CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

1. Page1
CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
Name :- Naushad Alam
Roll no. :- BFT/14/L12
Semester:- 5
National institute of fashion technology.
PATNA
Submitted by:-
Nilima regina Topno
National institute of fashion technology.
PATNA

2. NIFT PATNA
Page2
Abstract
Title: Consumer behavior
Keywords: Consumer, Consumer behavior, Apparel Consumer Behaviour,
Management Students
Apparel is one of the basic necessities of human civilization along with
food, water and shelter. The Apparel Industry reflects people lifestyles and shows
their social and economic status. The Apparel and Textile industry is India second
largest industry after the IT Industry. College students as a young consumer group
have gained significant importance from marketers in recent years because of
their growing purchasing power. They have easy access to credit cards and
income from part-time jobs to spend. Students tend to spend money on clothing
and beauty products, and find these items to be important. Therefore, college
student apparel shopping orientation is important to research because it is an
important sector of consumer behaviour. The purpose of the study is to
understand the Indian apparel market in terms of market size and growth and to
study the important demographic, psychological and socio-economic factors
which influence the consumer purchase behaviour for apparel with reference to
college going students, especially management students.
First a secondary study was done on the apparel market in India through
books and the internet. Then a questionnaire was prepared to collect primary
data from management students of different areas, family income, gender and
attitude regarding purchase behaviour of apparel. The collected data was then
analyzed using various quantitative tools.
The relation between various demographic variables and consumer
behaviour on apparel is expected to be understood. Apparel companies can
target the right target segment in terms of gender, age group, family income,
personality, culture etc. by understanding the preferences of the students and
can devise strategies to enable the students to access their products easily.

3. NIFT PATNA
Page3
CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
 INTRODUCTION
Consumer Behaviour is the study of individuals, groups, or organizations and the
processes they use to select, secure, use, and dispose of products, services,
experiences, or ideas to satisfy needs and the impacts that these processes have on
the consumer and society. It blends elements from psychology, sociology, social
anthropology, marketing and economics. It attempts to understand the decision-
making processes of buyers, both individually and in groups such as how emotions
affect buying behaviour. It studies characteristics of individual consumers such
as demographics and behaviour variables in an attempt to understand people's wants.
It also tries to assess influences on the consumer from groups such as family, friends,
sports, reference groups, and society in general
Customer behavior study is based on consumer buying behavior, with the
customer playing the three distinct roles of user, payer and buyer. Research has shown
that consumer behavior is difficult to predict, even for experts in the field. Relationship
marketing is an influential asset for customer behaviour analysis as it has a keen interest
in the re-discovery of the true meaning of marketing through the re-affirmation of the
importance of the customer or buyer. A greater importance is also placed on
consumer retention, customer relationship management, personalization, customization
and one-to-one marketing. Social functions can be categorized into social choice and
welfare functions.
 OTHER DEFINITION
“The behavior that consumers display in searching for, purchasing, using, evaluating
and disposing of products and services that they expect will satisfy their needs.”
(SCHIFFMAN AND KANUK)
“The decision process and physical activity engaged in when evaluating, acquiring,
using or disposing of goods and services."
(LOUDON AND BITTA)

4. NIFT PATNA
Page4
“The study of consumers as they exchange something of value for a product or service
that satisfies their needs”
(WELLS AND PRENSKY)
“Those actions directly involved in obtaining, consuming and disposing of products and
services including the decision processes that precede and follow these actions”.
(ENGEL, BLACKWELL, MINIARD)
“The dynamic interaction of effect and cognition, behavior and the environment by
which human beings conduct the exchange aspects of their lives”
(AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION)
 Basic Components In Consumer Behavior
1. Decision making (Cognitive and Affect)
2. Actual purchase (Behavior):
- Buying the good or service
- Physical activity: Visible
- Result of interplay of many individual and environmental determinants
3. Individual determinants and environmental influences
4. Buying roles
5. Buyers and Sellers
 Factors influencing consumer behavior
There are 4 main types of factors influencing consumer behavior
1. cultural factors,
2. social factors,
3. personal factors and
4. Psychological factors.
 Cultural factors

5. NIFT PATNA
Page5
Cultural factors are coming from the different components related to culture or
cultural environment from which the consumer belongs.
 Culture and societal environment
Culture is crucial when it comes to understanding the needs and behaviors of an
individual. Throughout his existence, an individual will be influenced by his family, his
friends, his cultural environment or society that will “teach” him values, preferences as
well as common behaviors to their own culture.
 Sub-cultures
A society is composed of several sub-cultures in which people can identify. Subcultures
are groups of people who share the same values based on a common experience or a
similar lifestyle in general.
Subcultures are the nationalities, religions, ethnic groups, age groups, gender of
the individual, etc. The subcultures are often considered by the brands for the
segmentation of a market in order to adapt a product or a communication strategy to
the values or the specific needs of this segment.
Consumers are usually more receptive to products and marketing strategies that
specifically target them.
 Social classes
Social classes are defined as groups more or less homogenous and ranked
against each other according to a form of social hierarchy. Even if it’s very large
groups, we usually find similar values, lifestyles, interests and behaviors in individuals
belonging to the same social class. We often assume three general categories among
social classes
 Lower class,
 Middle class and
 Upper class.
People from different social classes tend to have different desires and
consumption patterns. Disparities resulting from the difference in their purchasing

6. NIFT PATNA
Page6
power, but not only. According to some researchers, behavior and buying habits would
also be a way of identification and belonging to its social class.
A common foundation to the whole population and taking into account that
many counterexample naturally exist, they usually do not always buy the same
products, do not choose the same kind of vacation, do not always watch the same TV
shows, do not always read the same magazines, do not have the same hobbies and
do not always go in the same types of retailers and stores.
 Cultural trends
Cultural trends or “Bandwagon effect” are defined as trends widely followed by
people and which are amplified by their mere popularity and by conformity or
compliance with social pressure. The more people follow a trend, the more others will
want to follow it.
They affect behavior and shopping habits of consumers and may be related to the
release of new products or become a source of innovation for brands.
By social pressure, desire to conformity or belonging to a group, desire to “follow
fashion trends” or simply due to the high visibility provided by media, consumers will be
influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by these trends.
 Social factors
Social factors are among the factors influencing consumer behavior significantly.
They fall into three categories
 Reference groups and membership groups
 Family
 Social roles and status.
 Reference groups and membership groups
The membership groups of an individual are social groups to which he belongs
and which will influence him. The membership groups are usually related to its social
origin, age, place of residence, work, hobbies, leisure, etc.

7. NIFT PATNA
Page7
More generally, reference groups are defined as those that provide to the
individual some points of comparison more or less direct about his behavior, lifestyle,
desires or consumer habits. They influence the image that the individual has of himself
as well as his behavior. Whether it is a membership group or a non-membership group.
Because the individual can also be influenced by a group to which he doesn’t
belong yet but wishes to be part of this is called an aspiration group. This group will
have a direct influence on the consumer who, wishing to belong to this group and look
like its members, will try to buy the same products.
Some brands have understood this very well and communicate, implicitly or not,
on the “social benefit” provided by their products. Within a reference group that
influences the consumer buying behavior, several roles have been identified:
 The initiator: the person who suggests buying a product or service
 The influencer: the person whose point of view or advice will influence the buying
decision. It may be a person outside the group (singer, athlete, actor, etc.) but
on which group members rely on.
 The decision-maker: the person who will choose which product to buy. In
general, it’s the consumer but in some cases it may be another person. For
example, the “leader” of a soccer supporters’ group (membership group) that
will define, for the whole group, which supporter’s scarf buy and bear during the
next game.
 The buyer: the person who will buy the product. Generally, this will be the final
consumer.
Many brands look to target opinion leaders (initiator or influencer) to spread the use
and purchase of their product in a social group. Either through an internal person of the
group when it comes to a small social group. Or through a sponsorship or a partnership
with a reference leader (celebrity, actor, musician, athlete, etc.) for larger groups.
 Family
The family is maybe the most influencing factor for an individual. It forms an
environment of socialization in which an individual will evolve, shape his personality,
acquire values. But also develop attitudes and opinions on various subjects such as
politics, society, social relations or himself and his desires.

8. NIFT PATNA
Page8
But also on his consumer habits, his perception of brands and the products he
buys.
We all kept, for many of us and for some products and brands, the same buying habits
and consumption patterns that the ones we had known in our family.
Perceptions and family habits generally have a strong influence on the consumer
buying behavior. People will tend to keep the same as those acquired with their
families.
For brands – especially for Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) or Consumer
Packaged Goods (CPG) – successfully “integrate” the family is both a real challenge
and an opportunity to develop a strong consumer loyalty among all the family
members.
That’s why it’s important for brands to be seen as a family brand in order to become a
consumer habit for parents and children when they will become adults.
 Social roles and status:
The position of an individual within his family, his work, his country club, his group of
friends, etc. – All this can be defined in terms of role and social status.
A social role is a set of attitudes and activities that an individual is supposed to have
and do according to his profession and his position at work, his position in the family, his
gender, etc. – and expectations of the people around him.
Social status meanwhile reflects the rank and the importance of this role in society or in
social groups. Some are more valued than others. The social role and status profoundly
influences the consumer behavior and his purchasing decisions. Especially for all the
“visible” products from other people.
And this kind of behaviors and influences can be found at every level and for every role
and social status. Again, many brands have understood it by creating an image
associated with their products reflecting an important social role or status.
 Personal factors:

9. NIFT PATNA
Page9
Decisions and buying behavior are obviously also influenced by the characteristics of
each consumer.
 Age and way of life:
A consumer does not buy the same products or services at 20 or 70 years. His lifestyle,
values, environment, activities, hobbies and consumer habits evolve throughout his life.
The factors influencing the buying decision process may also change.
The family life cycle of the individual will also have an influence on his values,
lifestyles and buying behavior depending whether he’s single, in a relationship, in a
relationship with kids, etc. As well as the region of the country and the kind of city where
he lives (large city, small town, countryside, etc.).
For a brand or a retailer, it may be interesting to identify, understand, measure
and analyze what are the criteria and personal factors that influence the shopping
behavior of their customers in order to adapt.
 Purchasing power and revenue
The purchasing power of an individual will have, of course, a decisive influence on his
behavior and purchasing decisions based on his income and his capital. This obviously
affects what he can afford, his perspective on money and the level of importance of
price in his purchasing decisions. But it also plays a role in the kind of retailers where he
goes or the kind of brands he buys. As for social status, some consumers may also look
for the “social value” of products they buy in order to show “external indications” of
their incomes and their level of purchasing power..
 Lifestyle
The lifestyle of an individual includes all of its activities, interests, values and opinions. The
lifestyle of a consumer will influence on his behavior and purchasing decisions.
 Personality and self-concept

10. NIFT PATNA
Page10
Personality is the set of traits and specific characteristics of each individual. It is the
product of the interaction of psychological and physiological characteristics of the
individual and results in constant behaviors.
It materializes into some traits such as confidence, sociability, autonomy, charisma,
ambition, openness to others, shyness, curiosity, adaptability, etc.
While the self-concept is the image that the individual has – or would like to have – of
him and he conveys to his entourage. These two concepts greatly influence the
individual in his choices and his way of being in everyday life. And therefore also his
shopping behavior and purchasing habits as consumer.
 Psychological factors
Among the factors influencing consumer behavior, psychological factors can be
divided into 4 categories: motivation, perception, learning as well as beliefs and
attitudes.
 Motivation:
Motivation is what will drive consumers to develop a purchasing behavior. It is
the expression of a need is which became pressing enough to lead the consumer to
want to satisfy it. It is usually working at a subconscious level and is often difficult to
measure.
Motivation is directly related to the need and is expressed in the same type of
classification as defined process
To increase sales and encourage consumers to purchase, brands should try to
create, make conscious or reinforce a need in the consumer’s mind so that he
develops a purchase motivation. He will be much more interested in considering and
buy their products.
 Perception
Perception is the process through which an individual selects, organizes and interprets
the information he receives in order to do something that makes sense. The perception
of a situation at a given time may decide if and how the person will act.

11. NIFT PATNA
Page11
Depending to his experiences, beliefs and personal characteristics, an individual will
have a different perception from another.
Each person faces every day tens of thousands of sensory stimuli (visual, auditory,
kinesthetic, olfactory and gustatory). It would be impossible for the brain to process all
consciously. That is why it focuses only on some of them.
The perception mechanism of an individual is organized around three processes:
 Selective Attention: The individual focuses only on a few details or stimulus to
Which he is subjected. The type of information or stimuli to which an individual is
more sensitive depends on the person.
For brands and advertisers successfully capture and retain the attention of
consumers is increasingly difficult. For example, many users no longer pay any attention,
unconsciously, to banner ads on the Internet. This kind of process is called Banner
Blindness.
The attention level also varies depending on the activity of the individual and the
number of other stimuli in the environment. For example, an individual who is bored
during a subway trip will be much more attentive to a new ad displayed in the tube. It is
a new stimulus that breaks the trip routine for him.
 Selective Distortion: In many situations, two people are not going to interpret
information or a stimulus in the same way. Each individual will have a different
perception based on his experience, state of mind, beliefs and attitudes. Selective
distortion leads people to interpret situations in order to make them consistent with
their beliefs and values.
For brands, it means that the message they communicate will never be
perceived exactly in the same way by consumers. And that everyone may have a
different perception of it. That’s why it’s important to regularly ask consumers in order to
know their actual brand perception.
Selective distortion often benefits to strong and popular brands. Studies have shown
that the perception and brand image plays a key role in the way consumers perceived
and judged the product.

12. NIFT PATNA
Page12
Similarly, consumers will tend to appreciate even less a product if it comes from a brand
for which they have a negative perception.
 Selective Retention: People do not retain all the information and stimuli they
have been exposed to. Selective retention means what the individual will store and
retain from a given situation or a particular stimulus. As for selective distortion,
individuals tend to memorize information that will fit with their existing beliefs and
perceptions.
 Nature of Consumer Behavior:
The subject deals with issues related to cognition, affect and behavior in
consumption behaviors, against the backdrop of individual and environmental
determinants. The individual determinants pertain to an individual’s internal self and
include psychological components like personal motivation and involvement,
perception, learning and memory, attitudes, self-concept and personality, and,
decision making. The environmental determinants pertain to external influences
surrounding an individual and include sociological, anthropological and economic
components like the family, social groups, reference groups, social class, culture, sub-
culture, cross-culture, and national and regional influences.
The subject can be studied at micro or macro levels depending upon whether it
is analyzed at the individual level or at the group level. The subject is interdisciplinary. It
has borrowed heavily from psychology (the study of the individual: individual
determinants in buying behavior), sociology the study of groups:
 Group dynamics in buying behavior),
 Social psychology (the study of how an individual operates in
group/groups and its effects on buying behavior),
 Anthropology (the influence of society on the individual: cultural and
cross-cultural issues in buying behavior),
 Economics (income and purchasing power)
Consumer behavior is dynamic and interacting in nature. The three components of
cognition, affect and behavior of individuals alone or in groups keeps on changing; so
does the environment. There is a continuous interplay or interaction between the three

13. NIFT PATNA
Page13
components themselves and with the environment. This impacts consumption pattern
and behavior and it keeps on evolving and it is highly dynamic. Consumer behavior
involves the process of exchange between the buyer and the seller, mutually beneficial
for both. As a field of study it is descriptive and also analytical/ interpretive. It is
descriptive as it explains consumer decision making and behavior in the context of
individual determinants and environmental influences. It is analytical/ interpretive, as
against a backdrop of theories borrowed from psychology, sociology, social
psychology, anthropology and economics the study analyzes consumption behavior of
individuals alone and in groups. It makes use of qualitative and quantitative tools and
techniques for research and analysis, with the objective is to understand and predict
consumption behavior. It is a science as well as an art. It uses both, theories borrowed
from social sciences to understand consumption behavior, and quantitative and
qualitative tools and techniques to predict consumer behavior.
 Scope of Consumer Behavior
The study of consumer behavior deals with understanding consumption patterns and
behavior. It includes within its ambit the answers to the following: - ‘What’ the
consumers buy: goods and services
 ‘Why’ they buy (Need And Want)
 ‘When’ do they buy (Time: Day, Week, Month, Year, Occasions Etc.)
 ‘Where’ they buy (Place)
 ‘How often they buy’(Time Interval )
 ‘How often they use’ (Frequency Of Use)
The scope of consumer behavior includes not only the actual buyer but also the various
roles played by him/ different individuals.
 Consumer purchase behavior: The actions a person takes in purchasing and
using products and services, including the mental and social processes that precede
and follow these actions can be called as consumer behavior. It helps us to answer
questions such as:
(1)Why people choose one product or brand over another?
(ii) How they make these choices, and

14. NIFT PATNA
Page14
(iii) How companies use this knowledge to provide value to consumers
Consumer purchase decision process: Behind the visible act of making a purchase, lies
a decision that must be investigated. The purchase decision process is the stages a
buyer passes through in making choices about which products and services to buy.
There are five stages of consumer behavior:
(i) Problem Recognition
(ii) Information Search
(iii) Alternative Evaluation
(iv) Purchase Decision
(v) Post Purchase Behavior
 Consumer purchase behaviour of apparel: The Indian economy has grown over
the last 10 years with new jobs created in the Biomedical, Automotive engineering,
Apparel manufacturing and Civil engineering. The growth is strongly led by Information
Technology Enabled Services (ITES); this is supported by the education sector with
increase in the number of students enrolling for higher education and large numbers of
students graduating every year thus creating a large pool of technical and managerial
manpower. The working class people segment has grown since the economic growth
and it has benefited middle class and upper middle class people. Due to the increase
in the number of working people and substantial raise in income, spending power has
increased over the years, and particularly the young Indians in the age of 15 – 25 like to
shop more.
 Results and Discussion
As for the characterization of the sample and, more precisely, in what concerns the
profile of the clothing consumer to which this study is related, starting from his age, we
see that he is distributed, in a very homogeneous way, by the three age ranks (18-25,
26-32 and 32 years), although it was evident a more significant prominence in the 18-35
years rank (31%). This homogeneity of the sample avoids problems of obliquity that
would arise in the answers that would happen if there were more preponderant ranks.
As for the responders’ occupation, we realized that a significant percentage (27,6%) is
formed by students, followed by independent workers (16,3%), and thirdly by

15. NIFT PATNA
Page15
assignment workers (13,1%). Concerning educational qualifications, we see that the
sample’s great majority (61,5%) in this study is formed by people with a degree
 Conclusions
The investigation question arisen in this study it was not rejected the
hypothesis of investigation that defended the existence of differences on the consumer
buying behaviour according to gender, we noticed, in what concerns “what one
buys”, that both men and women mostly prefer clothing that may highlight their
physical attributes. Women appreciate first of all satisfaction and comfort, followed by
function, while men prefer comfort, followed by satisfaction and, finally, quality.
As for “how one buys”, women go shopping mostly by impulse and bring
someone, while men do it by necessity and almost always alone. Respecting the
question “where one buys”, he prefers to buy his pieces of clothing in stores that display
an appealing and pleasant atmosphere, where prices, quality and variety low are
highlighted both by women and men, although in a different order. In terms of “when
one buys” we may infer that women buy more often and that both genders choose to
buy mostly during sales season. There are some restrictions that may be pointed out in
this study, namely the fact of not having been highlighted a stricter age rank within the
population and the sample’s dimension is somehow reduced. In terms of future threads
of investigation, it would be interesting to cross the gender variable with age, income
level, and professional occupation and also to expand the same study to more than a
country.