Week 3- Chapter 6 and Smart Projects

This week, we were assigned to read Chapter 6. Chapter 6 is about consumer decision making. For managers to understand how consumers make decisions, they must understand consumer behavior. Consumer behavior is defined in our book as "a process a consumer uses to make purchase decisions, as well as to use and dispose of purchased goods or services; also includes factors that influence purchase decisions and product use." Understanding these behaviors is crucial for marketing managers. It helps them to know what the people want to buy, and adjust their products accordingly to meet their criteria. Value, which is a personal assessment of how much an item is worth to you, is a major part of consumer decision making. There are three types of value. Perceived value, utilitarian value, and hedonic value. Perceived is the value the consumer expects to receive, utilitarian is a value derived from a product or service that helps the consumer accomplish tasks (a washing machine). Hedonic value is a value that brings us a good or happy feeling. The consumer decision making process goes as shown below.

We were given a matrix of consumer buying decisions, I will now identify a product one might buy in each cell of the matrix. Limited decision making could include something like toothpaste. It typically occurs when a consumer has previous product experience, but does not know all of the current brands available. So, you may go to buy your normal toothpaste and its out of stock, a consumer will not spend long selecting another similar toothpaste due to the fact that they have experience with the product. Extensive decision making, on the other hand, takes much longer. This typically occurs when buying an expensive product that is unfamiliar and not frequently bought by the consumer. An example would be a home or a car. Routine response behavior occurs when a consumer is buying a low cost good that they spend little time on. One example could be orange juice, milk, or eggs. Brand loyalty occurs when a lot of time and effort is put into the search and decision of which to buy, but then the same brand is bought after that each time. An example for this could be sports clothing, if you are loyal to solely Nike or Adidas. 

This week we also had a joint meeting with our team members from the engineering program. In class we went through some activities that helped us to enhance our problem definitions and pov statements. We went around the room in a gallery walk style and left two notes on each of the other teams boards. This helped everyone to improve our ideas. Next, we each created our own sketches about our project that was then passed to another teammate and then after it was passed through our entire team we all had a completed sketch that each team member had added to. This helped us to join all of our ideas together. My team has planned to meet on Monday for another out of class meeting.

What I learned this week about Marketing is heavily related to the world around me. Everyone makes decisions regarding their purchases every day. Whether you think about it or not, you go through the process of decision making with every purchase. Learning about this process will definitely make me more aware next time I purchase something. I will be more aware of the value it has to me and whether or not is a worthwhile purchase.