The Economic Realm: Consumer Behavior

Being able to identify consumers' attitudes and behavior helps determine not only the message with which to target them, but the manner in which to target. This is the basis of building brand awareness, and in turn, building sales.

When targeting a group of consumers, looking at their psychographics, as well as their self-perceptions, uses attitude to better target consumers. Using VALS, for example, allows marketers to better target consumers who perceive and associate themselves with a group of people who often share the same types of attitudes. This in turn helps better define the target market and form a more appropriate message which to reach the target market.

Our society today moves quickly--trends change practically "yesterday"--and the speed to keep up with the newest products and services has shifted from a luxury to a necessity with many consumers today. Attitudes have now changed toward the need for materialism, and consumers are now seeking prestige-related products, thus exemplifying prestige-seeking consumer behavior (PSCB) (25). Marketers' abilities to keep up with consumer behavior and attitude changes as these is crucial to their success in the marketplace (25).

Furthermore, combining theories of economics and social psychology, as illustrated below, allows for a more accurate portrait of consumer behavior, according to Warshaw and Droge (26).

*Warshaw, Sheppard and Hartwick have recently extended attitude theory to contain constrained choice (1985). This was not so in the past.

Next - The Overview - The Introduction - The Psychological Spectrum - The Relationships - The Economic Realm - The Conclusion - The Resources - The Contacts - The Author

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