Consumer Psychology, Article Review Example

The collective study of customer thought processes and behaviors as they relate to mental constructs is known as the field of consumer psychology. The breadth of this subject is understandably large, as researchers are interested in virtually all aspects of the psychological processes that are associated with consumer evaluation and decision methods. Some of the specific topics of theoretical interest include the emotions that come into play when considering purchases, environmental variables that influence related behaviors, motivation sources, and the impact of personality factors. Practical investigations compliment theoretical findings by evaluating the effectiveness of business strategies that have been constructed using the provided information, such as changes to products directly, packaging alterations, store display rearrangements, expanding marketing mediums, and more. Consumer psychology has an appropriately important role in the construction of successful advertisement communications.

Psychographics and Attitudes About Marketing Communications

Psychographics is a blanket term used to describe the measurement of psychological constructs such as values, attitudes, beliefs, preferences, and behaviors. The psychographic approach has been instrumental in providing standard methods for the evaluation and application of many concepts in consumer psychology. An example is found in Dutta-Bergman’s 2006 investigation of the psychographic measures that may influence attitudes about advertisements. The authors examined evidence from previous studies about attitudes and psychology, determining that the literature is plentiful but too broad. Accordingly, they devised a research design that examined variations in psychographic influences on attitudes toward marketing in smaller subsets of the population. Supported by a review of related literature, the following psychographic measures were chosen as the most likely to be associated with attitudes toward advertisement: trust inclination, consciousness of health, environmental consciousness, inclination for community participation, opinions on leadership, innovativeness, price awareness, product consciousness, brand influence tendencies, fashion consciousness, and conservativeness of gender perspective. The dependent variables were beliefs about informational value of advertising, as well as attitudes toward ad censorship.

Data was collected from throughout the United States through customer surveys, resulting in the participation of 1475 males and 1875 females. Related questionnaire items were designed to assess each of the proposed psychographic measures, as well as basic demographics which would also be employed as independent variables. The relationship between all independent variables and utility of marketing communications was examined using a factor analysis design, while their association with conservative attitudes was assessed with correlation regressions.

The results showed that most demographic and psychographic variables had a significant relationship with attitudes toward advertising utility, as well as attitudes about marketing censorship. Findings of particular interest include a negative association between both education and income with beliefs about the informational value of advertising and the gender having a significant relationship with censorship attitudes but none with those about informational utility. This article provides a wealth of new information, but is limited by a secondary data source and still too broad dependent variables. Future research and strategic maneuver in consumer psychology will undoubtedly benefit from building upon the concepts that are discussed in this article.

Interactive Marketing and Psychographics

Although it took place four years earlier than the above study, research by Peltier and colleagues (2002) provides an example of how psychographics can be utilized to directly influence cross-selling developments. Taking from previous studies in relationship marketing, the authors suggest that the opportunities for establishing loyalty through interactive marketing tools can be extended to utilize psychographic measures. It is hypothesized that buyer-seller interactions can be used to identify and categorize market segments, that psychographics can be used to predict segment membership, that segments will differ in banking use preferences, and that these groups will also vary in profitability.

The data used in this study was acquired from bank surveys, and included responses from 60% of 2000 randomly selected customers who were sent the documents. Market segments were established using factor analysis, while regression was used to examine the usefulness of psychographics for predicting segment membership. Comparisons of mean differences were employed to test for significant variations in group banking behaviors and profitability.

The findings of this study include the identification of four separate market segments that are identified by factors that are associated with individual groups. Labeled according to factor themes, the segments consisted of anxious traditionalists, loyalists to the bank, secured investors, and the thrift-minded. Models were developed using logistical regression, and successfully predicted group membership. Also, significant differences were found between group behavior characteristics of all identified segments. Lastly, group profitability potentials were high for all, but the specific ways in which they were profitable differed significantly. This study provides a wealth of information about the importance of using thoroughly researched marketing communication strategies.

References

Dutta-Bergman, M. (2006). The demographic and psychographic antecedents of attitude toward advertising. Journal of Advertising Research, 46(1), 102-112.

Peltier, J., Schibrowsky, J., Schultz, D., & Davis, J. (2002). Interactive psychographics: Cross- selling in the banking industry. Journal of Advertising Research, 42(2), 7-22.