What is Consumer Behavior? Definition of Consumer Behavior, Consumer Behavior Meaning and Concept

Consumer behavior from the marketing point of view represents a set of activities that people carry out from the moment a need arises, until it is satisfied.

The activities that people carry out can be influenced by internal and external variables.

Internal and external aspects of consumption

The internal aspects of consumption are all aspects that come from within the individual. While the external aspects come from the external environment that surrounds the person. All these aspects will affect consumer behavior, when seeking to satisfy their needs with the goods and services available in the market.

Consumer behavior process

How does the consumer behavior process develop? We can summarize it in the following phases:

• The deficiencies: The process begins when there is a deficiency, such as when something is missing, for example, when someone feels hungry, but it is not an intense hunger.
• The needs : These are the deficiencies that are consciously manifested in the consumer, that is, when they become aware that they need to eat something. Needs can vary based on age, physical condition, climate, and many other conditions that make them different.
• Motivations: They are considered as the impulses that make the person act with concrete actions, trying to find a satisfier to cover the need. Like ordering food from a friend or going to a restaurant to eat.
• Desires : In this step, the wishes or the different ways in which each person wants to meet their needs appear, some want to eat a cake, another a taco, another a pizza and thus we can mention a large number of satisfiers.
• Learning: The way a person learns to solve their need is conditioned by their family, social environment and culture.

If your family is healthy, you will prefer a salad to a hamburger. If you are with friends, you will prefer a pizza to a formal food menu. If the person is Spanish, they will prefer a paella to some Mexican tacos.

• The attitude: It is the response of the consumer to accept a satisfactory or reject it; if the person is offered to eat dog meat, according to their cultural customs, they approve or totally disgust it.
• Economic situation : The choice of goods and services is also determined by the economic situation of the person, you may want to go to eat at a five-star hotel, but if you do not have enough money, you end up eating in a cheap fast food restaurant.
• The commercial equipment : The commercial infrastructure where we want to cover the need also decisively affects the choice of the satisfier, if someone is in a shopping center and wants to eat pizza. If there are no pizzerias in that place, you cannot opt ​​for that product.
• Advertising: Advertising is another variable that influences the search for a satisfier, because this means of communication seeks to persuade consumers to make certain purchase choices, promoting different satisfiers with which the need expressed in the person can be covered.

Steps in consumer behavior

The graph simplifies the steps that the consumer follows in the process of arising a need, until it is satisfied

We can conclude by stating that for marketing, knowing precisely and clearly how the consumer behaves is very important, because each consumer is different and companies must seek to satisfy all of them by giving them an appropriate solution.

With this we also reinforce the idea that marketing does not create needs in the consumer, because this occurs as an internal lack; the role of marketing is to generate the best satisfiers to meet those needs.