Consumer behavior

Consumer behavior is the study of how individuals, groups, and organizations select, buy, use, and dispose of goods, services, ideas, or experiences to satisfy their needs and wants. Consumer behavior would refer to one of the essential tools which would help the marketers to understand the perspective of the consumers keeping in mind the various concepts & theories of the same.

Consumer Behavior in the real world draws evidences from various aspects of Marketing and Economics. To start with, let us first take the Marketing Mix Stimuli into account and relate it to Cadbury chocolates.

Product: The product refers to the commodity which the consumer wants to buy in order to satisfy his/her needs. The chocolate centric products offered by the consumer brand i.e. Cadbury’s are a wide range of chocolate bars namely, Dairy Milk, Fruit & Nut, Silk Dairy Milk, Crackle, Bourneville etc.

Price: Price refers to the second marketing stimulus which affects the buying behavior of the consumers. Price can be referred to as one of the main elements, because it is this factor which determines the profit or loss for a particular enterprise. The pricing strategy used by Cadbury takes into consideration the pocket of each consumer. This is the reason the price has been kept extremely flexible - from 5 to upwards of 120.

Promotion: The third marketing stimulus which has to be kept in mind is the promotional aspect i.e. the means of communication to be used. Based upon the type of product, the promotional strategy as well as the tool for communication is selected. The various means of communication which have been used by Cadbury in order to attract more number of customers are advertisements on radio, television, banners, magazines, internet, etc.

Place: Place refers to the last marketing mix stimulus which refers to the location where the product would be readily available for sale. Place plays one of the crucial elements while deciding upon the purchase for a particular product. The organization decides on using any/some of the following strategies such as franchisee, intensive distribution, exclusive distribution or selective distribution. The products offered by Cadbury are readily available at the small-scale neighborhood grocery stores as well as big grocery stores such as Reliance, Big Bazaar etc.

Now, let us try to relate the consumer behavior of our product based on Cultural, Social and Personal factors.

Cultural factors: Cultural factors comprise of set of values and ideologies of a particular community or group of individuals. It is the culture of an individual which decides the way he/she behaves. Cultural factors have a significant effect on an individual’s buying decision. Every individual has different sets of habits, beliefs and principles which he/she develops from his/her family status and background. What they see from their childhood becomes their culture. From that point of view, it can be said that though the Indian psyche was not exposed to chocolate at all till after a substantial period after the attainment of independence (thanks to the glorious, rich legacy of the multitudes of traditional Indian sweets which have been, are and will be revered irrespective of any other product which might try to displace/replace them), gradually the taste for chocolate started seeping in through the layers of rapid globalization. From the 1980s, the Indian population gladly took to consumption of chocolates and Cadbury had a big role to play in the phenomenon. From then till now, the market has seen a sea change and today, there is a dedicated market only for chocolates. Cadbury has its huge assortment of chocolates which rules the roost in the market at around 70% of the market share.

Social factors: Human beings are social animals. We need people around to talk to and discuss various issues to reach better solutions and ideas. Social Factors influencing consumer buying decision can be classified under Reference Groups, Immediate Family Members, Relatives, Role in the Society, Status in the society etc. Cadbury’s brilliant marketing campaigns made sure that consumers got their insights and recommendations about their purchase decisions and preferences from all of those sources and did not narrow it down to any particular arena. While the chocolates offered by Cadbury are a huge hit among children, it can be noticed that it has developed a huge market for teenagers and young adults by extending its product line into more diverse flavors and also by marketing them through ads which are appealing to the young audiences. Some of their campaigns exclusively focused on Indian traditions and customs such as ‘Kuch meetha ho jaaye’ and ‘Shubh aarambh’, thereby sealing the recipe of success.

Personal Factors: They play an important role in affecting consumer buying behavior, and are characterized by the factors such as occupation, age, economic condition, lifestyle, and personality. Cadbury in its journey made sure that it covered all of these bases and utilized the variety involved in it by designing its product line and campaigns accordingly. The sheer versatility of the pricing across the product line took care of the occupational and economic differences across consumers, while the variety in flavor and packaging did the job as far as age and lifestyle are concerned. As far as personality goes, they went an extra step by fashioning the silk ads in such a way that most people will relate to them, and effectively so with recall value.

One more factor that we can include in this discussion is the Cognitive consumer response as far as the product is concerned. One of the main issues which can be studied within the cognitive psychology refers to the study of memory. The memory of the consumers can be divided into three parts i.e. Sensory Memory, Short Term Memory & Long Term Memory.

Sensory memory: The first stage which would be taken into consideration to discuss the cognitive response will be the sensory memory. It involves the information that enters the senses of the consumers. This would be practiced primarily with the advertisements being aired on televisions, radio, banners, etc. The memory which would be created within the minds of the customer will last for approximately 3 seconds of hearing, ½ second of vision etc. In case of Cadbury chocolate or toffees or milk powder, the color of the tin pack or the wrappers would attract the attention of the customers. The dark blue cover of the wrappers will grasp the attention of the consumers which will have a long lasting effect.

Short-term memory: The aspect within this model would keep in mind a temporary storage facility. The use of the tag line (e.g. “Kuch meetha ho jaaye” “Pappu paas ho gaya”, aaj pehli tareekh hai”) has acted as one of the best ways with which the consumers relate to the brand.

Long-term memory: The last stage to judge the cognitive response of consumers would be to have a long term memory. The long term memory with regards to Cadbury chocolates can be seen with respect to the information flown regarding the brand and the recall value associated. It can be judged when the customer prefers/suggests others to buy a bar of Cadbury as opposed to the substitutes available in the market.