Chapter 6 - Analyzing Consumer Markets 

1. Consumer behavior is influenced by three factors: cultural (culture, subculture, and social class), social (reference groups, family, and social roles and statuses), and personal (age, stage in the life cycle, occupation, economic circumstances, lifestyle, personality, and self-concept). Research into these factors can provide clues to reach and serve consumers more effectively. 

2. Four main psychological processes that affect consumer behavior are motivation, perception, learning, and memory. 

3. To understand how consumers actually make buying decisions, marketers must identify who makes and has input into the buying decision; people can be initiators, influencers, deciders, buyers, or users. Different  marketing campaigns might be targeted to each type of person. 

4. The typical buying process consists of the following sequence of events: problem recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision, and post-purchase behavior. The marketers’ job is to understand the behavior at each stage. The attitudes of others, unanticipated situational factors, and perceived risk may all affect the decision to buy, as will consumers’ levels of post-purchase product satisfaction, use and disposal, and the company’s actions. 

5. Consumers are constructive decision makers and subject to many contextual influences. They often exhibit low involvement in their decisions, using many heuristics as a result.