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Define Consumer Behavior?

Consumer Behavior may be defined as the interplay of forces that takes place during a consumption process, within a consumers self and his environment.

List out the individual determinants and environmental influences that affect consumption behavior?

These are listed as follows:

Scope of Consumer Behavior:

The study of consumer behavior deals with understanding consumption patterns and behavior. It includes within its ambit the answers to the following:

The scope of consumer behavior includes not only the actual buyer but also the various roles played by him/ different individuals.

Buying Roles

A child goes to a kindergarten school. She comes back home and asks her parents to buy her a set of color pencils and crayons. Now the roles played are: 1. Initiator: the child in nursery school

  1. Influencer: a fellow classmate

  2. Decider: the father or the mother

  3. Buyer: the father or the mother

  4. User: the child

Market research may be defined as:

The environment surrounding a Company may be grouped as the “micro-environment” and the “macro environment”. The micro-environment comprises forces in the environment that are close to the company and affect the company directly; for example, the company’s internal environment, the founder/leader and his vision and mission, the customers, competitors, suppliers, and channel intermediaries. The macro- environment on the other hand,comprises forces in the environment that first affect the micro environment and through that they affect the company; in other words they affect the company indirectly; examples are the demographic factors, socio-economic factors, political factors, technological factors, cultural factors, natural factors etc. The forces in the macro environment affect all the companies operating in a same industry in a similar manner.

The micro-environment is studied in terms of strengths (S) and weaknesses (W), while the macro-environment is studied in terms of opportunities (O) and threats(T). The analysis of both of these put together comprises the SWOT analysis.

(Resource: Great Notes for Studying: http://www.nptel.ac.in/courses/110105029/)