Situational Influences

1
Situational Influences

• John T. Drea
• Department of Marketing and Finance
• Western Illinois University

2
Consumer Situation

• Defined a set of factors outside of the
  individual consumer and removed from the
  attributes of the product
• Classified into a scheme of the following
  variables
• Physical surroundings
• Social Surroundings
• Temporal Perspectives
• Task Definition
• Antecedent States

3
Physical Surroundings

• Safety
• Physical safety of the consumer (safety in terms
  of physical well-being)
• Financial safety of the consumer (shopping on the
  Internet)
• What could you do to make someone feel safer
  shopping on the Internet?

4
Physical Surroundings (cont.)

• Music
• When slower paced music was played in the
  background at a mall, consumers walked slower and
  purchased more.
• When slower paced music was played in a
  restaurant, consumers ate slower and consumed
  more.
• Are there situations where you want to speed up
  consumers? How can music do this?

5
Physical Surroundings (cont.)

• Crowding
• Consumers perceive dense situations as being more
  crowded if they have no control over being in the
  situation.
• Increases negative arousal.
• Think how different you feel in being in a crowd
  at a big game, and being in a crowd where you
  dont want to be (waiting area for a doctors
  appt.)

6
Physical Surroundings (cont.)

• Certain types of store layouts are conducive to
  certain behaviors.
• Generating eye contact (loop)
• Encouraging browsing behavior (free-form)
• Facilitating consumers to find merchandise (grid)
• Example Arrangements of seats

7
Physical Surroundings (cont.)

• Atmospherics
• deals with how managers manipulate the design of
  space (interior and exterior)
• It is the scents, colors, shapes, textures, and
  sounds experienced by consumers.

8
Atmospherics (continued)

• If the atmosphere arouses the customer and the
  atmosphere is perceived as positive, the customer
  will spend more time in the store.
• If the atmosphere arouses the customer and the
  atmosphere is not pleasant, less buying will
  occur.
• Arousal activates dominant tendencies.

9
Social Surroundings

• Other persons present who may have an impact on
  consumer behavior
• presence of others in the room lessens the
  attention paid to ads.
• presence of a friend lowers the effectiveness of
  many sales presentations (conformity effect)
• When shopping with another, the shopper tends to
  visit more stores and make more unplanned
  purchases

10
Temporal Perspectives

• Deals with the effect of time on consumer
  behavior.
• Three concepts of time
• Linear-Separable Time time is divided into past,
  present, future, can be saved, wasted, or bought
  (a western approach)
• Circular-Traditional Time the future will take
  care of itself - do only those things which have
  to be done today (found in some Spanish
  sub-cultures)
• Procedural-Traditional Time governed by task
  rather than by time. Events occur when the time
  is right, they are done when they are done.,
  Time cant be wasted - it just is. The task is
  the key.

11
Task Definition

• the reason why a consumer engages in purchase or
  consumption behavior.
• Gift giving vs. personal use vs. use by another
  within the household.