The Importance of Sociology

Every society is composed of a variety of personalities that have different behaviors and preferences. These behaviors affect the customers’ preferences in the market.

 According to Chapter 5 the following are the important social factors that affect the behavior of consumers in one or the other way:

Reference group

Family

Roles and status

In terms of family we get to know that the second generation family is a young family whose parents immigrated to Australia 40 years ago. They have two children who are aged 8 and 17 who attend private schools.

For the old couples’ family in terms of social life we find that they are so social. This shown by their usage of technology to keep I touch with their adult children. They also visited their grandchildren twice a year. In terms of their role in the local community we find that they are always active.

Cultural factors

Cultural consist of ideologies and values of a specific community. The cultures of an individual determine the way he or she behaves in the market. From chapter 5 we have the following culture elements-

Culture

Culture group

Social Class

The second generation family is based on Portuguese culture upbringing and they are Portuguese by birth.

The old couple family belongs to a local culture group Rotary club and plays lawn bowls twice a week.

Personal Factors

Personal Factors are those factors of consumers that strongly affect their buying patterns. They are because of the differences in the set of attitudes, perceptions and behavior towards certain products. The personal factors include-

Age and life-cycle stage

Occupation

Economic status

Life style

Personality and self-concept

The second generation household parent occupation was that both work on a full time basis in digital marketing duties. They have an upkeep income of $342,000 per year which is inadequate for them. Their children go to private schools and that they have a pet in for of a dog.

Even though they were struggling financially, they like a high life style. We find that they drive very expensive cars like BMW and Porsche. They also stay in a house whose average mortgage price is $ 1.2 million. They rarely visit their family in Portugal every 3 years because of the tight budget.

For the old couple household, they own a house where they leave. They also had a steady income of $ 105,000 from retirement investment. They have a pet bird call Alfie

Buyer Decision Process

The buying decision process is use by consumer whenever a problem or needs to purchase a certain product arises. I have five stages as shown below:

Need Recognition: The process begins with the problem or need recognition. The marketer must recognize the needs of the consumer and how to satisfy it.

Information Search: This is the second stage. Here the consumer searches for the information to know more about the product from any source.

Evaluation of Alternatives: Upon getting the information about the product substitutes of the products, the consumer evaluate the various options based on their quality features and satisfying power.

Purchase Decision: after the evaluation, the buyer buys the best product. There may be chances to suspend the purchase decision because of some reasons.

Post-Purchase Behavior: after the purchase, there will be the possibility of a consumer being satisfied or dissatisfied. If the consumer is dissatisfied he/she will be disappointed otherwise he/she be satisfied hence happy. The decision model is shown below.

Decision model for paying a gardener to do the lawns once a week for both households

Here we are dealing in a product/service which can regularly be accessed at low cost. It does not need a lot of purchasing power in order to afford it; hence its decision process does not require all the five stages. Both households will use nearly the same stages in decision making as show below.

Decision model for the purchase of a new car

The Second Generation house holds

A car is an expensive product that needs high purchasing power when deciding to buy and a lot of information such. For the second generation household, their financial status is tight, hence low purchasing power. They will go through all the stages when purchasing a new car with no much concentration on the information search because they may just need any car. People with less purchasing power don’t know much to do with quality. They evaluate alternative whether it is a Toyota, Nissan or any other car they will buy, purchase and there after the post-purchase behavior follows.

The old couple household car purchasing decision

For this household they have a stable income, hence high purchasing power. They will go through all the stages when purchasing a new car with much concentration on the information for search of a quality car. They know what they want. They evaluate alternative whether it is a Toyota, Nissan or any other car they will buy, purchase and the after the post-purchase behavior follows.

Reference

Chankong, V. and Haimes, Y.Y., 2008. Multiobjective decision making: theory and methodology. Courier Dover Publications.

Kluegel, J.R. and Smith, E.R., 2017. Beliefs about inequality: Americans’ views of what is and what ought to be. Routledge.

Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M. and Brennan, R., 2015. Marketing: an introduction.