Factors of affecting consumer behavior

Consumer purchases are influenced by cultural, social, personal and psychological characteristics.
These factors are discussed below:
CULTURAL FACTORS: Cultural factors influence on customer behavior. The marketer needs to understand the role played by the buyer's sub-culture and social class.
Cultural factors are discussed below:
• Subculture: Subculture is a group of people with shared value systems based on common life experiences and situations.
• Social Classes: Social classes are relatively permanent and ordered divisions in a society whose members share similiar values, interests and behaviors.
SOCIAL FACTORS: Consumer behavior is influenced by social factors such are the consumers small groups, family and social roles and status.
Social factors are discussed below:
• Group: Two or more people interact to accomplish individual or mutual goals.
• Family: Family members can influence buyer behavior. The family is the most important consumer buying organization in society.
• Roles and status: A role consists of the activities people are expected to perform according to the persons. Each people are expected to perform according to the persons. Each role barriers a status reflecting the general esteem given to it by society.
PERSONAL FACTORS: A buyer's decisions are also influenced by personal characteristics such as the buyer's age, life cycle stage, occupation, economic situation, lifestyle and personality and self-concept.
• Age and life cycle stage: People change the goods and services to buy over their lifetime. Tastes in food, clothes, furniture's and recreation are often age and life cycle stage related.
• Occupation: A person's occupation affects the goods and services bought. A worker tends to buy more rugged work cloths. But executives buy more business suit.
• Economic Situation: A person's economic situation will affect product choice. Product depends on personal income, savings and interest rate.
• Life style: A person's pattern of living as expressed in his or her activities, interests and opinions.
• Personality and self concept: Personality is person's distinguishing psychological characteristics that lead to relatively consistent and lasting responses to his or her own environment. Personality and self-concept also affect to buy product and service.
PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS: A person's buying choices are influenced by four major psychological factors such as motivation, perception, learning and beliefs and attitudes. Psychological factors are discussed below:
• Motivation: Motivation is the drive which a person influences to buy product and service.
• Perception: Perception is the process by which people select, organize and interpret information of form a meaningful picture of the world.
• Learning: Learning is the relatively permanent change of an individual's behavior and arising from experience.
• Beliefs and attitudes: Belief is a descriptive thought that a person holds about something. Attitude is that a person's consistently favorable or unfavourable evaluations, feelings and tendencies toward an object or idea.
• From the above discussion we can say that all factors affect in consumer buying behavior.