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4.2.1 Psychological influences

Although your text covers the remaining psychological variables well, it is worth mentioning the importance of attitudes. An attitude is a learned, relatively enduring feeling of being favourable or unfavourable towards something, whether that might be, say a particular outlet, product or brand. As attitudes are learned, they are difficult to change and they lead people to act fairly consistently towards similar objects. As marketers, therefore, it is much more appropriate that we should try to match our products to people's attitudes rather than try to change those attitudes. This is particularly relevant for international marketing, so please keep it in mind when you study the following reading on an international aspect of consumer behaviour.

Also discussed by your text is why marketers use psychographics, including examples of how psychographic data are classified via the Values and Life Style (VALS) 2 model. You may wish to try the VALS questionnaire yourself by accessing the Web site at http://www.sric-bi.com/VALS/presurvey.shtml .

In your text

Kotler et al. (2004) Chapter 7, pp. 245-251, 'Characteristics influencing consumer behaviour', 'Psychological factors', pp. 253-254, 'Cultural factors', and pp. 258-262, 'Consumer lifestyle'.

 

Activity 4.2

The three selective processes outlined in Kotler et al. (2004, pp. 249-250) are very relevant to your study habits as a student (a consumer of this course). So:

  1. Think of, and write down, an example of selective exposure which relates to your study activities.
  2. Do the same for selective distortion (also known as selective perception) and selective retention.
  3. Then answer the following question: how can I apply this information to improve my study habits?

Consider this

Consider the categories of the VALS 2 model and the report from the VALS Web site based on your replies to the questionnaire. Do you fit into one of the eight categories? Why? What are your particular characteristics that match those of the category into which you think you fit?

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