When evaluating consumer buying behavior for a business, there are four factors important to know cultural, social, personal, and psychological. My group evaluated two of these factors in our Practicum Presentation and applied them to Apple iPhone consumers: cultural and social.
Cultural influences on customers are culture, subculture, and social classes. Culture is a learned part of society and personal values, perceptions, wants, and behavior are learned from family and other important institutions. Subcultures are groups of people with shared value systems based on common life experiences and situations. Marketers can utilize this information by advertising to specific values in certain culturally dominant areas. For example, to advertise in an area with a higher Latin population, Apple could have a commercial showing interactions in a 3-generation household; Latin families tend to be more family oriented and respect the elderly, much more so than Americans. Cross-Cultural marketing is the practice of including ethnic themes and cross-cultural perspectives within their mainstream marketing. For example, while marketing the new iPhone, Apple made commercials focused on many culturally-different peoples interacting with family and friends through the video chat application. Apple markets to the cross-cultural value of the importance of staying connected to loved-ones. The last aspect of cultural influences is social classes which are divisions in peoples that share similar values, interests, and behaviors; this can be measured by occupation, income, education, wealth, and/or other variables. Many marketers in North America advertise aspirations of reaching goals and crossing into a higher social class.
Social influences on consumers include groups, family, roles and status, and social networks. Reference groups are the most common form of social influences and are mainly family members, friends, and celebrities. They serve as face-to-face or indirect points of comparison for buyers to base their decisions off of and can expose a person to new behaviors, lifestyles, attitudes, self-concepts. This can create pressures to conform that may affect product and brand purchasing choices. Also, reference groups can be strongest when the product is used by people the buyer respects. Many marketers try to identify the most influential reference groups of their target markets, such as celebrities or sports icons because many people will buy a product if someone they admire in the media is associated with it. Roles and Status also factor into purchasing decisions. The Upper and Middle Class tend to identify with luxurious and trendy products and they spend more money on products to maintain a distinct class difference. Apple utilizes this buyer trend by developing and releasing a new product every year so there is more pressure for the higher classes to get up-to-date products. The Lower Class tends to have less disposable income so there is less purchasing power over higher-end items, such as the iPhone, so technology-based companies tend to overlook these potential markets. This trend is changing slowly with the release of products such as Apple’s new iPhone 5C. Online social networks blogs, social networking websites and other online communities are the last factor in social influences. People socialize and share information and opinions constantly so there is more ease in spreading word about products whether good or bad.
Overall, it is important for businesses to know which factors impact consumer buying behavior when marketing new products. By knowing where, when, and to whom to advertise to, marketers can increase revenues and the value of their company with ease.
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