TÜKETİCİ DAVRANIŞLARI

Consuming as integration

Consuming as play

Promotion

Offer

Gatekeeper

Market intelligence

I, II, III, IV

Stimulus Selection-Stimulus Organization

Involvement

Stereotyping

A classification scheme is developed in an attempt to explore the different ways that products and experiences can provide meaning to people. This scheme identified four distinct types of consumption activities (Solomon et al. 2006, p.15-16):

1. Consuming as experience – when consumption is an emotional or aesthetic goal in itself, a consumer may find meaning in it. This would include activities like the pleasure derived from learning how to drive an electric car, or appreciating the speeding ability of a favourite car.

2. Consuming as integration – using and manipulating consumption objects to express aspects of the self. For example, attending matches in person rather than watching them on TV allows the fan to integrate his or her experience more completely with himself/herself – the feeling of ‘having been there’. Magnets on our fridges are the clues that deliver the meaning of being a traveller.

3. Consuming as classification – the activities that consumers engage in to communicate their association with objects, both to self and to others. For example, a consumer who owns a car (may it be Ferrari or Tata) reflects an image that puts him/her into a specific social standing, or a gender group or a cultural cluster. Tea lovers may believe that they have certain features like being introvert and quiet, while coffee lovers may see themselves as outgoing and social.

4. Consuming as play – consumers use objects to participate in a mutual experience. For example, happy football fans might scream, hug and jump in unison when their team scores a goal – this is a different dimension of shared experience compared with watching the game at home.

In a consumption process there are four main steps to take: searching, buying, using and disposing. During these four main steps and the sub-steps within the main steps, different roles that different agents (father, mother, teacher etc.) play impose some important information for companies to understand their target and potential consumers.

Maintainer: The person in this role is responsible for maintaining the purchased product. For example: child puts air in the tires of his bicycle or cleans it after running it through mud puddles, while his grandfather looks after the plants and fountain in the garden.

Value is defined as the ratio between the customer’s perceived benefits (economic, functional and psychological) and the resources (monetary, time, effort, psychological) used to obtain those benefits. The other choices are related to customer loyalty rather than value.

Human beings have five senses given above to govern sensory perception. Sensory receptors are eyes, mouth & tongue, ears, nose, and skin. Taste is therefore an element of sensory perception, while the other choices are stimulus related factors.

Novelty: anything that is different from what is expected will attract attention. It may be a differently designed bottle, or a logo. Novelty tends to wear off after two or three exposure when it comes to advertising.

Perceiver related factors are characteristics that differ from one individual to another. Involvement refers to consumers’ perceptions of importance or personal relevance of an object, event, or activity. If a person finds a stimulus (for example his/ her mobile phone) relevant to himself/herself, the likelihood of paying attention to it increases. Thus, he will be willing to shop for phone cases, or apps. The other choices are stimulus related factors.

When a consumer is exposed to a stimulus through his/her senses, some factors determine if the stimulus is going to beproceeded to the perception process of consumer or not. Selecting stimulus is the second step of the perception process in which a consumer focuses his/her attention on certain incoming sensory information inputs. Since our brain’s capacity to process information is limited, we tend to be very selective about what we pay attention to. We apply the following selection process (Barış, 2018):

1. Selective exposure: our eyes and minds seek out and notice only information that interests us.

2. Selective perception: we screen out or modify ideas, messages and information that conflict with previously learned attitudes and beliefs.

3. Selective retention: we remember only what we want to remember

Gestalt theory offers four categorisation tools in organising stimuli (Williams, 1981); 1. Figure and ground principle, 2. Principle of closure, 3. Principle of similarity and 4. Principle of proximity.

Similarity refers to the fact that we often group stimuli to form a unified picture or impression, making it easier to process them. We view similar objects as belonging together. This principle is referred to as grouping in some of the consumer behaviour books. Grouping is the tendency to arrange stimuli together to form well-organized units. Thus, objects viewed in close proximity tend to be grouped together, as do stimuli that move in the same direction together.