20 percent of users account for 80 percent of sales. This guideline often holds up well, and in some cases even this lopsided split isn’t big enough: A study of 54 million shoppers reported that only 2.5 percent of consumers account for 80 percent of sales for the average packaged-goods brand.

Marketing’s Impact on Consumers

Does marketing imitate life, or vice versa? After the movie Wedding Crashers became a big hit, hotels, wedding planners, and newlyweds reported  an outbreak of uninvited guests who tried to gain access to parties across the United States. For better or for worse, we all live in a world that the actions of marketers significantly influence.

Marketing stimuli surround us as advertisements, stores, and products compete for our attention and our dollars. Marketers filter much of what we learn about the world, whether through the affluence they depict in glamorous magazines, the roles actors play in commercials, or maybe the energy drink a rock star just “happens” to hold during a photo shoot. Ads show us how we should act with regard to recycling, alcohol consumption, the types of houses and cars we might wish to own—and even how to evaluate others based on the products they buy or don’t buy. In many ways we are also at the mercy of marketers, because we rely on them to sell us products that are safe and that perform as promised, to tell us the truth about what they sell, and to price and distribute these products fairly.

Popular culture—the music, movies, sports, books, celebrities, and other forms of entertainment that the mass market produces and consumes—is both a product of and an inspiration for those who study consumer behavior. It also affects our lives in more far-reaching ways, ranging from how we acknowledge cultural events such as marriage, death, or holidays to how we view social issues such as climate change, gambling, and addictions. Whether it’s the Super Bowl, Christmas shopping, national health care, newspaper recycling, medical marijuana, body piercing, vaping, tweeting, or online video games, consumer behavior plays a significant role in our view of the world and how we live in it.

The cultural impact of consumer behavior is hard to overlook, although many people do not seem to realize how much marketers influence their preferences for movie and musical heroes; the latest fashions in clothing, food, and decorating choices; and even the physical features that they find attractive or ugly in men and women. For example, consider the product icons that companies use to create an identity for their products. Many imaginary creatures and personalities, from the Pillsbury Doughboy to the Jolly Green Giant, at one time or another have been central figures in popular culture. In fact, it is likely that more consumers could recognize such characters than could identify past presidents, business leaders, or artists. Although these figures never really existed, many of us feel as if we “know” them, and they certainly are effective spokescharacters for the products they represent.

What Does It Mean to Consume?

What’s the poop on Peeps? Every year, people buy about 1.5 billion of these mostly tasteless marshmallow chicks; about two-thirds of them sell around Easter. The newer version called Peeps Minis encourages people to eat them at other times as well, including quirky and obscure “holidays” such as “Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day and “Lost Sock Memorial Day.”

This fascination with a creepy little candy chick illustrates one of the fundamental premises of the modern field of consumer behavior: People often buy products not for what they do, but for what they mean. This principle does not imply that a product’s basic function is unimportant, but rather that the roles products play in our lives extend well beyond the tasks they perform. The deeper meanings of a product may help it to stand out from other similar goods and services. All things being equal, we choose the brand that has an image (or even a personality!) consistent with our underlying needs.

For example, although most people probably couldn’t run faster or jump higher if they wear Nikes instead of Reeboks, many die-hard loyalists swear by their favorite brand. People choose between these archrivals (or other competitors) largely because of their brand images—meanings that have been carefully crafted with the help of legions of rock stars, athletes, slickly produced commercials, and many millions of dollars. So, when you buy a Nike “swoosh,” you are doing more than choosing shoes to wear to the mall; you also make a lifestyle statement about the type of person you are or wish you were. For a relatively simple item made of leather and laces, that’s quite a feat!

Our motivations to consume range from the practical to the fanciful.  In some cases, we decide to try a product because we want to learn more about the experience and in some way grow personally. For example, in one study undergraduates who were asked to try a new (fictitious) brand of beer were more likely to do so when they believed their level of expertise with the product was relatively low (imagine that!), and thus there was an opportunity to enhance their knowledge about different attributes of beer.  In other cases our choice of a product links more to our broader identity as a member of a larger entity such as an ethnic group or a country.

Consumer Behavior as a Field of Study

By now it should be clear that the field of consumer behavior encompasses many things, from the simple purchase of a carton of milk to the selection of a complex networked computer system; from the decision to donate money to a charity to devious plans to rip off a company.

There’s an awful lot to understand, and many ways to go about studying consumer behavior.  Although people have certainly been consumers for a long time, it is only recently that consumption per se has been the object of formal study. In fact, although many business schools now require that marketing majors take a consumer behavior course, most colleges did not even offer such a course until the 1970s.

Where do we find consumer behavior researchers? Just about anywhere we find consumers. consumer behavior researchers work for manufacturers, retailers, marketing research firms, governments and nonprofit organizations, and of course colleges and universities. You’ll find them in laboratories, running sophisticated experiments that involve advanced neural imaging machinery, or in malls interviewing shoppers. consumer behavior researchers may conduct focus groups or run large-scale polling operations. For example, when an advertising agency began to work on a new campaign for retailer JC Penney, it sent consumer behavior specialists to hang out with more than 50 women for several days. They wanted to really understand the respondents’ lives, so they helped them to clean their houses, carpool, cook dinner, and shop. As one of the account executives observed, “If you want to understand how a lion hunts, you don’t go to the zoo—you go to the jungle.”

consumer behavior researchers work on many types of topics, from everyday household products and high-tech installations to professional services, museum exhibits, and public policy issues such as the effect of advertising on children.

Many different perspectives shape the young field of consumer behavior. Indeed, it is hard to think of a field that is more interdisciplinary. You can find people with training in a wide range of disciplines—from psychophysiology to literature—doing consumer research. Universities, manufacturers, museums, advertising agencies, and governments employ consumer behavior researchers. Several professional groups, such as the Association for Consumer Research and the Society for Consumer Psychology, have been formed since the mid-1970s to promote the study of consumer behavior.

To get an idea of the diversity of interests of people who do consumer behavior research, consider the list of professional associations that sponsor the field’s major journal, the Journal of Consumer Research: the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences, the American Statistical Association, the Association for Consumer Research, the Society for Consumer Psychology, the International Communication Association, the American Sociological Association, the Institute of Management Sciences, the American Anthropological Association, the American Marketing Association, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the American Association for Public Opinion Research, and the American Economic Association. That’s a pretty mixed bag.

Clearly there are a lot of researchers from diverse backgrounds who are into the study of consumer behavior. So, which is the “correct” discipline to look into these issues? You might remember a children’s story about the blind men and the elephant. The gist of the story is that each man touched a different part of the animal and, as a result, the descriptions each gave of the elephant were quite different. This analogy applies to consumer behavior research as well. Depending on the training and interests of the researchers studying it, they will approach the same consumer phenomenon in different ways and at different levels.

In recent years, some consumer behavior research has become more proactive, as adherents try to influence consumer behavior rather than just understand it. Consumer culture theory (CCT) refers generally to consumer behavior research that regards consumption from a social and cultural point of view rather than more narrowly as an economic exchange. CCT studies embrace a variety of consumer behavior topics that range from how the media shapes our conceptions of our bodies or how underprivileged people cope with poverty to how Harley-Davidson riders participate in an active community of bike lovers.

Many researchers regard the field of consumer behavior as an applied social science. They argue that the value of the knowledge we generate should be judged in terms of its ability to improve the effectiveness of marketing practice. However, others argue that consumer behavior should not have a strategic focus at all; the field should not be a “handmaiden to business.” It should instead focus on the understanding of consumption for its own sake rather than marketers applying this knowledge to making a profit.  Most consumer behavior researchers do not hold this rather extreme view, but it has encouraged many to expand the scope of their work beyond the field’s traditional focus on the purchase of consumer goods such as food, appliances, and cars to embrace social problems such as homelessness or preserving the environment.  That explains the subtitle of my “Consumer Behavior” textbook:  Buying, Having, and Being.

What is the study of how individuals groups and organizations select buy use and dispose of goods, services ideas or experiences to satisfy their needs and wants?

What do you call as the study of individuals groups or organizations and the processes they use to select?

What is the study of individuals groups or organizations?

What is the study of the processes involved when people select purchase use or dispose of products services ideas or experiences to satisfy needs and desires?