Glossary of

Consumer Behavior Terms

Abstract information: Pallid information, lacking concreteness and
communication effectiveness.

Absolute threshold: The lowest level at which a stimulus can be

detected 50% of the time.

Acceptable risk: The level of risk that a consumer will tolerate when
purchasing a product or service.

Acculturation: The difficult task of learning a new culture.

Achievement motivation: The motivation identified by David

McClelland to strive for success and to perform up to one's capabilities.

Acquisition phase: The first of three phases of consumer buying-

acquisition, consumption, and disposition. It is associated with search
and selection of goods and services.

Actual product performance: A consumer's perception of the level

of performance displayed by a product. Actual performance is
compared to expected performance to determine product satisfaction.

Actual state: The state of being experienced by a consumer at any

particular point in time. When the actual diverges sufficiently from the
desired state, need recognition is said to occur.

Adaptation: A process in which an organism has repeated experience

with a stimulus and habituates to it.

Adaptation level: The level of intensity of a stimulus to which a

consumer has become accustomed or adapted

Advertising clutter: Too many ads on TV or radio impeding the

ability of consumers to remember the ads.

Advertising substantiation: The concept, developed by the Federal

Trade Commission, that companies must provide evidence for the truth
of their advertising claims.
Advertising wear-out: Occurs when consumers are overexposed to
an advertisement, resulting in decreased positivity.

Affect: A class of mental phenomena uniquely characterized by a

consciously experienced, subjective feeling state, commonly
accompanying emotions and moods.

Affect and CS/D: The concept that the level of consumer satisfaction
is influenced by the positive and negative affective responses elicited
by a product after its purchase and during use.

Affect intensity: The stable tendency of some people to react more

strongly than others to an emotion-producing situation.

Affect-referral heuristic: A rule of thumb in which a consumer

chooses a product based upon an overall recollection of his or her
emotional response of an alternative.

African- American subculture: The subculture in the United States

composed of dark-skinned people whose ancestry can be traced to
Africa.

Asian-American subculture: The fastest-growing ethnic subculture

in the United States.

AIO statements: Used in psychographic inventories to obtain

information on consumers' activities, interests, and opinions.

Altruistic Marketing: A field of study that (1) researches the causes

of negligent consumer behavior and (2) applies the findings to develop
treatment and/or preventive methods to reduce the maladaptive
actions of consumers.

Alternative evaluation: The formation of benefits and attitudes

regarding choice alternatives.

Anchoring and adjustment: A judgmental heuristic that is used to

make an estimate of the level of a stimulus on a scale. The level is
estimated by starting at some reference point and then adjusting away
from it.

Antecedent states: The temporary physiological and mood states

that a consumer brings to a consumption situation.

Applied behavior analysis: A process in which environmental

variables are manipulated to alter behavior.
Articulation: A component of consumer knowledge that describes
how finely a person can discriminate differences along a dimension.

Aspiration group: A group to which an individual would like to

belong. If it is impossible for the individual to belong to the group, it
becomes a symbolic group for the person.

Assimilation effect: The idea that a communication may be viewed

as more congruent with the position of the receiver than it really is
because it falls within the latitude of acceptance.

Associationist school: Eighteenth-century learning theorists who

investigated such phenomena as the serial-position effect and paired-
associate learning.

Atmospherics: The process through which consumer reactions may

be influenced by the design of buildings anti spaces, including the
interior space; the layout of the aisles; the texture of the carpets and
walls; the scents, colors, shapes, and sounds experienced by
customers.

ATSCI: (attention to social comparison information) a scale that

measures the disposition to conform.

Attention: The allocation of cognitive capacity to an object or task, so

that information is consciously processed.

Attention stage: The stage of information processing in which a

person allocates cognitive capacity to a stimulus.

Attitude: The amount of affect or feeling for or against a stimulus.

Attitude toward the ad: A consumer's positive and negative feelings

held toward a particular advertisement.

Attitude toward the behavior: A consumer's positive and negative

feelings held toward engaging in a particular behavior.

Attitude-toward-the-object model: A model of consumer choice

based upon how consumers combine their beliefs about product
attributes to form attitudes about various brand alternatives.

Attribute-benefit belief: A belief about the extent to which an

attribute provides a specific benefit.
Attribute importance: A person’s general assessment of the
significance of an attribute for products and services of a certain type.

Attribute-object belief: The belief that an object possesses a

particular attribute.

Attributes: The characteristics or features that an object may or may

not have.

Attribution theory: Identifies the various means through which

people determine the causes of action of themselves, others, and
objects.

Augmenting principle: A principle from one of the attribution theory

models stating that the role of a given cause in producing a given
effect is discounted if other plausible causes are also present.

Autonomic decisions: Decisions of lesser importance that either the

husband or wife may make independently

Availability heuristic: The concept that people may assess the

probability of an event based on the ease with which the event can be
brought to mind.

Availability-valence hypothesis:. The hypothesis that judgments

depend on the favorableness of information available in memory.

Awareness set: A subset of the total universe of potential brands and

products available of which a consumer is aware.

Baby-boom generation: The large post-World War 11 group of

people born between 1946 and 1964

Baby bust: A period after 1964 when fertility rates plunged far below
the replacement level, resulting in fewer children being born in the
United States.

Back translation: A process involving successive translations of a

message back- and forth between languages by different translators.
In this way, subtle and not-so-subtle differences in meaning can be
located.

Balance theory: A type of cognitive consistency approach in which

people are viewed as maintaining a logical and consistent set of
interconnected beliefs.
Basic exchange equation: Profit = Rewards - Costs.

Behavioral economics: An approach to economics based upon the

investigation of the behavior of individual consumers. An example is
the use of survey research methods to assess the economic confidence
of consumers.

Behavioral influence hierarchy: The proposal that, in some

instances, the hierarchy of effects begins with a behavior, followed by
the formation of beliefs and attitudes.

Behavioral influence perspective: The view that strong situational

or environmental mental forces may propel a consumer to engage in
buying behavior without having formed either feelings or affect about
the object of the purchase.

Behavioral Influence Techniques: Techniques that cause people to

comply to requests by making use of strong norms of behavior.

Behavioral intentions: The intentions of consumers to behave in a

particular way with regard to the acquisition, disposition and use of
products and services.

Behavioral intentions model: A consumer choice model that states

that behavior results from the formation of specific intentions to
behave.

Behavioral learning: A process in which experience with the

environment leads to a relatively permanent change in behavior or the
potential for a change in behavior.

Behavioral segmentation: A complementary approach to using

demographic variables to segment the market by dividing consumers
into homogeneous groups based on various aspects of their buying
behavior.

Beliefs: The cognitive knowledge people have of the relations among

attributes, benefits, and objects.

Bem sex-role inventory: An inventory for exploring gender roles. It

identifies three possible roles- masculine, feminine, and
psychologically androgynous.

Benefit segmentation: The division of the market into relatively

homogeneous groups of consumers based upon similarities of needs.
Benefits: The outcomes that product or service attributes may
provide.

Binationals: A situation in which product components are made in

one country but the product is assembled in another, or in which a
product is designed in one country but made in another.

Binational products: Products that are mad in one country and

assembles in another country, or designed in one country and
manufactured in another.

Bogies: Fear rumors that may spook the marketplace.

Bookend ads: Advertisements placed in the first and last position of a

series of commercials.

Boomerang effect: Occurs when a message results in a change of

attitude opposite in direction to that intended.

Brand commitment: The emotional-psychological attachment to a

brand within a product class.

Brand expectations: The expectations that a consumer forms

regarding the performance of a brand.

Brand knowledge: The amount of experience with and information

that a person has about particular products or services. Consumers
possessing greater amounts of knowledge can think about a product
across a number of dimensions and make finer distinctions among
brands.

Brand loyalty: The biased behavioral response, expressed to a

degree to which a customer holds a positive attitude toward a brand,
has a commitment to it and intends to continue purchasing it in the
future.

Butterfly curve: The curve showing that the preference for a stimulus
is at its greatest level at points just higher or lower than the adaptation
level.

Buyer's regret: A postacquisition phenomenon in which the

preference for a chosen alternative actually falls below that of a
rejected alternative.

Buying unit: The individual, family, or group that makes a purchase

decision.
CAD model: A personality scale developed to measure the
interpersonal orientation of consumers. CAD stands for compliance,
aggression, and detachment.

Central cues: Those ideas and supporting data that bear directly on
the quality of the arguments developed in the message.

Central route to persuasion: In high-involvement information

processing, a path to persuasion in which a person diligently processes
the arguments of the source of information.

Channels: The media through which information flows.

Childhood consumer socialization: Processes by which young

people acquire skills, knowledge, and attitudes relevant to their
functioning as consumers in the marketplace.

Choice: The process in which consumers make a choice between two

or more alternative courses of action.

Choice uncertainty: The degree of uncertainty about which of

several brands to select.

Classic fashion trend: A fashion trend in which particular looks

become a classic, such as the blue pin-striped suit.

Classical conditioning: A type of learning in which a conditioned

stimulus is paired with an unconditioned stimulus through repetition,
the conditioned stimulus will eventually elicit a conditioned response.

Closure: A principle of perceptual organization that describes the

tendency of people to fill in missing information to create a holistic

Cluster analysis: The use of demographic variables to identify where

groups of neighborhoods with households of similar consumers arc
located geographically.

Clutter: An overabundance of advertisements that decreases

communications effectiveness.

Cognitive complexity: A personality characteristic that describes the

degree of structural intricacy of the organizing schemas used by
different groups of consumers to code and store information in
memory.
Cognitive consistency: The tendency of people to maintain a logical
and consistent set of interconnected attitudes.

Cognitive dissonance: An unpleasant emotional state that is felt

when there is a logical inconsistency among cognitive elements.

Cognitive learning: The process through which people form

associations among concepts, learn sequences of concepts, solve
problems and gain insights.

Cognitive responses: The thoughts that consumers may develop in

response to messages.

Cognitive personality theories: Personality theories positing that

individual differences result from variations in how people process
information, think, and learn.

Commitment: The degree to which an attitude position can be

changed. As the level of commitment to an attitude position increases,
it becomes more difficult to change the attitude.

Communication: The use of a sign to convey meaning. A sign may be

a verbalization, an utterance, a body movement, a written word, a
picture, an odor, a touch, or even stones on the ground to denote a
property boundary.

Communications model: A model stating that sources encode

messages that travel through a channel and are processed by
receivers, who then provide feedback to the source.

Comparative appraisal: The consumer's evaluation of his or her own

relative standing with respect to an attitude, belief, ability, or emotion
through observation of the behavior of appropriate reference others.

Comparative messages: Messages in which the communicator

compares the positive and negative aspects of his or her position to
the positive and negative aspects of a competitor's position.

Comparison level: The minimum level of positive outcome (profit)

that an individual feels he or she deserves from an exchange.

Comparison level for alternatives: The lowest level of outcomes a

person will accept in light of available alternative opportunities.

Comparison level for outcomes: The minimum level of positive

outcomes a person believes he or she deserves from in exchange.
Compensatory models of choice: A class of choice models in which
consumers are viewed as analyzing each alternative in a broad
evaluative fashion. A choice is said to be compensatory when high
ratings on some attributes may compensate for low ratings on other
attributes.

Competitive positioning: The positioning of a product relative to key

competitors on important attributes.

Complaint behavior: The overt actions taken by consumers to bring

their product or service dissatisfaction to the attention of others.

Complementary activities: Activities that naturally take place

together.

Complex exchange: An exchange that involves a set of three or more

actors enmeshed in a set of mutual relations.

Compliance: The act of conforming to the wishes of another person or

group without necessarily accepting the group's dictates.

Comprehension: The process of making sense of stimuli so that the

message may be understood.

Comprehension stage: The stage of information processing in which

the person organizes and interprets information in order to obtain
meaning from it.

Compulsive consumption: Consumption marked by an impulse or

urge to engage in behavior that may be harmful to the consumer while
simultaneously denying its possible negative effects.

Compulsive purchases: Purchases marked by an impulse or urge to

engage in behavior that may be harmful to the consumer while
simultaneously denying its possible negative effects.

Compound traits: Predispositions that result from the effects of

multiple elemental traits, a person’s learning history and the cultural
environment.

Concept testing: The pre-testing of the product idea.

Conditioned response: The response elicited by the conditioned

stimulus when classical conditioning occurs.
Conditioned stimulus: A previously neutral stimulus that, when
paired with an unconditioned stimulus, may elicit a conditioned
response.

Conformity: A change in behavior or belief as a result of real or

imagined group or individual pressure.

Conjunctive rule: A type of choice heuristic in which the consumer

sets minimum cutoffs on each product attribute. If the product rating
falls below the minimum cutoff level oil any attribute, the product is
rejected from further consideration.

Conservation behavior: Action Consumers take to conserve

resources, including curtailment behaviors, maintenance behaviors,
and efficiency behaviors.

Consideration set: The set of alternative brands that the consumer

regards as acceptable for further consideration.

Consumer actions: Those behaviors in which consumers engage in

the acquisition, consumption, and disposition of goods, services, and
ideas.

Consumer acquisitions: The goods, services, and ideas that

consumers obtain in the marketplace.

Consumer behavior: The study of the decision-making units and the

processes involved in acquiring, consuming, and disposing of goods,
services, experiences, and ideas.

Consumer behaviors: consist of all the actions taken by consumers

related to acquiring, disposing, and using products and services.

Consumer beliefs: The cognitive knowledge people have of the

relations among attributes, benefits, and objects.

Consumer complaint behavior: A multiple set of actions triggered

by perceived dissatisfaction with a purchase episode.

Consumer decision making: The analysis made in choosing between

two or more alternative acquisitions and the processes that take place
before and after the choice.

Consumer environment: It is composed of factors existing

independently of individual consumers and firms that influence the
exchange process.
Consumer ethnocentrism: A scale measuring the tendency of
consumers to prefer to purchase U.S.-made products.

Consumer expectations: A person's prior beliefs about what should

happen in a given situation.

Consumer incentives: The products, services, information, and even

other people that are perceived to satisfy a need.

Consumer information processing: The process in which

consumers are exposed to information, attend to it, comprehend it,
place it in memory, and retrieve it for later use.

Consumer involvement: The perceived personal importance and/or

interest consumers attach to the acquisition, consumption and
disposition of a good, a service or an idea.

Consumer knowledge: The amount of experience and information

that a person has about particular products or services.

Consumer marketing: The marketing of a good or service by one

consumer to another.

Consumer performance: An event in which a consumer and a

marketer act as performers and/or as audience in a situation in which
obligations and standards exist.

Consumer primacy: The concept that the consumer should be at the

center of the marketing effort.

Consumer rights: The rights, identified by John F. Kennedy, of safety,

information, redress, and choice. More recently some have suggested
that the right to health care and the right to a home should be added
to the list.

Consumer ritual: Standardized sequences of actions that are

periodically repeated.

Consumer satisfaction/ dissatisfaction: The general feelings that a

consumer develops about a product or service after its purchase and
use.

Consumer search behavior: All actions consumers take to identify

and obtain information on the means of solving a problem.
Consumer self-control: The ability of people to avoid making
purchases that involve pleasure in the present, but pain in the future.

Consumer situations: The temporary environmental and personal

factors that form the context within which a consumer activity occurs
at a particular place and time.

Consumer well-being: The extent to which an individual's needs and

wants are satisfied.

Consumerism: The movement made up of activities of government,

business, independent organizations, and concerned consumers that
are designed to protect the rights of consumers.

Consumption amount. The amount of a good that is consumed. For

example, how many ounces of a soft drink is consumed.

Consumption experience: The cognitions and feelings the consumer

experiences during the use of a product or service.

Consumption frequency: The frequency with which a product or

service is consumed or used.

Consumption purpose: The reason for using a product. That is, some
products can be used for multiple purposes. Thus, baking soda can be
used as an antacid, to make bread rise, and to reduce odors.

Consumption phase: A researcher's analysis of how consumers

actually use a product or service and the experiences that the
consumer obtains from such use.

Context: The background factors within which consumer behavior

occurs.

Context effects: The concept that the background or context in

which stimuli are embedded will influence the perception of the stimuli.
Thus the background programming in which an advertisement is
placed may influence the interpretation of the advertisement.

Contingencies of reinforcement: The temporal relationship

between a behavior and its reinforcers or punishers that acts to shape
consumer behavior.

Continuous innovations: A modification of an existing product to

improve performance, taste, reliability, and so forth. Continuous
innovations result in few, if any, consumer life-style changes.
Contracted performance: Both the consumer and marketer have
minimal interactions. It occurs with low-involvement goods.

Country of origin: The country from which a good or service

originates.

Contrast effects: Occur when the attitude statement falls into the
latitude of rejection, so that it is perceived as more opposed to the
receiver's position than perhaps it really is.

Conventions: Norms that describe how to act in everyday life.

Corporate social responsibility: The idea that business has an

obligation to help society with its problems by offering resources.

Corrective advertising: Advertising that is mandated by a federal

agency to correct consumer impressions that were formed by
previously misleading advertising.

Cresive norms: Norms embedded in the culture that include three

types: conventions, mores, and customs.

Cross-cultural analysis: The study of foreign cultures and their

values, attitudes, languages, and customs.

Crowding: Unpleasant feelings that people experience when they

perceive that densities are too high and that their control of the
situation has been reduced acceptable levels.

Cultural ethnocentricity: The feeling among some consumers that

the values, beliefs, and ways of doing things as specified by one's own
culture are "right," "correct," and generally better than those of other
cultures.

Cultural identification: A feeling of attachment to the society in

which a person prefers to live.

Cultural meanings: Cultural ideas transferred to consumers through

material goods and rituals.

Cultural rituals: Standardized sequences of actions that are

periodically repeated. They have some purpose and generally have a
beginning, middle, and end. They provide meaning and involve the use
of cultural symbols.
Cultural symbols: Entities that represent the shared ideas and
concepts of a culture.

Cultural values: They represent the shared meanings ideal end-

states.

Culture: A set of socially acquired behavior patterns transmitted

symbolically through language and other means to the members of a
particular society. It is a way of life.

Culture versus nation: A nation is a state that may contain a culture.

A culture is a way of life that may extend far beyond national borders.

Customs: Handed down from generation to generation, customs

refers to basic actions such as the ceremonies held and the roles
played by the sexes.

Cyclical fashion trend: The adoption of styles that are progressively

more extreme in one direction or another. Examples include skirt
lengths and tie widths.

Deceptive advertising: An advertisement may be deemed deceptive

if it has the "capacity to deceive a measurable segment of the public."

Decision context: Situational or extrinsic factors that dictate the

options available to the decision maker.

Decision-making perspective: Occurs when consumers move

through a series of rational steps when making a purchase. These
steps include problem recognition, search, alternative evaluation,
choice, and postacquisition evaluation.

Decision process: The steps through which consumers move when

purchasing a product or service, including problem recognition, search,
alternative evaluation, choice, and postacquisition evaluation.

Decreasing marginal utility: The concept that, as a consumer

obtains more of something, each additional unit brings less utility or
satisfaction.

Defense mechanisms: Psychological logical adjustments made by

people to keep themselves from recognizing personality qualities or
motives that might lower self-esteem or heighten anxiety.
Delay-payment effect: This effect occurs when customers are
encouraged to buy a good or service in the present and are allowed to
pay for it at a later date.

Demand curve shift: The shift of the demand curve to the right or
left.

Demand elasticity: The variation in quantity demanded of a good

that is caused by changes in the price of that good. For example, an
elastic demand curve results in small changes in price, causing large
changes in quantity demanded.

Demarketing: Attempts by regulatory agencies and non-profit

organizations to reduce the frequency of consumer behaviors that
have a negative impact on the consumer or society.

Demographic characteristics: Age, sex, income, religion, marital

status, education, etc.

Demographic variables: Characteristics of various groups of people

as assessed by such factors as age, sex, income, religion, marital
status, nationality, education, family size, occupation, and ethnicity.

Density: How closely packed consumers are in a particular situational

context.

Depth interviews: Long, probing, one-on-one interviews to identify

hidden reasons for purchasing products and services.

Desired state: The preferred state that a consumer would like to

achieve. When differences between the desired state and the actual
state are sufficiently large, a need state is said to exist.

Detached nuclear family: Pattern in which children from middle-

class families tend to strike out on their own to form families away
from their parents.

Difference threshold: The minimum amount of difference in the

intensity of a stimulation that can be detected 50% of the time.

Diffusion: The process by which innovative ideas, products and

services spread through the consumer population.

Dimensionality: A type of consumer knowledge referring to the

number of different ways that a person can think about something.
Direct comparative advertisements: Advertisements in which one
brand is specifically compared to another.

Direct influence of attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors: The

concept that attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors may be formed directly.

Discontinuous innovations: Innovations that produce major changes

in the life-styles of consumers.

Discounting principle: The idea from attribution theory that people

will examine the environmental pressures that impede or propel a
particular action. When a person moves with the environmental
pressures, little understanding of the person's true motivations can be
gained; therefore, the information is discounted.

Discrete exchange: A one-time interaction in which money is paid for

a commodity. Discrete exchanges are short, one-time purchases that
do not involve the creation of a relationship.

Discretionary expenditures: Expenditures that can be postponed or

eliminated.

Discriminative stimuli: Stimuli that only occur in the presence of a

reinforcer.

Disjunctive rule: A choice heuristic in which an option is judged

acceptable if any of its attributes surpass a cutoff level.

Disposition phase: The phase of postacquisition. in which the

consumer determines what to do with an acquisition after it has been
used.

Dissociative group: A reference group with whom the person does

not wish to be associated.

Dissonance: An imbalanced state that results when a logical

inconsistency exists among cognitive elements.

Divestment rituals: Rituals performed to erase the meaning

associated with the previous owner of a good (e.g., thoroughly
cleaning a new home prior to moving in).

Dogmatism: A personality characteristic marked by closed-

mindedness and rigidity in the, approach to the social environment.
Domain-specific values: Beliefs pertaining to more concrete
consumption activities- for example that manufacturers should give
prompt service, guarantee their products, help eliminate
environmental pollution and be truthful.

Door-in-the-face technique: A compliance technique that involves

the requester first making a very large request, which is usually
refused by the target. This request is then followed by a moderate
request, which is more often complied with than if no large request
were made.

Double jeopardy: Occurs when a less popular brand, as defined by

market share, also has less brand loyalty among its customers.

Drama: An advertising technique of indirect address in which the

characters speak to each other rather than to the audience.

Dramatistic performance: Both the consumer and the marketer

know that a show is occurring, and each is alert to the other’s role.

Drawing conclusions: A message strategy in which the presenter

draws the conclusions of the message for the audience.

Drive: An affective state in which a person experiences emotions and

physiological arousal.

Dyadic exchange: An exchange that takes place between two

parties.

Dynamic continuous innovations: Innovations that involve some

major change in an existing product and minor changes in the behavior
of consumers.

East Asia: Composed of Japan, Korea, China, and Southeast Asia, the
region has over 26% of the world's population and is the dominant
exporter of automobiles, electronics, and computer chips.

Eastern Europe: The landmass stretching from the eastern border of

Germany to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, composed of people as
diverse as the European Czechs and the Mongoloid people of far
eastern Siberia.

Economic cycle: The cycle that traces the flow of an economy. It has
four phases–peak, recession, trough, and recovery.
Economic environment: The set of factors involving monetary,
natural, and human resources that influence the behavior of
individuals and groups.

Economic optimism-pessimism: The reactions of consumers to

various economic and personal events that result in the presence or
absence of feelings of economic confidence.

Ego: The component of the personality defined in psychoanalytic

theory as standing for reason and good sense and as following the
reality principle.

Elaboration likelihood model (ELM): A model proposing that the

route to persuasion depends on the involvement of the consumer. The
highly involved consumer engages in greater amounts of information
processing than the less involved consumer.

Elemental Traits: The most basis underlying predispositions of

individuals that arise from genetics and early learning history.

Elimination-by-aspects heuristic: A choice heuristic in which

consumers rank attributes in order. Alternatives are eliminated if they
do not possess the first attribute. Those alternatives left are then
evaluated on the next attribute, and so forth, until only one alternative
remains.

Emotional dissatisfaction: A postacquisition state that occurs when

the actual performance is perceived to be lower than the expected
performance.

Emotional satisfaction: A postacquisition state that occurs when the

actual performance exceeds the expected performance.

Enacted norms: Norms that are explicitly expressed, sometimes in

the form of laws. An example would be on which side of the road you
drive a car.

Enacted Performance: Both the consumer and the marketer have

significant latitude to place blame for the outcome of the transaction.

Encoding: The process of transferring information from short-term to

long-term memory for permanent storage.

Enculturation: The process of learning one's own culture.

Enduring involvement: Occurs when consumers show a consistent
high level of interest in a product and frequently spend time thinking
about the product.

Environmental analysis: The assessment of the forces and

institutions external to the firm and of how these may influence the
marketing effort.

Environmental influence factors: Those factors outside the

individual that affect individual consumers, decision making units and
marketers.

Environmental level of analysis: Analysis of those factors outside of

the person that influence consumer behavior, such as the effects of
situations, groups, culture, subcultures, and the regulatory
environment.

Equity: Occurs when the ratio of the outcomes and inputs is perceived
by one party to an exchange to equal the ratio of the outcomes and
inputs of the other party to the exchange.

Equity theory: Holds that people will analyze the ratio of their
outcomes and inputs to the ratio of the outcomes and inputs of the
partner in an exchange.

Ethical dilemma: A decision that involves the trade-off of lowering

one's personal values in exchange for increased organizational and
personal profits.

Ethical exchange: Occurs when both parties know the full nature of
the agreement, neither party intentionally misrepresents or omits
relevant information, and neither party unduly influences the other
through the use of power.

Ethical exchange characteristics: The things that must occur for an

ethical exchange to take place, such as both parties knowing the full
nature of an agreement before entering into it.

Ethics: The study of normative judgments concerned with what is

morally right and wrong, good and bad.

Ethics matrix: A matrix that identifies when ethical problems may

occur. Such a matrix is based upon exchanges of information between
consumers and businesses.

Ethnicity: A group bound together by tie so of cultural homogeneity.

Ethnocentrism: The universal tendency for people to view their own
group as the center of the universe, to interpret other social units from
the perspective of their own group, and to reject persons who are
culturally dissimilar similar.

Euroconsumers: Consumers in Western Europe who supposedly

share common desires for a broad range of goods and services. This
assumption is incorrect.

Even-a-penny-will-help technique: A compliance technique in

which a person makes a request and then states that any contribution,
no matter how paltry, would. help.

Evoked set: Consists of those brands and products recalled from long-
term memory that are acceptable for further consideration.

Exchange: The transfer of something tangible or intangible, actual or

symbolic, between two or more social actors.

Exchange process: A process in which resources are transferred

between two parties.

Exchange rituals: Rituals in which products or services are

exchanged among consumers.

Exit behavior: Refers to the consumer choice to either leave a

relationship or to lower consumption levels of the good or service.

Expectancy confirmation: Results when the performance of a

product is perceived to meet a consumer's expectations.

Expectancy disconfirmation: Results when the performance of a

product fails to meet a consumer's expectations.

Expectancy disconfirmation model: A model of consumer

satisfaction/dissatisfaction based upon whether a brand meets or
exceeds consumer expectations.

Expectations: A person's prior beliefs about what should happen in a

given situation.

Expected product performance: The level of performance

anticipated of a product or service by a consumer.

Experiential hierarchy: The hierarchy of effects in which affect

occurs first, followed by behavior and then belief formation.
Experiential perspective: In some instances consumers do not make
purchases according to a strictly rational decision-making process.
They buy certain products and cervices in order to have fun, create
fantasies or feel desired emotions.

Exposure: The initial information-processing stage, in which

consumers receive information through their senses.

Exposure stage: A stage in information processing in which

consumers receive information through their senses.

Expressive needs: Desires by consumers to fulfill social and/or

aesthetic requirements.

Expressive role: A role found in many groups, in which a person

helps maintain the group and provides emotional support for its
members.

Extended family: Consists of the nuclear family plus other relatives,

such as parents of the husband and wife.

Extended self: The concept that possessions may become 1 part of

the self-concept and, therefore, extend the self to include impersonal
entities.

External attribution: An attribution of the cause of action to some

factor outside of an individual, such as attributing the reason for an
endorsement to the money paid to the endorser.

External exchange: An exchange between parties that are in

separate groups, such as between two families or two firms.

External roles: Involves communications and involvement with

people outside of the family.

External search: The consumer's soliciting information from outside

sources rather than from his or her memory.

Extinction: A gradual reduction in the frequency of occurrence of an

operant behavior that results from a lack of reinforcement of the
response.

Fads: Temporary fashion or other trends followed by a group.

Family decision stages: The steps in the decision process used by a

family to purchase products or services.
Family life cycle: The idea that families may move through a series
of stages in a developmental fashion.

Fashion: A set of behaviors temporarily adopted by a people because

they are perceived to be socially appropriate for the time and situation.

Fear appeals: A type of message in which the communication is

designed to create some level of fear in the target audience.

Feelings: The affective responses and emotions that consumers have.

Fertility rate: The number of children born to the average woman

during her lifetime.

Figure-ground: A principle of perception whereby the figure is the

object observed moving against the ground. The ground is the context
or background within which the figure is observed.

Focus groups: Small number of consumers (usually 6 to 10),

interacting in an open ended fashion with the assistance of a
moderator to provide information on their beliefs and attitudes about
specific topics.

Foot-in-the-door technique: A compliance technique that operates

through the influencer making two request; the first, a small request,
is followed by a moderately sized second request.

Forgetting: The inability to recall from memory some desired piece of

information. Forgetting occurs when either the retrieval or the
response generation process breaks down.

Formal exchange: an explicit written, or verbal contract. This will

frequently occur in external exchanges.

Formal group: A group whose organization and structure are defined

in writing.

Framing: A process in which a person evaluates a stimulus change as

occurring from either a loss or a gain position. Framing has been found
to influence risk-taking behavior.

Fraudulent symbol: A material good that is stripped of class

symbolism when its ownership is diffused across levels of the class
hierarchy.
Free riding: An act whereby a consumer obtains product information
from sales personnel and then uses the information to make a
purchase from a low-cost discount store that does not offer personal
service.

Frequency heuristic: The rule of thumb used by consumers in some

low-involvement settings, in which the liking for a brand is based
merely on the number of positive and negative attributes associated
with it.

Functions of attitudes: The concept that attitudes exist for a reason,

that is, to help people interact more effectively with the environment.

Fundamental attribution error: The tendency of people to attribute

the cause of a person's actions to that person's disposition and
personality.

Gatekeeper: An individual who has the ability to control information

to a decision maker.

Generation X: The post babyboom group born between 1965 and

1980.

Generation Y: The 72 million children of the baby boomers, the first

of whom will reach adulthood in the year 2000. They represent 28 % of
the current population.

Generic decision-making model: It identifies the stages though

which consumers move when making decisions.

Geodemographics: The use of demographic variables to identify

where consumers with similar buying patterns are geographically
concentrated.

Geographic segmentation: The segmentation of a market into

homogeneous groups of consumers with similar needs and wants
based on Geography.

Gestalt psychologists: An influential group of psychologists

prominent during the early twentieth century who believed that
biological and psychological events do not influence behavior in
isolation from each other.

Global attitude measures: A direct measurement of the overall

affect and feelings held by a consumer regarding an object.
Global marketer: A marketer who attempts to develop "one sight,
one sound, and one sell" for its products.

Global values: Enduring beliefs about desired states of existence or

modes of behavior.

Goal-directed action: Behavior directed toward obtaining an

incentive object, such as a product or service.

Goal-directed behavior: Actions directed toward obtaining goods,

services, or ideas that will decrease the gap between a desired and an
actual state.

Goods: Tangible products.

Gravitational model: The concept that trading areas act like planets,
attracting outside shoppers in proportion to the relative populations of
the towns in question and to the square of the inverse of the distance
between the towns.

Grooming rituals: An individual's acts to ensure that special,

perishable properties resident in clothing, hairstyles, and looks are
maintained.

Group: A set of individuals who interact with one another over some
period of time and who share some common need or goal.

Group polarization phenomenon: The tendency of groups to be

either more risky or more cautious than individuals when making
decisions.

Group shift: The tendency of group decisions to show either more or

less risk-taking propensities than the average of the decisions of the
individuals in the group.

Habitual purchases: Purchases that occur as a result of a habit.

Halo effect: The concept that positive or negative feelings about one
characteristic will generalize to influence feelings about other, possibly
unrelated, characteristics.

Hedonic consumption: The consumption of products and services

based primarily on the desire to experience pleasure and happiness.

Hedonism: The desire to gain pleasure through the senses.

Heuristic models of choice: Models of choice in which consumers
take shortcuts in information processing to make decision making less
complex.

Heuristics: Simple rules of thumb people use to make estimates of

probabilities and values.

Hierarchical models of choice: Models of choice in which the

consumer is viewed as comparing alternatives on attributes one at a
time.

Hierarchies of effects: Various models that explain the order in

which beliefs, feelings, and behavior occur.

High culture: Culture that is exclusive in style, content, and appeal. It

frequently harks back to the "old masters" of art, theater, music, and
literature.

High-involvement decision making: The decision process that

occurs when consumers perceive high personal importance in a
decision. It is marked by extended decision making and high levels of
information processing.

High-involvement hierarchy: The hierarchy of effects in which,

belief formation occurs first, followed by the creation of affect, followed
by a behavior.

Higher-order conditioning: Occurs when a conditioned stimulus acts

to classically condition another, previously neutral stimulus.

Hindsight bias: The tendency of people to consistently exaggerate

what could have been anticipated through foresight.

Hispanic subculture: The subculture of the Hispanic population in

the United States, in which four groups have been identified--Cubans,
Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and other Hispanics.

Hostselling: The use of a program character to promote a product.

Household: A group of people living under one roof.

Humor in messages: A type of message based upon using humor.

Hypothetical value function: The relationship between the

psychological valuation of gains and losses that may result from a
course of action and the actual valuation of those losses and gains.
Id: One of the three elements of the personality identified by Freud.
The id is based upon the pleasure principle, immediate gratification,
and moves a person to obtain positive feelings and emotions.

Idea generation: The first stage of product development.

Ideal self: How a person would ideally like to perceive himself or

herself.

Identification: The normal process through which children acquire

appropriate social roles by consciously and unconsciously copying the
behavior of significant others.

Image congruence hypothesis: The hypothesis that a consumer

selects products and stores that correspond to his or her self-concept.

Immigration: To come into a country of which one is not a native for

permanent residence.

Impersonal threats: Threats to behavioral freedom that come from

impersonal sources.

Impulse purchase: Buying action undertaken without a problem

previously having been consciously recognized or without a buying
intention formed prior to entering the store.

Incentives: The products, services, and people that are perceived as

satisfying needs.

Income effect: An economic principle stating that, when prices are

lowered, consumers can afford more of a product without giving up
other alternatives.

Incremental Effects Theory: Over many presentations of a stimulus,

a stimulus representation is gradually into the consumer’s nervous
system.

Index of Consumer Sentiment: An index of consumer economic

confidence developed at the University of Michigan Center for Survey
Research.

Indirect comparative advertisement: A comparative ad in which

the competing brand's name is never specifically mentioned

Individual difference variables: They describe how one individual

differs from another in distinctive patterns of behavior.
Individual influence factors: Those psychological processes that
affect individuals engaged in acquiring, consuming, and disposing of
goods, services and experiences.

Individual level of analysis: An analysis that focuses on identifying

the processes that influence a person in the acquisition, consumption,
and disposition phases.

Industrial marketing: The marketing of a product by one firm to

another firm.

Industrial purchase behavior: The process corporations use to

purchase goods, services, and ideas.

Inept set: Consists of the brands and products that are considered
unacceptable.

Inert set: Consists of the brands and products to which consumers are
essentially indifferent.

Influence: The attempt of one person to impact the behaviors,

attitudes, or beliefs of another person.

Informal exchange: Unwritten social contracts are created between

parties. Occurring more frequently

in internal exchanges, social norms and peer pressure replace formal

contracts.

Informal group: A group that has no written organizational structure

and is often socially based.

Information: The content of what is exchanged with the outer world

as we adjust to it and make our adjustment felt upon it.

Information overload: A situation experienced by a consumer, in

which more information is received than can be processed in short-
term memory.

Information processing: The process through which consumers are

exposed to information, attend to it, comprehend it, place it in
memory, and retrieve it for later use.

Information salience: The level of activation of a stimulus in

memory.
Informational influence: One method through which a group may
influence an individual, in which the group provides highly credible
information that influences the consumer’s purchase decision.

Ingratiation: Self-serving tactics engaged in by one person to make

himself or herself more attractive to another.

Ingratiator's dilemma: The problem that occurs when the ingratiator

is caught manipulating the target person, the result being a loss rather
than a gain of power.

Inner-directed persons: Within the VALS psychographic inventory,

persons who seek intense involvement in whatever they do.

Innovativeness: The degree to which a consumer adopts new

products, services, and ideas prior to others.

Inputs: In balance theory, the contributions to an exchange made by

each of the parties to the exchange.

Instrumental materialism: Obtaining material goods to perform

some activity or achieve some goal.

Instrumental response: The behaviors (operants) of an organism

that have been operantly conditioned.

Instrumental role: Within a group, the role filled by the person who
deals with the problem of getting the group to achieve certain goals
and complete certain tasks.

Instrumental values: Behaviors and actions required to achieve

various terminal states.

Instrumentality of search: An approach for measuring external

search by assessing the extent to which a person relies on various
types of outside information, such as the number of friends with whom
a purchase is discussed.

Integrated group: A category within the VALS psychographic

inventory that describes consumers who are mature and balanced and
who have managed to "put together" the best characteristics of the
inner and outer personalities.

Interaction: Occurs when two or more factors combine to cause a

consumer to behave in a different manner than if the two factors were
not combined.
Interaction set: Those stores where a consumers allows himself or
herself to be exposed to personal selling.

Internal attribution: An attribution that the cause for an action was

internal to the person or thing in question, rather than to some
external factor.

Internal exchange: Exchanges that occur between parties within a

group.

Internal roles: Duties inside the family.

Internal search: The first phase of the search process, in which the
consumer attempts to retrieve from long-term memory information on
products or services that will help to solve a problem.

Internalization: Occurs when an individual accepts influence because

it is intrinsically rewarding.

Interpersonal processes: The communications that occur between

two people at any particular point in time.

Interpretant: A person's reaction to and meaning derived from a sign.

Interpretation: A process whereby people draw upon their

experience, memory, and expectations to interpret and attach
meaning to a stimulus.

Interpretation process: The process in which people draw upon their

experience, memory and expectations to attach meaning to a stimulus.

Interpretive research methods: Qualitative methods in which the

researcher attempts to identify the meanings of the symbols and
rituals employed by consumers.

Intrinsic satisfaction: Satisfaction that results from an internal

interest in doing something, rather than from the external benefits of
doing it.

Involuntary attention: An innate response that occurs when a

consumer is exposed to something surprising, novel, threatening, or
unexpected.

Involvement: The level of perceived personal importance or interest

evoked by a stimulus (or stimuli) within a specific situation.
Involvement responses: The level of complexity of information
processing and the extent of decision making by a consumer.

Judgment: Assessments of (1) the likelihood that something will occur

or (2) the goodness or badness of something.

Judgmental heuristics: The simple rules of thumb used by people to

make estimates of probabilities and values.

Just-in-time (JIT) purchasing: A corporate philosophy associated

with total quality management in which a company seeks to purchase
goods and services at the last possible minute prior to when they are
required for the production process.

Just noticeable difference (JND): The minimum amount of

difference in the intensity of a stimulus that can be detected 50% of
the time.

Knowledge uncertainty: Consumers' uncertainty about the available

features, their importance, and their performance for alternative
brands.

Laddering: The process of probing to identify the linkages between

means (i.e., attributes) and terminal values (i.e., end states).

Latitudes of acceptance and rejection: The areas surrounding a

person's attitude about an issue. When messages fall within these
areas, they are assimilated and, in turn, viewed as consistent with the
attitude of the person.

Law of contiguity: States that things that are experienced together

become associated.

Law of demand: States that there is an inverse relationship between

the price of the product and the quantity demanded of the product.

Law of small numbers: People have a strong tendency to believe

that a sample is a true representation of a population even when the
sample is extremely small.

Learning mechanisms: Processes through which a person retains

information from the environment.

Learning through education: Obtaining information from companies

in the form of advertising, sales personnel, and the consumer's own
directed efforts to seek data.
Learning through experience: The process of gaining knowledge
through actual contact with products. Overall, learning through
experience is a more effective means to gain consumer knowledge.

Lecture: An advertising technique that occurs when a source speaks

to the audience in an attempt to inform and persuade.

Lexicographic heuristic: A noncompensatory choice model in which

the consumer first ranks the attributes and then selects the brand
rated highest on the highest-ranked attribute. If a tie occurs, the next
most important attribute is used.

Libido: A term in psychoanalytic theory that refers to sexual energy.

Lifestyle: How people live, how they spend their money, and how
they allocate their time. It is concerned with consumers’ overt actions
and behavior. (p. 220)

Life themes: They represent critical values and goals that influence
consumers at different stages of their lives.

Likert scale: An attitude scale that involves asking a consumer to

indicate the amount of his or her agreement or disagreement with a
statement.

Limited capacity: A characteristic of short-term memory.

List of Values (LOV) Scale: Assesses the dominant values of a

person. Although not strictly a psychographic inventory, it has been
applied to the same types of problems as VALS.

Logical empiricist research methods: Research methods that

involve collecting and analyzing quantitative data.

Long-term memory: The type of memory that has unlimited capacity

and that permanently stores information.

Low-involvement hierarchy: The hierarchy of effects that occurs in

low-involvement decision making, in which beliefs are formed first,
followed by behavior, and finally by attitude formation.

Lower Americans: A description of social class that refers to the

combination of the upper-lower and lower-lower social classes.
Lower-lower class: The lowest of the social classes. Members are
typically out of work (or have the dirtiest jobs) and include bums and
common criminals.

Lower-upper class: The next to highest social class, composed of the

newer social elite drawn from current professional and corporate
leadership.

Macrosegmentation: Identifying groups of companies having similar

buying organizations and facing similar buying situations.

Managerial applications analysis: An analysis in which the

consumer behavior concepts are identified that are pertinent to a
problem and their managerial implications noted.

Market embeddedness: The term used to describe situations in

which the social ties between buyer and seller supplement product
value to enhance overall exchange utility.

Market mavens: Individuals who have information about many kinds

of products, places to shop, and other facets of markets. They initiate
discussion with consumers and respond to requests from consumers
for market information.

Market research: Applied consumer research designed to provide

management with information on factors that affect consumers’
acquisition, consumption and disposition of goods, services and ideas.

Market segmentation: The subdivision of a market into distinct

subsets of customers, where any subset may conceivably be selected
as a target market to be reached with a distinct marketing mix.

Market testing: placing a product into limited distribution to

consumers in order to identify potential problems and test the entire
marketing mix.

Marketer: The firm, nonprofit organization, government agency,

political candidate, or other consumer who wishes to cause an
exchange to occur.

Marketing: The human activity directed at satisfying needs and wants

through human exchange processes.

Marketing concept: The view that an industry is a customer-

satisfying process, not a goods-purchasing process.
Marketing environment: The totality of the forces and institutions
that are external and potentially relevant to a firm.

Marketing mix: The elements of product, promotion, distribution and

pricing over which marketing managers can implement analysis,
planning, and control.

Marketing strategy: A strategy implemented by creating

segmentation and positioning objectives for a product that an
organization or individual wishes to exchange with a consumer.

Marketing triad: The interaction of a buying unit, the marketer, and

the consumer situation at a particular time and place to influence an
exchange process.

Match up effect: It states that endorsers are more effective in

changing attitudes, beliefs and intentions when the dominant
characteristics of the product match the dominant features of a source.

Match-up hypothesis: A hypothesis stating that the dominant

characteristics of the product should match the dominant features of a
source.

Materialism: The importance a consumer attaches to worldly

possessions, where at the highest levels possessions assume a central
place in life and provide the greatest sources of satisfaction and
dissatisfaction.

Mature consumer: A person 65 years old or older. Mature consumers

differ from younger people in information- processing and consumption
patterns.

Means-end chain: A model that identifies the linkages between

consumer desires for specific product features with increasingly
abstract concepts, such as benefits desired and values that are
important to an individual.

Medium: The channel through which a message is passed.

Memory-control processes: Methods of handling information that

people use to get information into and out of memory.

Mere exposure phenomenon: A psychological process in which

positive feelings toward and evaluations of a stimulus may be formed
simply through repeated exposures to the stimulus.
Mere measurement effect: The finding that merely asking
consumers about their purchasing plans in a market research study
actually influences their purcahse plans.

Message characteristics: Those aspects of a message that influence

consumer reactions, such as the use of humor or fear appeals.

Message complexity: The complexity of information that a message

contains.

Message construction: The problem of how to physically construct a

message. Factors to be considered in message construction are
message content and message structure.

Message content: The strategies that may be used to communicate

an idea to an audience. An example of such strategies is a decision to
develop complex rather than simple messages.

Message structure: How the source organizes the content of the

message, such as where in the message to place the most important
information.

Method of loci: A technique to aid the memorization of lists by

creating a mental image of a house that has locations in which the
items of the list may be placed. To recall the list, the person takes a
"mental" stroll back through the house picking up the items.

Microsegmentation: Identifying the characteristics of the decision-

making units within each of the various macrosegments.

Middle Americans: The name given to a combination of the social

classes including the middle class, lower-middle class, and working
class.

Middle class: Average-income white-collar workers and their blue-

collar friends who live on "the better side of town" and try to "do the
proper things."

Miller's law: The concept that people can process in short-term

memory only seven, plus or minus two, chunks of information at a
time.

Model: Someone whose behavior others observe and attempt to

emulate.
Modeling: The process through which someone attempts to emulate
the behavior of another.

Moderating variable: An individual-difference variable that interacts

with the consumer situation and/or the type of message being
communicated.

Monetary acquisitions: Acquisitions made with currency, personal

checks, or credit.

Money: Currency accepted for use as a medium of exchange.

Mood states: Temporary variations on how people feel, which can

range from happiness to extremely negative feelings.

Mores: Customs that emphasize the moral aspects of behavior.

Frequently, mores apply to forbidden behaviors, such as the showing
of skin by women in fundamentalist Moslem countries.

Mortality rate: The number of people per 1,000 who die per year.

Motivation: An activated state within a person that leads to goal-

directed behavior.

Motivation researcher: Researchers in the 1950s who employed a

psychoanalytic approach to understanding consumers by investigating
fantasies, dreams, and symbols.

Multiattribute models: Models that identify how consumers combine

their beliefs about product attributes to form attitudes about various
brand alternatives, corporations or other objects.

Multiple-store model: A model in which three different types of

memory storage systems are identified-sensory memory, short-term
memory, and long-term memory.

Multistep flow model: A model of personal influence that states that

information is transmitted from the mass media to three distinct sets
of people--gatekeepers, opinion leaders, and followers.

Myths: Stories that express key values and ideals of a society.

NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) A

database that classifies groups of business firms that produce the
same type of product.
Need-driven person: A psychographic person identified in the VALS
inventory who is characterized as striving simply to meet basic food
and housing needs.

Need for affiliation: A basic social need identified by McClelland that

is similar in nature to Maslow's belongingness need.

Need for cognition: A scale that measures the extent to which

consumers have an intrinsic motivation to engage in problem-solving
activities.

Need for power: A basic social need, identified by McClelland. It

refers to the desire to obtain and exercise control over others.

Need for uniqueness: The desires to perceive ourselves as different

and original.

Needs: Result from a discrepancy between an actual and a desired

state of being.

Need recognition: It occurs when a person perceives that there is a

discrepancy between an actual and a desired state of being.

Negative reinforcer: Reinforcers that increase the likelihood of a

behavior occurring by removing an aversive stimulus.

Negativity bias: The finding that negative information is given more

weight than positive information by consumers when they make
decisions to buy a product or service.

Negligent behavior. The actions and inactions of consumers that

may negatively affect the long-term quality of life of individuals and
society. Examples include drunk driving, product misuse, and failing to
use seatbelts.

Noncomparable alternatives: Two or more choice options in

different product categories, such as deciding whether to purchase a
new car or build a new addition to a house.

Noncompensatory models of choice: Models of choice that

emphasize that high ratings on some attributes do not necessarily
compensate for low ratings on other attributes.

Nonmonetary acquisitions: Acquisitions made when goods or

services are traded, borrowed, made, inherited, found, or stolen.
Nonverbal behaviors: Actions, movements, and utterances that
people use to communicate in addition to language. These include
movements of the hands, arms, head, and legs, as well as body
orientation and the space maintained between people.

Normative influence: Occurs when norms act to influence

individuals’ behavior.

Norm of reciprocity: A societal norm that states that, if a person

does something for another, the second person should respond with
appropriate reciprocal action.

Norms: A behavioral rule of conduct agreed upon by over half of the

group in order to establish behavioral consistency within the group.

Nostalgia: "A longing for the past, a yearning for yesterday, or a

fondness for possessions and activities associated with days of yore."

Nuclear family: Consists of a husband, wife, and their offspring.

Object-attribute belief: The belief that an object possesses a

specific attribute.

Object-benefit belief: The belief that an object will provide a specific

benefit.

Objects: The products, people, companies, and things about which

people hold beliefs and attitudes.

Observational learning: A process in which people develop "patterns

of behavior" by observing the actions of others. (Also called vicarious
or social learning

Occupational demographics: The area that focuses on the jobs

Americans hold and on the past and future changes in these jobs.

One- versus two-sided messages: The issue of whether persuasive

messages should present only one side or both sides of an issue.

Ongoing search: Involves the search activities that are independent

of specific purchase needs or decisions.

Operant conditioning: A process in which the frequency of

occurrence of a behavior is modified by the consequences of the
behavior.
Operants: The naturally occurring actions of an organism in the
environment.

Opinion leader: Consumers who influence the purchase decisions of

others.

Opponent-process theory: The psychological process in which a

person receives a stimulus that elicits an immediate positive or
negative reaction. This reaction is followed by a second emotional
reaction that is opposite in valence to the feeling initially experienced.

Opportunity cost: The concept that, when a person buys a product or

engages in one task, he or she simultaneously forgoes buying another
product or engaging in another task.

Optimum stimulation level: A person's preferred amount of

physiological activation or arousal, which may vary from very low (e.g.
sleep) to very high (e.g. severe panic)

Organization: Deals with how people perceive the shapes, forms,

figures, and lines in their visual world.

Organizational buying center: The people in an organization who

participate in a buying decision and who share the risks and goals of
that decision.

Organizational buying situations: Researchers have identified

three fundamental task definitions for organizational buying situations-
new task, modified rebuy, and straight rebuy.

Organizational culture: The shared values and beliefs that enable

members to understand their roles and the norms of the organization.

Orientation reflex: The physiological response of a person to a novel

or unexpected stimulus that involves an increase in arousal and the
orientation of the person to the stimulus.

Outcomes: The results of an exchange that a person assesses in

relation to the inputs to determine if the exchange was equitable.

Outer-directed persons: Psychographic persons identified by the

VALS inventory who tend to focus on what people think of them and
gears their lives to the "visible, tangible, and materialistic."
Overprivileged: Individuals with high incomes within a particular
social class, in contrast to the underprivileged, who have lower
incomes.

Pacific Rim: The countries that are situated on the Pacific Ocean.

Paired-associate learning: The learning of pairs of words or

concepts by attempting to associate them with each other.

Pattern advertising: While an overall promotional theme may be

employed worldwide, the implementation of this theme (e.g., deciding
whether to translate a slogan directly or to paraphrase it) is done
locally. This approach is in example of what the Japanese call
dochakuka: "think globally, act locally."

Perceived freedom: A motivational need experienced by people to

maintain their behavioral freedom.

Perceived risk: A consumer's perception of the overall negativity of a

course of action based upon an assessment of the possible negative
outcomes and on the likelihood that those outcomes will occur.

Perceived Value: The trade-off consumers make between perceived

quality and perceived price when evaluating a brand.

Perception: The process through which individuals are exposed to

information, attend to that information and comprehend it.

Perceptual maps: A map that shows how consumer position various

brands relative to each other on a graph whose axes are formed by
product attributes.

Perceptual organization: How people perceive the shapes, forms,

figures, and lines in their visual world.

Peripheral persuasion cues: Include such factors as the

attractiveness and expertise of the source, the mere number of
arguments presented and the positive or negative stimuli that form the
context within which the message was presented.

Peripheral route to persuasion: Persuasion that occurs in low

involvement circumstances when little information elaboration is
provided.
Personal influence: Refers to the idea that one individual may
intentionally or unintentionally influence another in his or her beliefs,
attitudes, or intentions about something.

Personal marketing: The marketing of one's own self to others.

Personal value: The meanings of ideal end states and modes of

conduct possessed by an individual.

Personality: The distinctive patterns of behavior, including thoughts

and emotions, that characterize each individual's adaptation to the
situations of his or her life.

Persuasion: An explicit attempt to influence beliefs, attitudes and/or

behaviors.

Physical Attractiveness: One of the key source characteristics that

influence consumer reactions to communications.

Physical Surroundings: The concrete physical and spatial aspects of

the environment encompassing a consumer activity.

Phased Strategy: Consumers sequentially use two noncompensatory

models, or first use a noncompensatory model and then a
compensatory approach.

Piecemeal Report Strategy: The use of the frequency heuristic to

influence choice by comparing a brand’s attributes one at a time to
different attributes from different brands in order to make the
marketer’s brand seem to be more appealing.

Pioneering Advantage: It occurs when the first brand to enter a

product category achieves a long-term edge over competitors.

Pipe dream rumors: Represent wishful thinking on the part

circulators of rumors.

Pleasure Principle: a principle that leads to seeking instant

gratification of instincts.

Popular culture: The culture of mass appeal.

Possession ritual: Involves acts in which a person lays claim to,

displays or protects possessions.
Positioning: Influencing how consumers perceive a brand’s
characteristics relative to those of competitive offerings.

Positive Reinforecer: An appropriate reward that is given

immediately after a behavior occurs to increase the likelihood that the
behavior will be repeated.

Postacquisition process: Refers to the consumption, postchoice

evaluation, and disposition of goods, services, experiences and ideas.

Preattention: The unconscious process in which consumers

automatically scan the features of the environment.

Premeditated rumors: Individuals with something to gain set out to

spread rumors that may help them financially or otherwise.

Preneed goods: A good or service that is purchase prior to when it is

needed, such as insurance.

Prepurchase search: Involves those information-seeking activities

that consumers engage in to facilitate decision making about a specific
purchase after they have gone through the problem recognition stage.

Price elasticity: An economic concept that different groups of

consumers react divergently to changes in the price of a product or
service.

Price-quality relationship: The greater the price, the less likely a

consumer is to buy a particular product.

Primacy effect: It occurs when material early in the message has the
most influence. (versus material at the end of he message).

Private acceptance: A situation in which a person actually changes

his or her beliefs in the direction of the group.

Priming: A phenomenon in which a small amount of exposure to a

stimulus leads to an increased drive to be in the presence of that
stimulus.

Proactive Interference: Material learned prior to the new material

interferes with the learning of the new material.

Problem recognition: The discovery of discrepancy between an

actual and a desired state of being.
Product development: The process which consists of developing,
testing, naming, and packaging prototypes.

Product differentiation: The process of manipulating the marketing

mix to position a brand so that consumers perceive meaningful
differences between it and its competitors.

Product disposition: What consumers do with a product once they

have completed their use of it.

Product expectations: The standard against which the actual

performance of the product is assessed.

Product innovation: A product that has been recently introduced and

is perceived by consumers to be new in relation to existing products
and services.

Product quality: The customers’ overall evaluation of the excellence

of the performance of a good or service.

Product use: It involves the actions and experiences that take place
in the time period in which a consumer is directly a good or service.

Prospect theory: According to this theory, how people

psychologically interpret the goodness or badness of an option does
not necessarily match "objective" or "actual" measure of its value.

Proportion-of-purchase method: The most frequently used

measure of brand loyalty in empirical research.

Psychodynamic theory of personality: A theory of Freud that

human personality results from a dynamic struggle between inner
psychological drives and social pressures to follow laws, rules and
moral codes.

Psychodynamic theory of arousal: A theory that assumes that

unconscious wishes to engage in some behavior can be activated by
unconsciously presented stimuli.

Psychological reactance: The negative motivational state that

results when a person’s behavioral freedom has been threatened.

Psychographic Analysis: A type of consumer research that describes

segments of consumers in terms of how they live, work, and play.
Psychographics: The quantitative investigation of consumers’
lifestyles, personalities and demographic characteristics.

Public policy: The development of laws and regulations that impact

consumers in the marketplace.

Punisher: Any stimulus whose presence after a behavior decreases

the likelihood that that behavior will occur.

Quiet Set: Retail stores that consumers enter, but have no intention
of purchasing a product from.

Reactance: The motivational state of someone whose behavioral

freedom has been threatened.

Reality principle: A principle that moves a person to be practical, and

to function efficiently in the world.

Recall task: Information is retrieved by the consumer from long-term

memory (unaided recall).

Recency effect: It occurs when material at the end of a message has

the most influence (versus material at the beginning of the message).

Recognition task: Information is put in front of a consumer, who

simply judges whether the information has been previously seen.

Reference group: A group whose value, norms, attitudes or beliefs

are used as a guide for behavior by an individual.

Reflected Appraisal: A process in which a consumer examines the

manner in which others in a reference group interact with him or her.

Regional subcultures: Subcultures based upon a geographical sub-

area of a larger culture.

Regulatory environment: It consists of al the laws and regulations

established by federal, state, and local governments to exert control
over business practices.

Rehearsal: The silent repetition of information to encode into long-

term memory.

Reinforcer: Anything that occurs after a behavior and changes the

likelihood that the behavior will be repeated.
Relational exchange: A transaction that involves a long-term
commitment in which trust and social relations play an important role.

Relationship marketing: The overt attempt of exchange partners to

build a long-term association characterized by purposeful cooperation
and mutual dependence and the development of social, as well as
structural bonds.

Relationship trust: A willingness to rely on an exchange partner in

whom one has confidence.

Relative income hypothesis: People within the same social class

often have different consumption patterns based on their relative
incomes.

Reliability: It is evidenced when a scale is internally consistent, and

gives similar results when an individual is retested after a period of
time.

Repeat purchase behavior: The consumer is merely buying a

product repeatedly, without any particular product for it.

Repetition effects: The impact on consumers of repeating an

advertising message a number of times.

Repositioning: Changing how consumer perceive a brand’s

characteristics relative of those of competitive offerings.

Representativeness heuristic: A rule of thumb by which people

determine the probability that "object A" belongs to "class B" by
assessing the degree that object A is similar to or stereotypical of class
B.

Response generation: The concept that the recall of a memory

results from the person actively constructing a response, rather than
simply pulling from memory, an accurate representation of the stored
information.

Restricted exchange: The simplest type of exchange, involves two

parties interacting in a reciprocal relationship.

Retrieval: The process in which an individual searches through long-

term memory to identify within it the information to be recalled.
Retrieval cues: Verbal or visual information, originally contained in
an advertisement, that is placed on the product or packaging to assist
consumers' memories during decision making.

Retroactive interference: The concept that new material presented

after old material has been learned interferes with the recall of the old
material.

Risk perception: The likelihood and degree of negativity which

consumers perceive that outcomes may possess.

Rokeach value scale: A scale developed to assess the predominant

values of people. It appears to capture values held cross-culturally.

Role: The specific behaviors expected of a person in a position. Thus,

when a person takes on a role, normative pressures exert influence on
the person to act in a particular way.

Role conflict: A case in which individuals simultaneously occupy two

roles that may entail conflicting demands, such as being both a mother
and an executive.

Role overload: A state of conflict that occurs when the sheer volume
of behavior demanded by the positions in a person's position set
exceeds available time and energy.

Role-related product cluster: The set of products necessary for the

playing of a particular role.

Roles: The specific behaviors expected of a person in a certain

position.

Rumors: Information or stories in general circulation that lack factual

certainty.

Salience effects: Occur when stimuli stand out from background

information, so that attention is directed toward those stimuli.

Salient beliefs: Important attribute-object beliefs activated when a

person evaluates an attitudinal object.

Satisficing: The concept that consumers will frequently attempt to

make only satisfactory decisions rather than perfect decisions because
of limitations in time, information-processing ability, or appropriate
facts.
Schedule of reinforcement: A schedule, formed by the frequency
and timing of reinforcers, that can dramatically influence the pattern of
operant responses.

Schema: An organized set of expectations a person holds about an

object.

Search process: A search for information that may be either

extensive or limited, depending upon the involvement level of the
consumer.

Secondary reinforcer: A previously neutral stimulus that acquires

reinforcing properties through its association with a primary reinforcer.

Segmentation: The division of a marketplace into distinct subsets of

consumers having similar needs and wants, each of which can be
reached with a different marketing mix.

Segmenting by demand elasticity: The process of segmenting

consumers based upon the differential slopes of their demand curves
(e.g., on airline flights, vacationers versus business travelers).

Selective attention: The concept that consumers selectively decide

to which stimuli they should attend.

Selective exposure: The concept that consumers actively choose

whether or not to expose themselves to information.

Self-concept: The totality of the individual's thoughts and feelings

having reference to himself or herself as an object.

Self-fulfilling rumors: Rumors are based on a perception of what

could happen in the future if something else were to occur.

Self-gifts: Gifts that are given by a person to himself or herself.

Self-perception: The concept that an individual may observe his or

her own actions to infer attitudes and beliefs.

Semantic concepts: The meanings attached to words, events,

objects, and symbols.

Semantic memory: How people store the meanings of verbal

material in long-term memory.
Semiosis analysis: The process of identifying an object, a sign, and
an interpretant to analyze the meaning of a symbol.

Semiotics: The investigation of symbols and their meaning.

Sensation: The investigation of the ways in which people react to the

raw sensory information they receive through their sense organs.

Sensory memory: The extremely brief memories that result from the
firing of nerve fibers in a person's brain.

Sentiment connections: A term from balance theory used to denote

the observer’s evaluations of another person and an attitudinal object.

Separatedness-connectedness: A variable that measures the

extent to which people perceive their self-concept as autonomous
(separated from other people) versus interdependent (united with
other people).

Serial learning: The process of how people place into memory and
recall information received in a sequential manner.

Serial-position effect: The finding that items at the beginning and

end of a list are learned more rapidly than items in the middle of a list.

Service encounter: A personal interaction that occurs between a

consumer and a marketer.

Service quality: A customer's overall assessment of the excellence of

a service.

Services: Products exchanged that are intangible and that someone

does for someone else.

Shaping: A process through which a new operant behavior is created

by reinforcing successive approximations of the desired behavior.

Short-term memory: The site where information is temporarily

stored while being processed. Short-term memory is noted for its
limited capacity.

Sign tracking: The concept that organisms have a tendency to orient

themselves toward and attend to unconditioned stimuli.

Signs: The words, gestures, pictures, products, and logos used to

communicate information from one person to another.
Simple exchange: Characterized by two parties in a reciprocal
relationship.

Situational involvement: Involvement that occurs over a short

period of time and is associated with a specific situation, such as a
purchase.

Situational traits: Dispositions to act within general situational

contexts.

Slippage: The marketing term for the percentage of customers who

purchase a product but fail to redeem a premium offer.

Social class: The relatively permanent and homogeneous strata in a

society that tend to differ in their status, status, occupations,
education, possessions, and values.

Social class hierarchy: The ordering of the social classes from lower
to higher.

Social comparison: The process through which people evaluate the

correctness of their opinions, the extent of their abilities, and the
appropriateness of their possessions.

Social facilitation: The concept that a person become aroused when

performing a task in front of other people. The arousal tends to
enhance performance on easy tasks and hinder performance on
difficult tasks.

Social fences: Occur when a short-term punisher causes large

numbers of people to avoid engaging in a behavior that would have
benefited the group of people.

Social judgment theory: A psychological theory that describes how

an individual reacts to attitudinal statements depending upon the
relationship of the statement to the person's own attitude.

Social learning: The theory proposing that people will observe the
actions of others to develop patterns of behavior.

Social-psychological personality theories: Personality theories

that are based upon individual differences in how people respond to
social situations.

Social relations: The network of ties between individuals. Ties may

be strong, weak, or nonexistent.
Social surroundings: The effects of other people on a consumer in a
consumption situation.

Social threats: External pressure by other people to induce a

consumer to do something.

Social traps: The psychological phenomenon related to the finding

that individuals may respond to short-term reinforcers, which can lead
to long-term negative outcomes for a group.

Socialization agents: Individuals directly involved with a consumer

who have influence because of their frequency of contact with the
consumer, who have importance to the consumer, or who have control
over rewards and punishments given to the consumer.

Socialization background factors: Factors that influence the

socialization process, which include such variables as the consumer's
socioeconomic status, sex, age, social class, and religious background.

Source: An individual or character who is delivering a message.

Source characteristics: Features of the source, that impact the

effectiveness of a message delivery, such as credibility, physical
attractiveness, likability and meaningfulness.

Source credibility: A construct used to describe sources of

information. The extent that a source is perceived to have expertise
and trustworthiness.

Source expertise: The extent of knowledge the source is perceived

to have about the subject on which he or she is communicating

Source likability: The positive or negative feelings that consumers

have toward a source of information.

Source physical attractiveness: The extent to which a source is

perceived to have physical beauty.

Source trustworthiness: The extent that a source is perceived to

provide information in an unbiased, honest manner.

Specific positioning: The attempt to create strong connections

between the product, certain key attributes, and the product's benefits
in consumers' minds.
Spontaneous brand switching: Consumers' tendency to periodically
buy a new brand, even when nothing indicates that they are unhappy
with the brand previously used.

Standard rumors: When people seek explanations for unusual

events.

Standard Industrial Classification system- A database that

classifies and identifies groups of business firms that product the same
type of product.

Standard learning hierarchy: A high-involvement hierarchy of

effects in which beliefs occur first, followed by the development of
feelings or affect, followed by the occurrence of a behavior.

Standardization of the marketing plan: The proposal that

marketing plans can be standardized in international marketing.

Status: A person's social standing in the class hierarchy.

Status crystallization: The consistency with which an individual

reveals a particular social status across a number of dimensions.

Status groups: Groups based upon social distinctions and differences

in social prestige and respect.

Stimulus discrimination: Occurs when an organism behaves

differently toward two similar stimuli.

Stimulus generalization: Occurs, when an organism reacts similarly

to two or more distinct stimuli.

Store layout: The physical organization of a store that creates

specific traffic patterns, assists in the presentation of merchandise,
and helps to create a particular atmosphere.

Subculture: A subdivision of national culture based on unifying

characteristics, such as social status or religion, whose members share
similar patterns of behavior distinct from that of the national culture.

Subjective norm: A major component of the behavioral intentions

attitude model. The subjective norm introduces into this model the
powerful effects of reference groups on behavior. It assesses what
consumers believe other people think that they should do.
Subliminal perception: The concept that stimuli presented below the
level of conscious awareness may influence behavior and feelings.

Substitute activities: Activities that satisfy the same need for the
consumer and are mutually exclusive (they cannot take place
together).

Substitution effect: The economic principle that, when the price of a

product falls, it may be substituted for similar goods that are now
relatively more costly.

Superego: In psychoanalytic theory, the conscience or "voice within"

a person that echoes the morals and values of parents and society.

Surface traits: Enduring dispositions to act in context-specific

domains.

Surrogate consumer: A person who acts like an agent retained by a

consumer to guide, direct, and/or transact marketplace activities.

Symbolic innovation: An innovation that, through the acquisition of

new, intangible attributes, communicates a different social meaning
than it did previously.

Symbolic interactionism: A perspective that views consumers as

living in a symbolic environment and constantly interpreting the
symbols around them.

Symbols: Things that stand for or express something else.

Syncratic decision: Important decisions in which the husband and

wife participate jointly.

Task definition: The reason or occasion for engaging in a consumer

action, such as a gift occasion, a party, or even a type of meal.

Tastes and preferences: Subjective inclinations that may change

and act to shift the demand curve.

Technological innovation: A change in the characteristics of a

product or service that results through the introduction of a
technological change.

Terminal materialism: A type of materialism in which having

possessions is seen as an end in itself.
Terminal materialism is viewed as potentially destructive because it
leads to such unbecoming traits as envy, possessiveness,
nongenerosity, and greed.

Terminal values: Desired end states-how people would like to

experience their lives.

Theory: A set of interrelated statements defining the causal

relationships among a group of ideas.

Theory of reasoned action: A theory that describes the factors

posited to influence the behavioral intentions of an individual.

Time as a situational variable: The concept that the amount of time

available to consumers forms a situational context that acts to
influence their acquisition, consumption, and disposition of products
and services.

Time compression: The electronic process through which radio or

television commercials may be compressed, such that they last a
shorter length of time.

Tolerance for ambiguity: A trait that assesses how a person will

react to situations that have varying degrees of ambiguity or
inconsistency.

Total quality management (TQM): A management philosophy

based on the idea that successful companies should continuously
improve the quality of their products and that quality is defined by the
customer.

Trait: Any characteristic on which a person may differ from another in

a relatively permanent and consistent way.

Transformational advertising: Advertising that causes a consumer

to associate the experience of using a product with a set of
psychological characteristics not typically associated with its use. This
acts to transform the experience of purchasing and using the product.

Trickle-down theory: A model of mass communications that holds

that information moves from the upper classes to the lower classes.
For example, fashion trends begin with the wealthy.

Truth effect: If something is repeated often enough, people who are

in a low-involvement processing mode will believe it.
Two-factor theory: An explanation of advertising wear-out. In one
process, the repetition of a message causes a reduction in uncertainty
and increased learning about the stimulus, resulting in a positive
response. In the other process, tedium or boredom begins to occur
with each repetition.

Two-sided message: A message that presents both sides of an

argument as a tactic to be more persuasive.

Two-step flow model: A model of mass communications that holds

that mass communications first influence opinion leaders, who in turn
influence followers.

Types of risk: Various risk factors that may influence consumers

including financial risk, performance risk, physical risk, psychological
risk, social risk, time risk, and opportunity loss risk.

Unawareness set: Consists of the unknown brands and products.

Unconditioned response: The reflexive, involuntary response

elicited by an unconditioned stimulus.

Unconditioned stimulus: Any stimulus capable of eliciting

autonomically an unconditioned response.

Underprivileged: The people within a given social class who have low
incomes relative to other members of that social class.

Unique selling proposition: A quick, hard-hitting phrase that

captures a major feature of a product or service.

Unit relation: As defined in balance theorv, a relationship that is

attributed when an observer perceives that two cognitive elements are
somehow connected to each other.

Upper Americans: A description of a group of social classes including

the upper-upper, lower-upper, and upper-middle class.

Upper-lower class: A social class described as working, not on

welfare, whose living standard is just above poverty, whose behavior
may be judged as crude and trashy, and that tends to consist of
unskilled workers.

Upper-middle class: A social class composed of college graduates,

managers, the intellectual elite, and professionals.
Upper-upper class: The highest status group, marked by its small
size and "old" money.

Urban legends: A phenomenon related to rumors, are realistic stories

about incidents that are reputed to have occurred.

Usage situation: A type of situation based upon the task definition. It

forms the context in which a product or service is used and influences
the product characteristics sought by a consumer. (p. 463)

Utilitarian needs: Desires of consumers to correct basic instrumental

problems, such as filling a car's gas tank or removing a spot from a
rug.

Validity: It is evidenced when a scale is shown to measure the trait

that is designed to assess.

VALS life-style classification scheme: A psychographic approach in

which consumers are divided into four broad groups of individuals-the
need-driven, the inner-directed, the outer-directed, and the integrated
groups.

VALS 2: A new psychographic model developed by SRI International

that identifies relationships between consumer attitudes and purchase
behavior based upon three categories of self-identity orientations.

Valuation of pins and losses: A process described in prospect

theory in which a person values the level of positive or negative
outcomes.

Value-attitude system: The relation of global values to domain-

specific values to evaluations of product attributes within a consumer's
belief system.

Value -expressive influence: The concept that the values and

attitudes of a reference group will influence a person who wishes to be
part of and liked by that group.

Values: Enduring beliefs about ideal end states and modes of conduct.
They dictate what is good, right and appropriate in behavior.

Variety-seeking purchases: Buying a new brand spontaneously,

even though no dissatisfaction is expressed with the previously
purchased brand.
Vehicles: The specific means within a channel by which a message is
communicated, such as Vogue magazine as a vehicle within the print
medium.

Vicarious learning: A type of learning that occurs when a person

observes the reinforcements received by others contingent on their
actions.

Vivid messages: Messages using vivid, concrete words, which to

have a greater impact on receivers than messages containing more
abstract information.

Voluntary attention: A process in which the consumer actively

searches out information to achieve some type of goal.

von Restorff effect: The effect by which a unique item in a series of

relatively homogeneous items is recalled much more easily than those
surrounding items, because the effects of proactive and retroactive
interference are minimized.

Warner's index of social characteristics: Uses four variables as

indicators of social class-occupation, source of income, house type,
and dwelling area.

Weber's law: The concept that as the intensity of a stimulus

increases, the ability to detect a difference between two levels of the
stimulus decreases.

Word-of-mouth communications: Exchange of comments, thoughts

or ideas between two or more consumers, none of whom is a
marketing source.

Word-of-mouth network: The relations between individuals through

which personal influence may occur.

Working class: The social class composed of individuals who engage

in blue-collar trades, such as carpentry, plumbing, and assembly line
work.

Working memory: (a common term for short-term memory) A

hypothetical memory component in which individuals actively process
information.

Zapping: The process in which consumers avoid seeing commercials

by switching channels on their television with a remote control device.
Zeigarnik effect: An effect that occurs when an individual is involved
in a task that is interrupted or not completed. People continue to
process information about the task until it is completed.