Marketing Environment and Consumer Behaviour
This domain covers the marketing environment (micro and macro forces) and consumer behaviour-why buyers act as they do. Questions often ask you to classify forces, identify buying roles or apply the five-stage buying process.
Environment
- Micro environment: company, suppliers, marketing intermediaries, customers, competitors and publics. These are close to the firm and can be influenced.
- Macro environment: demographic, economic, natural, technological, political-legal and socio-cultural forces. These are largely uncontrollable.
- A SWOT analysis links internal strengths and weaknesses with external opportunities and threats.
Consumer behaviour
- Influences: cultural, social (family, reference groups), personal (age, occupation, income, lifestyle) and psychological (motivation, perception, learning, beliefs).
- Buying roles: initiator, influencer, decider, buyer and user; one person may play several.
- Buying process: need recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase and post-purchase behaviour. Cognitive dissonance is doubt after purchase.
- Adoption of new products follows innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards.
Worked example
A dairy cooperative sees urban buyers reading sugar content on packs and launches a low-sugar lassi. Which forces are at work? Reasoning: health consciousness is socio-cultural; income and spending are economic; label reading is consumer learning. The cooperative used a macro trend plus buyer information search to redesign the offer. A rival that only cut price missed the health motive.
Traps
Do not put competitors in the macro environment. Do not treat all family members as the buyer. Do not stop the buying process at purchase; post-purchase service affects repeat sales.