

The effects of culture on consumer behaviour are so powerful and people are surrounded by many practices from many significant behaviours like pressing the start button on our walkman to larger behaviours like flying to a different country for a honeymoon. The important thing is that these practices have meaning to us.
Culture is made up of three essential components:
(1) Beliefs- Mental and verbal processes that reflect our knowledge and assessment of products and services.
(2) Values- Indicators consumers use as guides for what is appropriate behaviour, they tend to be relatively enduring and stable.
The relationship between culture and consumer behaviour is a two way street. On one hand products and services with benefits to culture groups have a better chance of being accepted by the consumers. On the other hand The new products designed successfully by a culture at any point provides a window on the dominant cultural ideas of that period.
Aspects of culture
A cultural system can be said to consist of three functional areas:
-Ecology: This area is shaped by the technology used to obtain the distribute resources.
- Social structure: This area includes the domestic and political groups that are dominant within the culture.
- Ideology: This area revolves around the belief that members of a society possess a common Worldview. They share ideas about principles of order and fairness.
Rules for behaviour
Values are very general principles for judging between good and bad goals. They form the core principles of every culture (norm). Crescive norms include the following:
- A custom is a norm handed down by the past that controls basic behaviour like a division of labour in a household.
-Mores are customs with a strong moral overtone. Mores often involve a taboo or forbidden behaviour such as cannibalism.
-Conventions are norms regarding the conduct of everyday life. These rules deal with the subleties of consumer behaviour, including the 'correct' way to furnish ones house, wear ones clothes, host dinner parties and so on.
It is said that purchase behaviour is influenced by the nature of an individuals family. People come from different families and that influences on the way they purchase a product.
Children have become a very important part of purchasing products as parents are influenced by their kids on what they purchase. A study showed that one third of parents have changed their shopping habits after listening to the comments by their children. Most companies are becoming aware of young peoples influence in everyday family buying decisions and most companies are trying to persuade them that their products are environmentally friendly. In most cases there is more that one individual involved in making a decision, for example if a family decides to buy a pet, children may be the ones to persuade their parents to buy a cat or dog, but the parents would be responsible for which breed to buy and then the whole family would choose which one. Soon that pet also becomes part of the family. This would also be part of a purchasing influence as when the family would go shopping their shopping habits may change as to buying pet food as well.
There are diffent types of families like:
1. Nuclear family- this is where the parents and children live together.
2. Extended family- This is where the nuclear family and other relatives for example aunty's or grand parents may live together.
3. Family of orientation- this is the family a person is born into.
4. Family of procreation- this is a family a person finds through marriage.
It is possible that there may be changes in the family structures these can be caused by many reasons. Increasing number of births out of marriage, step families, one parent families e.t.c.
Looking at one person families they have less problems with things like the central heating and bath/shower. These include pensioners and non- pensioners. Research shows that most of the one person households do not even have central heatings at all.
There is a very interesting video on the you tube website about how the family social class and structure is changing in the united states. The video link is:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0Oqeov0Gcw
Looking at demographic classes it is said that a womans life expectancy is 78 years of age while mens is 73. More that 50% of women over the age of 65 now live on their own and looking at the divorces 1 in 3 people are now having a divorce. The video below is the one we had a look at in class at the main reason that people are now having a divorce.
It is funny looking at one of the main reasons for people having a divorce but it is the reality that people now have divorces for silly reasons at times.
The average age that people get married has also increased alot. For men from 26 years of age to more that 30 years of age now. Looking at the women it has been an increase for 23 years to 28 years now. The proprotion of divorces is estimated to be 15 percent for the people that entered marriages in 1960, while people that entered a marriage recently in 1980 has doubled to 29 percent. There are other countries apart from the EU that have a high rate of divorce like there is a divorce rate of 40% in countries like Finland, Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom.
The employement rate in the EU had increased alot. Looking at the employement rate of 62.2% in 2000, which increased in 2005 to 63.4% and rose again to 64.4% in 2006. The employment rates for women have also increased. One quater of married women now work more that 30 hours a week. It increased from 56% in 2000 going up in 2005 to 53.7% and 57.2% in 2006.
Having a look at the following link, which we had a look at in lectures: ortal/docs/PAGE/PGP_PRD_CAT_PREREL/PGE_CAT_PREREL_YEAR_2007/PGE_CAT_PREREL_YEAR_2007_MONTH_07/3-20072007-EN-AP.PDF
It shows that the longest working hours were in Austria and the United Kingdom. Full time employees normally worked 40.5 hours a week in the EU ,where as the united kingdom and austri were 42.4 hours a week. Netherlands was 38.9, Belgium was 39.0, latvia 42.2, Solvenia was 41.4 and France was 39.1 together with Finland with 39.2 hours.
From both a sociological and statistical perspective family is hard to nail down. One thing is certain that the concept of family will continue to exost in the future and manifest itself in varying forms and accross many countries throughout Europe.
After some research done by experts it is shown that as the idea of traditional family has been declined people are now placing greater impact on the role of close friends, siblings and other relatives to to have companionship and support. In the US people are also joining family groups of strangers and meet regularly for holidays and meals.
At a time there was only one acceptable way of families to live, get married, have kids and that is it nothing beyond. Now in the 21st century people have now opened their eyes and cleaned the wax from their ears. In the 21st century people now have broader minds and there is much broader categories where you have, single parents, step families, teenage mothers e.t.c.
Look at the website below for more information:
http://www.channel4.com/health/microsites/F/family/21st/index.html
The family life cycle
This is a way of segmenting the family market at different stages of the life cycle. The family life cycle have different stages to it. Starting from the bachelor stage to the solitary survivor 2 stage.
-Bachelors are young single people living on their own. They have a low income but a high discreationary income. Have few financial burdens but are fashion and opinion leaders.
-Newly married couples are young with no children, better off financially now than they will be in the coming future and high income but will have high mortgage commitments as well.
-Full nest 1 are the youngest children under the age of 6. Child dominated household, spending is dominated by childrens needs and they have a low income but higher debts.
-Full nest 2 are the youngest children aged 6 or over. Thei income is improving, still child dominated household, childrens needs have a considerable influence on household shopping and improvement in financial position.
-Full nest 3 are older married couples with dependent children. Older children may be at work and others in full time or higher education. Their financial position is better and they have an school and exam dominated household.
-Empty nest 1 are the older married couple but with no children at home, but the head of family still at work. Their income is the highest with low expenses and they may be interested in travel and self education.
-Empty nest 2 are older married couple, with no children at home and the head of household is retired. They may have a sugnifant cut in income, have a concern with the pension levels and income levels. Spendings on hobbies and past times. Buy medicals.
-Solitary survivor 1 are widow/widower but still in labour force. Income is alright but tend to sell bigger house to a smaller house and their concern may be the level of savings and pensions.
-Solitary survivor 2 are widow/widower but retired. There may be a signifant cut in income, additional medical requirements and special needs for affection and attention and may seek sheltered accommodation.
Just like this picture a customer can decide which product they want but have to come up with a solution from the range of different options they may have.
These kinds of decisions are not always beneficial for the consumers as for example if a customers has had a bad experience with a certain brand they will automatically refer to not making a purchase with them again. Telling others about the experience can also lead to them assuming that they will have the same experience rather than looking at the overall record of the organisation. Heuristics again is the rules that are made up in a customers mind which leads to making speedy decisions.Customers use this method as it is a way of helping them decide which kind of products they want to purchase and where would be the best place for them to purchase it from.
Learning is getting the knowledge out of what you see and memory is where you store the knowledge you get. Everytime you see an advertisement the objective behind it is for you to learn something from it and gain something out of it.
This memory process shows that when you gain information you store it in you memory and it is always kept there so that it can be found when needed.
It is usually said that the mind is like a computer in many ways because it allows input to the system and output is later used to retrieve the information. All the information that is entered in the memory system is entered in a way that it can be easily recognised.
Marketing businesses tend to use nostalgia in their adverts as this can help to gain customers attention as it brings emotions in and gets people to start thinking of their past days and the wanting for them to experience it all over again. They tend to do this by advetising with the things that people have already experineced to bring back the memories.
Looking at an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo_MMBcTnSU
Looking at this video which is a car advert. The reason i think it relates to them using nostalgic theme is that he is refering every aspect of the car to how the olden times cars used to work. So he explains how the old time cars where so good which cannot be found today but how this speed racer is better that the old cars made.
Agencies use alot of nostalgic ideas for their adverts in todays times that their brands are now known as one of the best leading brands. They do this by either making an advert and trying to use the past features like they will either include very old songs or have the products look abit like the olden times.
In direct mail women respond to an emotional style.
Charities have tended to use a female/emotional style of writing in their fundraising mail shots.
A re written factual letter for men generated a response of 85% better than the original female pack.
When the male/factual version was sent to women response rate was 15% lower than the original.