An academic overview to the ancient buyer school of thought. Based on a previous research.

1. The Buyer
Behavior School
of Thought
Yiğit Kalafatoğlu

2. Focusing on..
 Demographic information on how many
and who are the customers.
 Why customer behave the way they do in
marketplace?
 Understanding brand choice behavior as
opposed to other types of choices

3. Influenced by..
 Explanations of human behavior
 Psychology, sociology and anthropology
 Behavioral sciences has generated the
phenomenon

4. Keynotes..
 It has the greatest impact on the
discipline of marketing with possible
exception of the managerial school of
marketing.
 It is hard to provide a chronological and
detailed evolution of this school of
thought as other schools.

5. Evolution and Descriptions
1. Why become so popular?
2. Pioneers in the behavioral sciences..
3. How did it evolved and where it is today?
4. Major tenets, findings and generalization
5. Impact on the dicipline & practice of marketing

6. Why so popular?
 Emergence of the marketing concept
 Established body of knowledge in behavioral
science
 Shift from sellers economy to buyers economy
 Questioning the traditional supply-oriented
marketing practices including the concept of
push marketing.

7. Beginning..
 Hall (1960) proposed five silent universal languages: time, space,
friendship, material possessions, and nature of agreements.
 Kotler (1967) contrasted the production, selling and customer-
oriented marketing philosophies.
 Concepts from cognitive psychology borrowed: cognitive
dissonance.
 Social stratification, social class, and diffusion of innovations,
opinion leadership borrowed from sociology
 Focuse groups adopted from behavioral sciences into marketing

8. Early Pioneers from Behavioral Sciences
1. George Katona (1953): Differences between economic
and psychological behavior generated strong interest.
2. Paul Lazarsfeld: (1955): Opinion Leadership and Personal
Influence
3. Everett Rogers (1962): Diffusion of innovation, new
products, brands.
4. Leon Fistinger (1957): Coginitive Dissonance

9. Focus on 1950’s..
1. Emotional and irrational psychological determinants of
consumer behavior.
1. Freudian Psychology and Unconscious Motivations
2. Interpretation of consumer information is regarded as highly
subjective and lacking in consensus validation.

10. Research Tradition of 50’s
 Conspicuous consumption and reference
group influence resulted in a series of
empirical studies.
 Influence of reference groups
 WOMM- - Personal Influence
 Family Buying Behavior
 Brand Loyalty

11. Research Tradition of 60’s
 The use of experimental designs and
laboratory based experiments.
 Theory of perceived risk in consumer behavior
 Development of comprehensive theories.

12. Comprehensive Theory of
Buyer Behavior
 Howard and Sheth (1969) and the meta-
theory based on psychology:
 Simplify
 Complicate
 Information and Experience
 Recommendation
 Satisfaction

13. Decade of 70’s
 First time, it is began to emerge as a distinct
discipline.
 Foundation of Association for Consumer
Research (ACR) in 1969
The Journal of Consumer Research (JCR) in
1974

14. Journal of Consumer Research
 JCR created a medium for interdisciplinary
echange over handling strategies in the industrial
vendor selection process
1. Anderson and Chambers (1985) proposed a
model of the organizational buying process
2. Social and public services.
3. Cross Cultural Issues
4. Family Buying Behavior.
5. Area of attitude-behavior relationship

15. Theory of Behavioral Intensions
 Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) created a strong
enthusiasm in field;
 Person’s personal belief
 Person’s beliefs about his/her reference group.
 Fishbein’s model generated numerous research
studies in the field like information processing.

16. Decade of 80’s..
 The new dawn of consumer behavior.
 The backlash against information processing and
multi-attribute models.
 Includes rituals and symbolism.
 Experiential and fantasy behavior.
 Impact of religion in consumer behavior.
 Era is argued as the comeback of discipline of
marketing!

17. Decade of 80’s..
 Thinking in the era of consumer involvement…
 Bloch, Shrerrell and Ridway (1986) have offered
an extended framework for consumer search
behavior.
 Emotion, Temporal variety, selecting/eliminating
choice alternatives, post-purchase behaviors.

18. Consumer Expertise
 Alba and Hutchinson (1987) examined and
argued differs from product related expertise five
dimensions of expertise:
 Coginitive Efford
 Coginitive Structure
 Analysis Elaboration
 Memory

19. Semiotics
 Discipline that provides a structure for studiying
and analyzing how signs function within a
particular enviroment.
New Areas
 Rook (1985) : Mood states of consumers.
 Biehal and Chakravarti (1986): Use of memory and
external information in making brand choices.

20. EVALUATION
 Buyer behavior school has been more
interdisciplinary than most other schools of
marketing.
 There are several research traditions embedded in
the discipline ranging from highly qualitative
methods.

21. EVALUATION
 STRUCTURE: 8
 SPECIFICATION: 8
 TESTABILITY:6
 EMPRICAL SUPPORT: 8
 RICHNESS: 9
 SIMPLICITY: 8

22. The Activist
School of Thought
Yiğit Kalafatoğlu

23. Focusing On..
 Emprical research and conceptual thiking related to the
issues of consumer welfare and consumer statisfaction.
 Similar to buyer behaviour and macromarketing school.
 At the same time differs from the marcromarketing school
by focusing on individual consumers and specific
industries or companies.

24. Several Institutions and
Individuals Responsible…
 Consumer’s cooperatives.
 American Home Economics Assosiation and pressure
groups such as women’s club, labor unions, and
educational institutions.
 Business Agencies such as Better Business Bureau.
 Government Agencies

25. Several Institutions and
Individuals Responsible…
 The rapid rise is more directly attributed to consumers and
politicians.
 Kennedy in 1963 attempted to establish the rights of
consumers to be informed, to choose the safe products.
 Ralph Nader, was really responsible for setting off the new
Consumer Movement in 1966 with the publication of his study
of the safety of automobiles.

26. Emprical Researches on..
1. Malpractices of marketing..
2. Product safety research..
3. Disadvantaged consumers including the blacks,
Hispanics, poors, the disabled and other
minorities.
4. Consumer Satisfaction and dissatisfaction

27. Conceptual Thinking
 The role of consumerism in marketing practice!
 Peter Drucker (1969) defines consumerism as the
shame of marketing.
 Therefore; conceptualizes the activist approach as looking
at marketing practice from the buyer viewpoint rather
than seller’s.

28. Bauer and Greyser (1967)

29. Bauer and Greyser (1967)

30. Kotler’S Paradigm…

31. Conceptual Thinking
 The role of consumerism in marketing practice!
 Peter Drucker (1969) defines consumerism as the
shame of marketing.
 Therefore; conceptualizes the activist approach as looking
at marketing practice from the buyer viewpoint rather
than seller’s.

32. EVALUATION
 STRUCTURE: 5
 SPECIFICATION: 5
 TESTABILITY:4
 EMPRICAL SUPPORT: 7
 RICHNESS: 5
 SIMPLICITY: 6