Chapter 1
Summary
According to Schiffman, Hansen, and Kanuk, the study of consumer behavior is interdisciplinary because it involves social psychology, anthropology, psychology, economics, and sociology, which explain how personal and organizational consumers evaluate, purchase, and search for products (1-2).
The explanation of how the marketing concepts, which include production, sales, and marketing contribute to the needs and expectations of customers and shape their behavior has a lot of background history. For instance, the concept of production orientation, which emerged between the 1850s and 1920s focused on balancing production with consumer demand. Sales orientation emerged in the 1930s and 1950s as a marketing strategy for balancing production with consumption. Manufacturers used the concept to develop suitable products to satisfy the market needs and expectations instead of focusing on competition.
Schiffman, Hansen, and Kanuk argue that social marketing is new marketing that uses good corporate governance to provide specialized and long-term engagement with consumers (3). Marketing is achieved by researching product positioning, market segmentation, research, and by implementing the strategies by targeting specific markets. Product, place, promotion, and pricing are elements of the concept known as the marketing mix, which companies use to establish good relationships with the customers by increasing value, trust, retention, satisfaction, among the customers. Despite that, modern approaches use customer-focused profitability marketing and digital technologies to reach more consumers and broaden the market.
My Opinion on Chapter 1
My opinion is that marketing is a concept that has evolved as a tool that business organizations should adopt to use on a digitalized platform to provide value for money, satisfy end-user needs and expectations, and become competitive by focusing on the consumer.
Chapter 2
Summary
According to Schiffman, Hansen, and Kanuk, successful marketing strategies depend on consumer information that is obtained by conducting market research (5). The rationale is to understand consumer preferences, needs, and expectations and inform the market about the product offerings using the right marketing and promotional messages to shape consumer behavior. However, an effective research process begins by defining and clarifying objectives and collecting data using either or both the qualitative and quantitative research methods.
The target market consists of secondary and primary sources of data, which is collected by using a research design that supports the use of surveys, focus groups, and observations. The internal and external secondary sources of data rely on already available data for analysis and primary sources require the research to collect data by interacting directly with the source. The importance of the primary source is that it enables the researcher to beliefs, attitudes, and thoughts. However, the data obtained from customers should be treated with a lot of confidentiality.
Among the tools used to collect data are depth interviews that consist of one-on-one interaction with the respondent, probing questions, focus groups, common projective exercises, and specific questions for specific situations. Some of the areas include perception tests and metaphor analysis where technical devices are used to collect the data. Among the tools used to analyze the data are attitudinal and the Likert scales. A written report is presented in a format that uses graphs and tables among other tools.
My Opinion on Chapter 2
The chapter provides a comprehensive framework for conducting market research for a marketing professional to use when they are involved in the market research process.
Work Cited
Schiffman, Leon G., Håvard Hansen, and Leslie Lazar Kanuk. Consumer behavior: A European outlook. Pearson Education, 2008. Print.