Consumer behaviour and marketing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Consumer behaviour and marketing - Essay Example The only plausible way to do this is to ensure that the targeted customers are responding positively to the products or services of these companies. Marketing is one of the best ways to make sure that these customers have a connection to the companies’ products or services that is desirable. However, with the increased customer awareness and insight into brands all over the world, the marketing strategies of the companies have had to undergo a tremendous metamorphosis as a way of trying to predict the consumer behaviour and their influence on the businesses. According to Bian & Moutinho (2011, p. 200), customers have a great impact on the way a particular business behaves in the aspect of branding, usage, perception and even quality. The way the customer behaves towards a certain product is influenced by a number of different diverse factors. Some of these factors could be attributed to attitude of the customers towards a certain product of a certain company, fashion, culture among many others (Danaher & Rossiter, 2011, p.12). It is the responsibility of the companies to ensure that they come up with products that are in alignment with these different factors. In so doing, they must first identify which factor affects which type of the targeted customer and in the process come up with products that are considered appealing to this specific group of target customers. In other words, marketing is a strategy that puts the interests of the customer at heart. Companies are bound to fail if they come up with products without taking a survey of the market to identify the different needs of different customers. Different strategies of marketing are applied with respect to different fields. For instance, the kind of strategy that could be applicable to social marketing may not be fully applicable to another field such as manufacturing among others. However, no matter which field the marketing takes place, the main point of focus is on the customer. In every busin ess, the customer is the king. The customer is the main reason why people engage themselves in business activities (Geigenmuller & Outland, 2012, p. 430). This paper will indulge in the discussion of how the different forms of consumer behaviour influences the way companies conduct their marketing. It will illuminate upon the response of these companies in the marketing aspect with respect to changes in consumer behaviour. What happens to the marketing strategies laid down by different companies if the consumer behavior is varied? Since there are many diverse aspects of consumer behavior and attributes to name but a few such as fashion, culture, perceptions, attitudes, motivation and even group influence. Though these attributes sometimes intertwine, for the purposes of a clear investigation into this topic of influence of consumer behavior on marketing, this paper will narrow the attributes down to culture as a consumer attribute. Definition of terms For an in-depth and profound an alysis of this topic, a number of terms that will be applied extensively in this paper will be defined here. These terms are the consumer behavior as well as the culture concept of consumer behavior. Consumer behavior is a term used by different marketers and marketing strategists to describe extensively the way different consumers respond with respect to a number of factors. Consumer behavior