Many companies or firms use the Internet to help customers better understand and become more familiar with their products and brands.

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By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and assessment criteria:

• Competency 2: Analyze consumer behavior.
  • Describe a firm that uses the Internet to provide brand recognition and information about its products to customers.
• Competency 3: Assess the managerial application of customer behavior concepts.
  • Analyze how a firm uses the Internet to educate customers on its products.
  • Describe how the strategies used by the firm may affect customer behavior.

Consumer motivation is part of almost all areas of consumer behavior in some way. For example, consumer motivations are exhibited during the need recognition and the evaluation of products stages during consumer decision-making. A family with young children almost certainly experiences different motivation than a retired couple when evaluating vacation options. Similarly, motivation certainly impacts purchasing behavior. Many customers will purchase a product because of the prestige associated with the item, even if they know the purchase may not be the best decision for their overall financial status.

All consumers have ideas about how they picture themselves and how they would like to be viewed by the world. Interjected into those thoughts, consumers include their beliefs about products and how those products may or may not play a role in those images. Consumers may purchase a sporty convertible because of the statement they believe it makes about them. A consumer may wear certain clothing with particular brand names as a way of making a statement about personal taste or economic status. Predicting precisely how consumers’ beliefs will manifest in the marketplace, however, is a difficult job. Customers who believe that high-quality products always cost more may actually shy away from a high-quality product that is priced too low.

To deepen your understanding, you are encouraged to consider the questions below and discuss them with a fellow learner, a work associate, an interested friend, or a member of the business community.

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• Even when customers may fit the profile of the type of consumers who would purchase a product, they still may not make the purchase. Hence, some companies use advertising to remind customers that their products help consumers fit a particular social image. Some companies use rebates and coupons to entice customers to buy their products instead of other products. Still other firms rely on sales to entice consumers to buy. Although companies should use a variety of methods, which particular method do you believe is most useful and why?
• Many companies attempt to use customers’ own attitudes toward the world as a means of developing a relationship with the customers. What is an example of a promotional campaign you have seen a company use to try to influence customer beliefs to create a demand for a certain product? What were the product and the company selling the product? What was the media and promotion campaign? What belief system do you think the company was trying to use to connect with customers? Following are some examples:
  • A company that sells weight-loss products might show more television commercials during the month of January because it hopes to capitalize on some customers’ beliefs that they should make a New Year’s resolution to become healthier.
  • Proctor and Gamble created a sweepstakes to reward customers for lowering their energy consumption by using the Cold Water Tide product. By participating in the program, customers were able to feel like they were making a difference in reducing energy consumption. In this way, Proctor and Gamble was using customer attitudes to promote its product.

  Assessment Instructions

  Select a company and analyze how it uses the Internet to better educate its current and potential customers about its products in order to build greater brand recognition.Complete the following:

  • Select a firm that uses the Internet to offer consumers detailed and helpful information on its products.
  • Describe the selected firm and its business.
  • Locate the firm’s Web site. Analyze the Web site and how the firm uses it for brand recognition.
  • Explain how the Web site is used to educate customers about the firm’s products. Provide examples.
  • Describe how the Web site is used to create a lasting, favorable impression of the firm with customers. For example, consider how the firm may use its Web site to increase top-of-mind awareness of its products.
  • Describe how the strategies used may affect customer behavior toward the firm’s products.

  Use proper APA style and formatting. The content of your assessment should determine its length.

  Suggested Resources

  The following optional resources are provided to support you in completing the assessment or to provide a helpful context. For additional resources, refer to the Research Resources and Supplemental Resources in the left navigation menu of your courseroom.

  Capella Multimedia

  Click the link provided below to view the following multimedia piece:

  • Consumer Behavior Terminology | Transcript.

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  Course Library Guide

  A Capella University library guide has been created specifically for your use in this course. You are encouraged to refer to the resources in the
  BUS-FP4024 – Customer Behavior Library Guide to help direct your research.

  Internet Resources

  Access the following resources by clicking the links provided. Please note that URLs change frequently. Permissions for the following links have been either granted or deemed appropriate for educational use at the time of course publication.

  • Beckland, J. (2011). The end of demographics: How marketers are going deeper with personal data. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2011/06/30/psychographics-mark…

  Bookstore Resources

  The resources listed below are relevant to the topics and assessments in this course and are not required. Unless noted otherwise, these materials are available for purchase from the
  Capella University Bookstore. When searching the bookstore, be sure to look for the Course ID with the specific
  –FP (FlexPath) course designation.

  • Babin, B. J., & Harris, E. (2018). CB8: Consumer behavior (8th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage.

  Transcript:

• CUSTOMER BEHAVIOR TERMINOLOGY

  AIO Measures

  Statements that describe the activities, interests, and opinions of consumers.

  Benefit segmentation

  Dividing consumers into different market segments based on the benefits they seek from purchasing and consuming products.

  Brand

  A product or product line, store, or service with an identifiable set of benefits, wrapped in a recognizable personality.

  Brand associations

  The linkages in memory between the brand and other concepts.

  Brand extensions

  The extension of a brand name that is well-known and respected in one product category to another product category for which it had not been known before.

  Categorization process

  When constructing an evaluation of a choice alternative, consumers do so based on the particular category to which the alternative is assigned.

  Central process

  A process of opinion formation in which opinions are formed from a thoughtful consideration of relevant information.

  Consideration set

  Those alternatives considered during decision making.

  Consolidated metropolitan statistical area

  A grouping of closely related primary metropolitan statistical areas.

  Conspicuous consumption

  Consumption that is motivated to some extent by the desire to show one’s successfulness to other people.

  Consumer analysis

  The process of understanding consumer trends, global consumer markets, models to predict purchase and consumption patterns, and communication methods to reach target markets most effectively.

  Consumer behavior

  Activities people undertake when obtaining, consuming, and disposing of products and services.Also, a field of study that focuses on consumer activities.

  Consumer decision process model

  Also known as the CPD model, this is a road map of consumers’ minds that marketers and managers can use to help guide product mix, communication, and sales strategies.

  Consumer life cycle

  The series of stages that a consumer passes through during life and that change an individual’s behavior over time.

  Consumer motivation

  The drive to satisfy both physiological and psychological needs through product purchase and consumption.

  Consumer orientation

  The process of bringing product design, logistics, manufacturing, and retailing together as a customer-centric demand chain.

  Consumption

  Consumers’ usage of the purchased product.

  Consumption analysis

  The study of why and how people buy and use products.

  Cost versus benefit perspective

  A theory of search behavior that proposes that consumers will search for decision-relevant information when the perceived benefits of the new information are greater than the perceived costs of acquiring the information.

  Cultural empathy

  The ability to understand the inner logic and coherence of other ways of life and refrain from judging other value systems.

  Customer lifetime value

  Abbreviated CLV, this is the value to the company of a customer over the whole time the customer relates to the company.

  Data mining

  The creation of a database of names for developing continuous communications and relationships with the consumer.

  Demographics

  The size, structure, and distribution of a population.

  Disposing

  How consumers get rid of products and packaging.

  Early adopters

  Opinion leaders and role models for others, with good social skills and respect within larger social systems, who adopt new innovations before the masses do.

  Economic demographics

  The study of the economic characteristics of a nation’s population.

  Family life cycle

  The series of stages that a family passes through and that change them over time.

  Impulse buying

  Buying that is unplanned and occurs when consumers unexpectedly experience a sudden and powerful urge to buy something immediately.

  Integrated marketing communications

  Abbreviated IMC, this is a systematic, cross-organizational marketing communication process that is customer-centric, data driven, technically anchored, and branding effective.

  Loyalty programs

  Programs that strive to motivate repeat buying by providing rewards to customers based on how much business they do with a company.

  Market aggregation

  The act of an organization to market and sell the same product or service to all consumers. Also know as mass marketing.

  Market segment

  A group of consumers with similar needs, behavior, or other characteristics, which are identified through the market segmentation process.

  Market segmentation

  The process of identifying groups of people who are similar in one or more ways (based on demographic, psychographic, behavioral, cultural, and/or other characteristics), but somewhat different from other groups.

  Marketing

  The process of transforming or changing an organization to provide what people will buy.

  Marketing concept

  The process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational objectives.

  Marketing era

  A time when productive capacity exceeded demand, causing firms to change their orientation away from manufacturing capabilities and toward the needs of consumers, thus adopting a marketing orientation.

  Marketing orientation

  A focus on how an organization adapts to consumers.

  Metropolitan statistical area

  A free-standing metropolitan area that is surrounded by nonmetropolitan counties and that is not closely related to other metropolitan areas.

  Need Recognition

  A perception of difference between the desired state of affairs and the actual situation that is sufficient to arouse and activate the decision process.

  Norms

  Rules of behavior held by a majority or at least a consensus of a group about how individuals should behave.

  Pre-purchase evaluation

  The third stage of the decision making process that focuses on the manner in which choice alternatives are evaluated.

  Pre-purchase search

  Search motivated by an upcoming purchase decision.

  Primary metropolitan statistical area

  Abbreviated PMSA, this is a metropolitan area that is closely related to another city.

  Product

  A good or service. The total bundle of utilities obtained by consumers in the exchange process.

  Product innovation

  Any product recently introduced to the market or perceived to be new as compared to existing products.

  Product knowledge

  The information stored in consumers’ memory about products.

  Psychographics

  An operational technique of measurement lifestyles that can be used with the large samples needed for definition of market segments.

  Purchase intentions

  What consumers think they will buy.

  Reference group

  Any person or group of people that significantly affects or influences another individual’s behavior.

  Relative price knowledge

  What consumers know about one price relative to another.

  Satisfaction

  A positive post-consumption evaluation that occurs when the consumption experience either meets or exceeds expectations.

  Value

  The difference between what consumers give up for a product and the benefits they receive.