GLOSSARY OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

Abstract information: Pallid information, lacking concreteness and communication

effectiveness.
Absolute threshold: The lowest level at which a stimulus can be detected 50% of the time.
Acceptable risk: The level of risk that a consumer will tolerate when purchasing a product
or service.
Acculturation: The difficult task of learning a new culture.
Achievement motivation: The motivation identified by David McClelland to strive for
success and to perform up to one's capabilities.
Acquisition phase: The first of three phases of consumer buying-acquisition, consumption,
and disposition. It is associated with search and selection of goods and services.
Actual product performance: A consumer's perception of the level of performance
displayed by a product. Actual performance is compared to expected performance to
determine product satisfaction.
Actual state: The state of being experienced by a consumer at any particular point in time.
When the actual diverges sufficiently from the desired state, need recognition is said to
occur.
Adaptation: A process in which an organism has repeated experience with a stimulus and
habituates to it.
Adaptation level: The level of intensity of a stimulus to which a consumer has become
accustomed or adapted
Advertising clutter: Too many ads on TV or radio impeding the ability of consumers to
remember the ads.
Advertising substantiation: The concept, developed by the Federal Trade Commission, that
companies must provide evidence for the truth of their advertising claims.
Advertising wear-out: Occurs when consumers are overexposed to an advertisement,
resulting in decreased positivity.
Affect: A class of mental phenomena uniquely characterized by a consciously experienced,
subjective feeling state, commonly accompanying emotions and moods.
Affect and CS/D: The concept that the level of consumer satisfaction is influenced by the
positive and negative affective responses elicited by a product after its purchase and during
use.
Affect intensity: The stable tendency of some people to react more strongly than others to an
emotion-producing situation.
Affect-referral heuristic: A rule of thumb in which a consumer chooses a product based
upon an overall recollection of his or her emotional response of an alternative.
African- American subculture: The subculture in the United States composed of dark-
skinned people whose ancestry can be traced to Africa.
Asian-American subculture: The fastest-growing ethnic subculture in the United States.
AIO statements: Used in psychographic inventories to obtain information on consumers'
activities, interests, and opinions.
Altruistic Marketing: A field of study that (1) researches the causes of negligent consumer
behavior and (2) applies the findings to develop treatment and/or preventive methods to
reduce the maladaptive actions of consumers.
Alternative evaluation: The formation of benefits and attitudes regarding choice
alternatives.
Anchoring and adjustment: A judgmental heuristic that is used to make an estimate of the
level of a stimulus on a scale. The level is estimated by starting at some reference point and
then adjusting away from it.
Antecedent states: The temporary physiological and mood states that a consumer brings to a
consumption situation.
Applied behavior analysis: A process in which environmental variables are manipulated to
alter behavior.
Articulation: A component of consumer knowledge that describes how finely a person can
discriminate differences along a dimension.
Aspiration group: A group to which an individual would like to belong. If it is impossible
for the individual to belong to the group, it becomes a symbolic group for the person.
Assimilation effect: The idea that a communication may be viewed as more congruent with
the position of the receiver than it really is because it falls within the latitude of acceptance.
Associationist school: Eighteenth-century learning theorists who investigated such
phenomena as the serial-position effect and paired-associate learning.
Atmospherics: The process through which consumer reactions may be influenced by the
design of buildings anti spaces, including the interior space; the layout of the aisles; the
texture of the carpets and walls; the scents, colors, shapes, and sounds experienced by
customers.
ATSCI: (attention to social comparison information) a scale that measures the disposition to
conform.
Attention: The allocation of cognitive capacity to an object or task, so that information is
consciously processed.
Attention stage: The stage of information processing in which a person allocates cognitive
capacity to a stimulus.
Attitude: The amount of affect or feeling for or against a stimulus.
Attitude toward the ad: A consumer's positive and negative feelings held toward a
particular advertisement.
Attitude toward the behavior: A consumer's positive and negative feelings held toward
engaging in a particular behavior.
Attitude-toward-the-object model: A model of consumer choice based upon how
consumers combine their beliefs about product attributes to form attitudes about various
brand alternatives.
Attribute-benefit belief: A belief about the extent to which an attribute provides a specific
benefit.
Attribute importance: A person’s general assessment of the significance of an attribute for
products and services of a certain type.
Attribute-object belief: The belief that an object possesses a particular attribute.
Attributes: The characteristics or features that an object may or may not have.
Attribution theory: Identifies the various means through which people determine the causes
of action of themselves, others, and objects.
Augmenting principle: A principle from one of the attribution theory models stating that the
role of a given cause in producing a given effect is discounted if other plausible causes are
also present.
Autonomic decisions: Decisions of lesser importance that either the husband or wife may
make independently
Availability heuristic: The concept that people may assess the probability of an event based
on the ease with which the event can be brought to mind.
Availability-valence hypothesis:. The hypothesis that judgments depend on the
favorableness of information available in memory.
Awareness set: A subset of the total universe of potential brands and products available of
which a consumer is aware.
Baby-boom generation: The large post-World War 11 group of people born between 1946
and 1964
Baby bust: A period after 1964 when fertility rates plunged far below the replacement level,
resulting in fewer children being born in the United States.
Back translation: A process involving successive translations of a message back- and forth
between languages by different translators. In this way, subtle and not-so-subtle differences
in meaning can be located.
Balance theory: A type of cognitive consistency approach in which people are viewed as
maintaining a logical and consistent set of interconnected beliefs.
Basic exchange equation: Profit = Rewards - Costs.
Behavioral economics: An approach to economics based upon the investigation of the
behavior of individual consumers. An example is the use of survey research methods to
assess the economic confidence of consumers.
Behavioral influence hierarchy: The proposal that, in some instances, the hierarchy of
effects begins with a behavior, followed by the formation of beliefs and attitudes.
Behavioral influence perspective: The view that strong situational or environmental mental
forces may propel a consumer to engage in buying behavior without having formed either
feelings or affect about the object of the purchase.
Behavioral Influence Techniques: Techniques that cause people to comply to requests by
making use of strong norms of behavior.
Behavioral intentions: The intentions of consumers to behave in a particular way with
regard to the acquisition, disposition and use of products and services.
Behavioral intentions model: A consumer choice model that states that behavior results
from the formation of specific intentions to behave.
Behavioral learning: A process in which experience with the environment leads to a
relatively permanent change in behavior or the potential for a change in behavior.
Behavioral segmentation: A complementary approach to using demographic variables to
segment the market by dividing consumers into homogeneous groups based on various
aspects of their buying behavior.
Beliefs: The cognitive knowledge people have of the relations among attributes, benefits,
and objects.
Bem sex-role inventory: An inventory for exploring gender roles. It identifies three possible
roles- masculine, feminine, and psychologically androgynous.
Benefit segmentation: The division of the market into relatively homogeneous groups of
consumers based upon similarities of needs.
Benefits: The outcomes that product or service attributes may provide.
Binationals: A situation in which product components are made in one country but the
product is assembled in another, or in which a product is designed in one country but made
in another.
Binational products: Products that are mad in one country and assembles in another
country, or designed in one country and manufactured in another.
Bogies: Fear rumors that may spook the marketplace.
Bookend ads: Advertisements placed in the first and last position of a series of commercials.
Boomerang effect: Occurs when a message results in a change of attitude opposite in
direction to that intended.
Brand commitment: The emotional-psychological attachment to a brand within a product
class.
Brand expectations: The expectations that a consumer forms regarding the performance of
a brand.
Brand knowledge: The amount of experience with and information that a person has about
particular products or services. Consumers possessing greater amounts of knowledge can
think about a product across a number of dimensions and make finer distinctions among
brands.
Brand loyalty: The biased behavioral response, expressed to a degree to which a customer
holds a positive attitude toward a brand, has a commitment to it and intends to continue
purchasing it in the future.
Butterfly curve: The curve showing that the preference for a stimulus is at its greatest level
at points just higher or lower than the adaptation level.
Buyer's regret: A postacquisition phenomenon in which the preference for a chosen
alternative actually falls below that of a rejected alternative.
Buying unit: The individual, family, or group that makes a purchase decision.
CAD model: A personality scale developed to measure the interpersonal orientation of
consumers. CAD stands for compliance, aggression, and detachment.
Central cues: Those ideas and supporting data that bear directly on the quality of the
arguments developed in the message.
Central route to persuasion: In high-involvement information processing, a path to
persuasion in which a person diligently processes the arguments of the source of information.
Channels: The media through which information flows.
Childhood consumer socialization: Processes by which young people acquire skills,
knowledge, and attitudes relevant to their functioning as consumers in the marketplace.
Choice: The process in which consumers make a choice between two or more alternative
courses of action.
Choice uncertainty: The degree of uncertainty about which of several brands to select.
Classic fashion trend: A fashion trend in which particular looks become a classic, such as
the blue pin-striped suit.
Classical conditioning: A type of learning in which a conditioned stimulus is paired with an
unconditioned stimulus through repetition, the conditioned stimulus will eventually elicit a
conditioned response.
Closure: A principle of perceptual organization that describes the tendency of people to fill
in missing information to create a holistic
Cluster analysis: The use of demographic variables to identify where groups of
neighborhoods with households of similar consumers arc located geographically.
Clutter: An overabundance of advertisements that decreases communications effectiveness.
Cognitive complexity: A personality characteristic that describes the degree of structural
intricacy of the organizing schemas used by different groups of consumers to code and store
information in memory.
Cognitive consistency: The tendency of people to maintain a logical and consistent set of
interconnected attitudes.
Cognitive dissonance: An unpleasant emotional state that is felt when there is a logical
inconsistency among cognitive elements.
Cognitive learning: The process through which people form associations among concepts,
learn sequences of concepts, solve problems and gain insights.
Cognitive responses: The thoughts that consumers may develop in response to messages.
Cognitive personality theories: Personality theories positing that individual differences
result from variations in how people process information, think, and learn.
Commitment: The degree to which an attitude position can be changed. As the level of
commitment to an attitude position increases, it becomes more difficult to change the
attitude.
Communication: The use of a sign to convey meaning. A sign may be a verbalization, an
utterance, a body movement, a written word, a picture, an odor, a touch, or even stones on
the ground to denote a property boundary.
Communications model: A model stating that sources encode messages that travel through
a channel and are processed by receivers, who then provide feedback to the source.
Comparative appraisal: The consumer's evaluation of his or her own relative standing with
respect to an attitude, belief, ability, or emotion through observation of the behavior of
appropriate reference others.
Comparative messages: Messages in which the communicator compares the positive and
negative aspects of his or her position to the positive and negative aspects of a competitor's
position.
Comparison level: The minimum level of positive outcome (profit) that an individual feels
he or she deserves from an exchange.
Comparison level for alternatives: The lowest level of outcomes a person will accept in
light of available alternative opportunities.
Comparison level for outcomes: The minimum level of positive outcomes a person
believes he or she deserves from in exchange.
Compensatory models of choice: A class of choice models in which consumers are viewed
as analyzing each alternative in a broad evaluative fashion. A choice is said to be
compensatory when high ratings on some attributes may compensate for low ratings on other
attributes.
Competitive positioning: The positioning of a product relative to key competitors on
important attributes.
Complaint behavior: The overt actions taken by consumers to bring their product or service
dissatisfaction to the attention of others.
Complementary activities: Activities that naturally take place together.
Complex exchange: An exchange that involves a set of three or more actors enmeshed in a
set of mutual relations.
Compliance: The act of conforming to the wishes of another person or group without
necessarily accepting the group's dictates.
Comprehension: The process of making sense of stimuli so that the message may be
understood.
Comprehension stage: The stage of information processing in which the person organizes
and interprets information in order to obtain meaning from it.
Compulsive consumption: Consumption marked by an impulse or urge to engage in
behavior that may be harmful to the consumer while simultaneously denying its possible
negative effects.
Compulsive purchases: Purchases marked by an impulse or urge to engage in behavior that
may be harmful to the consumer while simultaneously denying its possible negative effects.
Compound traits: Predispositions that result from the effects of multiple elemental traits, a
person’s learning history and the cultural environment.
Concept testing: The pre-testing of the product idea.
Conditioned response: The response elicited by the conditioned stimulus when classical
conditioning occurs.
Conditioned stimulus: A previously neutral stimulus that, when paired with an
unconditioned stimulus, may elicit a conditioned response.
Conformity: A change in behavior or belief as a result of real or imagined group or
individual pressure.
Conjunctive rule: A type of choice heuristic in which the consumer sets minimum cutoffs
on each product attribute. If the product rating falls below the minimum cutoff level oil any
attribute, the product is rejected from further consideration.
Conservation behavior: Action Consumers take to conserve resources, including
curtailment behaviors, maintenance behaviors, and efficiency behaviors.
Consideration set: The set of alternative brands that the consumer regards as acceptable for
further consideration.
Consumer actions: Those behaviors in which consumers engage in the acquisition,
consumption, and disposition of goods, services, and ideas.
Consumer acquisitions: The goods, services, and ideas that consumers obtain in the
marketplace.
Consumer behavior: The study of the decision-making units and the processes involved in
acquiring, consuming, and disposing of goods, services, experiences, and ideas.
Consumer behaviors: consist of all the actions taken by consumers related to acquiring,
disposing, and using products and services.
Consumer beliefs: The cognitive knowledge people have of the relations among attributes,
benefits, and objects.
Consumer complaint behavior: A multiple set of actions triggered by perceived
dissatisfaction with a purchase episode.
Consumer decision making: The analysis made in choosing between two or more
alternative acquisitions and the processes that take place before and after the choice.
Consumer environment: It is composed of factors existing independently of individual
consumers and firms that influence the exchange process.
Consumer ethnocentrism: A scale measuring the tendency of consumers to prefer to
purchase U.S.-made products.
Consumer expectations: A person's prior beliefs about what should happen in a given
situation.
Consumer incentives: The products, services, information, and even other people that are
perceived to satisfy a need.
Consumer information processing: The process in which consumers are exposed to
information, attend to it, comprehend it, place it in memory, and retrieve it for later use.
Consumer involvement: The perceived personal importance and/or interest consumers
attach to the acquisition, consumption and disposition of a good, a service or an idea.
Consumer knowledge: The amount of experience and information that a person has about
particular products or services.
Consumer marketing: The marketing of a good or service by one consumer to another.
Consumer performance: An event in which a consumer and a marketer act as performers
and/or as audience in a situation in which obligations and standards exist.
Consumer primacy: The concept that the consumer should be at the center of the marketing
effort.
Consumer rights: The rights, identified by John F. Kennedy, of safety, information, redress,
and choice. More recently some have suggested that the right to health care and the right to a
home should be added to the list.
Consumer ritual: Standardized sequences of actions that are periodically repeated.
Consumer satisfaction/ dissatisfaction: The general feelings that a consumer develops
about a product or service after its purchase and use.
Consumer search behavior: All actions consumers take to identify and obtain information
on the means of solving a problem.
Consumer self-control: The ability of people to avoid making purchases that involve
pleasure in the present, but pain in the future.
Consumer situations: The temporary environmental and personal factors that form the
context within which a consumer activity occurs at a particular place and time.
Consumer well-being: The extent to which an individual's needs and wants are satisfied.
Consumerism: The movement made up of activities of government, business, independent
organizations, and concerned consumers that are designed to protect the rights of consumers.
Consumption amount. The amount of a good that is consumed. For example, how many
ounces of a soft drink is consumed.
Consumption experience: The cognitions and feelings the consumer experiences during the
use of a product or service.
Consumption frequency: The frequency with which a product or service is consumed or
used.
Consumption purpose: The reason for using a product. That is, some products can be used
for multiple purposes. Thus, baking soda can be used as an antacid, to make bread rise, and
to reduce odors.
Consumption phase: A researcher's analysis of how consumers actually use a product or
service and the experiences that the consumer obtains from such use.
Context: The background factors within which consumer behavior occurs.
Context effects: The concept that the background or context in which stimuli are embedded
will influence the perception of the stimuli. Thus the background programming in which an
advertisement is placed may influence the interpretation of the advertisement.
Contingencies of reinforcement: The temporal relationship between a behavior and its
reinforcers or punishers that acts to shape consumer behavior.
Continuous innovations: A modification of an existing product to improve performance,
taste, reliability, and so forth. Continuous innovations result in few, if any, consumer life-
style changes.
Contracted performance: Both the consumer and marketer have minimal interactions. It
occurs with low-involvement goods.
Country of origin: The country from which a good or service originates.
Contrast effects: Occur when the attitude statement falls into the latitude of rejection, so
that it is perceived as more opposed to the receiver's position than perhaps it really is.
Conventions: Norms that describe how to act in everyday life.
Corporate social responsibility: The idea that business has an obligation to help society
with its problems by offering resources.
Corrective advertising: Advertising that is mandated by a federal agency to correct
consumer impressions that were formed by previously misleading advertising.
Cresive norms: Norms embedded in the culture that include three types: conventions,
mores, and customs.
Cross-cultural analysis: The study of foreign cultures and their values, attitudes, languages,
and customs.
Crowding: Unpleasant feelings that people experience when they perceive that densities are
too high and that their control of the situation has been reduced acceptable levels.
Cultural ethnocentricity: The feeling among some consumers that the values, beliefs, and
ways of doing things as specified by one's own culture are "right," "correct," and generally
better than those of other cultures.
Cultural identification: A feeling of attachment to the society in which a person prefers to
live.
Cultural meanings: Cultural ideas transferred to consumers through material goods and
rituals.
Cultural rituals: Standardized sequences of actions that are periodically repeated. They
have some purpose and generally have a beginning, middle, and end. They provide meaning
and involve the use of cultural symbols.
Cultural symbols: Entities that represent the shared ideas and concepts of a culture.
Cultural values: They represent the shared meanings ideal end-states.
Culture: A set of socially acquired behavior patterns transmitted symbolically through
language and other means to the members of a particular society. It is a way of life.
Culture versus nation: A nation is a state that may contain a culture. A culture is a way of
life that may extend far beyond national borders.
Customs: Handed down from generation to generation, customs refers to basic actions such
as the ceremonies held and the roles played by the sexes.
Cyclical fashion trend: The adoption of styles that are progressively more extreme in one
direction or another. Examples include skirt lengths and tie widths.
Deceptive advertising: An advertisement may be deemed deceptive if it has the "capacity to
deceive a measurable segment of the public."
Decision context: Situational or extrinsic factors that dictate the options available to the
decision maker.
Decision-making perspective: Occurs when consumers move through a series of rational
steps when making a purchase. These steps include problem recognition, search, alternative
evaluation, choice, and postacquisition evaluation.
Decision process: The steps through which consumers move when purchasing a product or
service, including problem recognition, search, alternative evaluation, choice, and
postacquisition evaluation.
Decreasing marginal utility: The concept that, as a consumer obtains more of something,
each additional unit brings less utility or satisfaction.
Defense mechanisms: Psychological logical adjustments made by people to keep
themselves from recognizing personality qualities or motives that might lower self-esteem or
heighten anxiety.
Delay-payment effect: This effect occurs when customers are encouraged to buy a good or
service in the present and are allowed to pay for it at a later date.
Demand curve shift: The shift of the demand curve to the right or left.
Demand elasticity: The variation in quantity demanded of a good that is caused by changes
in the price of that good. For example, an elastic demand curve results in small changes in
price, causing large changes in quantity demanded.
Demarketing: Attempts by regulatory agencies and non-profit organizations to reduce the
frequency of consumer behaviors that have a negative impact on the consumer or society.
Demographic characteristics: Age, sex, income, religion, marital status, education, etc.
Demographic variables: Characteristics of various groups of people as assessed by such
factors as age, sex, income, religion, marital status, nationality, education, family size,
occupation, and ethnicity.
Density: How closely packed consumers are in a particular situational context.
Depth interviews: Long, probing, one-on-one interviews to identify hidden reasons for
purchasing products and services.
Desired state: The preferred state that a consumer would like to achieve. When differences
between the desired state and the actual state are sufficiently large, a need state is said to
exist.
Detached nuclear family: Pattern in which children from middle-class families tend to
strike out on their own to form families away from their parents.
Difference threshold: The minimum amount of difference in the intensity of a stimulation
that can be detected 50% of the time.
Diffusion: The process by which innovative ideas, products and services spread through the
consumer population.
Dimensionality: A type of consumer knowledge referring to the number of different ways
that a person can think about something.
Direct comparative advertisements: Advertisements in which one brand is specifically
compared to another.
Direct influence of attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors: The concept that attitudes, beliefs,
and behaviors may be formed directly.
Discontinuous innovations: Innovations that produce major changes in the life-styles of
consumers.
Discounting principle: The idea from attribution theory that people will examine the
environmental pressures that impede or propel a particular action. When a person moves
with the environmental pressures, little understanding of the person's true motivations can be
gained; therefore, the information is discounted.
Discrete exchange: A one-time interaction in which money is paid for a commodity.
Discrete exchanges are short, one-time purchases that do not involve the creation of a
relationship.
Discretionary expenditures: Expenditures that can be postponed or eliminated.
Discriminative stimuli: Stimuli that only occur in the presence of a reinforcer.
Disjunctive rule: A choice heuristic in which an option is judged acceptable if any of its
attributes surpass a cutoff level.
Disposition phase: The phase of postacquisition. in which the consumer determines what to
do with an acquisition after it has been used.
Dissociative group: A reference group with whom the person does not wish to be
associated.
Dissonance: An imbalanced state that results when a logical inconsistency exists among
cognitive elements.
Divestment rituals: Rituals performed to erase the meaning associated with the previous
owner of a good (e.g., thoroughly cleaning a new home prior to moving in).
Dogmatism: A personality characteristic marked by closed-mindedness and rigidity in the,
approach to the social environment.
Domain-specific values: Beliefs pertaining to more concrete consumption activities- for
example that manufacturers should give prompt service, guarantee their products, help
eliminate environmental pollution and be truthful.
Door-in-the-face technique: A compliance technique that involves the requester first
making a very large request, which is usually refused by the target. This request is then
followed by a moderate request, which is more often complied with than if no large request
were made.
Double jeopardy: Occurs when a less popular brand, as defined by market share, also has
less brand loyalty among its customers.
Drama: An advertising technique of indirect address in which the characters speak to each
other rather than to the audience.
Dramatistic performance: Both the consumer and the marketer know that a show is
occurring, and each is alert to the other’s role.
Drawing conclusions: A message strategy in which the presenter draws the conclusions of
the message for the audience.
Drive: An affective state in which a person experiences emotions and physiological arousal.
Dyadic exchange: An exchange that takes place between two parties.
Dynamic continuous innovations: Innovations that involve some major change in an
existing product and minor changes in the behavior of consumers.
East Asia: Composed of Japan, Korea, China, and Southeast Asia, the region has over 26%
of the world's population and is the dominant exporter of automobiles, electronics, and
computer chips.
Eastern Europe: The landmass stretching from the eastern border of Germany to the shores
of the Pacific Ocean, composed of people as diverse as the European Czechs and the
Mongoloid people of far eastern Siberia.
Economic cycle: The cycle that traces the flow of an economy. It has four phases–peak,
recession, trough, and recovery.
Economic environment: The set of factors involving monetary, natural, and human
resources that influence the behavior of individuals and groups.
Economic optimism-pessimism: The reactions of consumers to various economic and
personal events that result in the presence or absence of feelings of economic confidence.
Ego: The component of the personality defined in psychoanalytic theory as standing for
reason and good sense and as following the reality principle.
Elaboration likelihood model (ELM): A model proposing that the route to persuasion
depends on the involvement of the consumer. The highly involved consumer engages in
greater amounts of information processing than the less involved consumer.
Elemental Traits: The most basis underlying predispositions of individuals that arise from
genetics and early learning history.
Elimination-by-aspects heuristic: A choice heuristic in which consumers rank attributes in
order. Alternatives are eliminated if they do not possess the first attribute. Those alternatives
left are then evaluated on the next attribute, and so forth, until only one alternative remains.
Emotional dissatisfaction: A postacquisition state that occurs when the actual performance
is perceived to be lower than the expected performance.
Emotional satisfaction: A postacquisition state that occurs when the actual performance
exceeds the expected performance.
Enacted norms: Norms that are explicitly expressed, sometimes in the form of laws. An
example would be on which side of the road you drive a car.
Enacted Performance: Both the consumer and the marketer have significant latitude to
place blame for the outcome of the transaction.
Encoding: The process of transferring information from short-term to long-term memory for
permanent storage.
Enculturation: The process of learning one's own culture.
Enduring involvement: Occurs when consumers show a consistent high level of interest in
a product and frequently spend time thinking about the product.
Environmental analysis: The assessment of the forces and institutions external to the firm
and of how these may influence the marketing effort.
Environmental influence factors: Those factors outside the individual that affect individual
consumers, decision making units and marketers.
Environmental level of analysis: Analysis of those factors outside of the person that
influence consumer behavior, such as the effects of situations, groups, culture, subcultures,
and the regulatory environment.
Equity: Occurs when the ratio of the outcomes and inputs is perceived by one party to an
exchange to equal the ratio of the outcomes and inputs of the other party to the exchange.
Equity theory: Holds that people will analyze the ratio of their outcomes and inputs to the
ratio of the outcomes and inputs of the partner in an exchange.
Ethical dilemma: A decision that involves the trade-off of lowering one's personal values in
exchange for increased organizational and personal profits.
Ethical exchange: Occurs when both parties know the full nature of the agreement, neither
party intentionally misrepresents or omits relevant information, and neither party unduly
influences the other through the use of power.
Ethical exchange characteristics: The things that must occur for an ethical exchange to
take place, such as both parties knowing the full nature of an agreement before entering into
it.
Ethics: The study of normative judgments concerned with what is morally right and wrong,
good and bad.
Ethics matrix: A matrix that identifies when ethical problems may occur. Such a matrix is
based upon exchanges of information between consumers and businesses.
Ethnicity: A group bound together by tie so of cultural homogeneity.
Ethnocentrism: The universal tendency for people to view their own group as the center of
the universe, to interpret other social units from the perspective of their own group, and to
reject persons who are culturally dissimilar similar.
Euroconsumers: Consumers in Western Europe who supposedly share common desires for
a broad range of goods and services. This assumption is incorrect.
Even-a-penny-will-help technique: A compliance technique in which a person makes a
request and then states that any contribution, no matter how paltry, would. help.
Evoked set: Consists of those brands and products recalled from long-term memory that are
acceptable for further consideration.
Exchange: The transfer of something tangible or intangible, actual or symbolic, between two
or more social actors.
Exchange process: A process in which resources are transferred between two parties.
Exchange rituals: Rituals in which products or services are exchanged among consumers.
Exit behavior: Refers to the consumer choice to either leave a relationship or to lower
consumption levels of the good or service.
Expectancy confirmation: Results when the performance of a product is perceived to meet
a consumer's expectations.
Expectancy disconfirmation: Results when the performance of a product fails to meet a
consumer's expectations.
Expectancy disconfirmation model: A model of consumer satisfaction/dissatisfaction
based upon whether a brand meets or exceeds consumer expectations.
Expectations: A person's prior beliefs about what should happen in a given situation.
Expected product performance: The level of performance anticipated of a product or
service by a consumer.
Experiential hierarchy: The hierarchy of effects in which affect occurs first, followed by
behavior and then belief formation.
Experiential perspective: In some instances consumers do not make purchases according to
a strictly rational decision-making process. They buy certain products and cervices in order
to have fun, create fantasies or feel desired emotions.
Exposure: The initial information-processing stage, in which consumers receive information
through their senses.
Exposure stage: A stage in information processing in which consumers receive information
through their senses.
Expressive needs: Desires by consumers to fulfill social and/or aesthetic requirements.
Expressive role: A role found in many groups, in which a person helps maintain the group
and provides emotional support for its members.
Extended family: Consists of the nuclear family plus other relatives, such as parents of the
husband and wife.
Extended self: The concept that possessions may become 1 part of the self-concept and,
therefore, extend the self to include impersonal entities.
External attribution: An attribution of the cause of action to some factor outside of an
individual, such as attributing the reason for an endorsement to the money paid to the
endorser.
External exchange: An exchange between parties that are in separate groups, such as
between two families or two firms.
External roles: Involves communications and involvement with people outside of the
family.
External search: The consumer's soliciting information from outside sources rather than
from his or her memory.
Extinction: A gradual reduction in the frequency of occurrence of an operant behavior that
results from a lack of reinforcement of the response.
Fads: Temporary fashion or other trends followed by a group.
Family decision stages: The steps in the decision process used by a family to purchase
products or services.
Family life cycle: The idea that families may move through a series of stages in a
developmental fashion.
Fashion: A set of behaviors temporarily adopted by a people because they are perceived to
be socially appropriate for the time and situation.
Fear appeals: A type of message in which the communication is designed to create some
level of fear in the target audience.
Feelings: The affective responses and emotions that consumers have.
Fertility rate: The number of children born to the average woman during her lifetime.
Figure-ground: A principle of perception whereby the figure is the object observed moving
against the ground. The ground is the context or background within which the figure is
observed.
Focus groups: Small number of consumers (usually 6 to 10), interacting in an open ended
fashion with the assistance of a moderator to provide information on their beliefs and
attitudes about specific topics.
Foot-in-the-door technique: A compliance technique that operates through the influencer
making two request; the first, a small request, is followed by a moderately sized second
request.
Forgetting: The inability to recall from memory some desired piece of information.
Forgetting occurs when either the retrieval or the response generation process breaks down.
Formal exchange: an explicit written, or verbal contract. This will frequently occur in
external exchanges.
Formal group: A group whose organization and structure are defined in writing.
Framing: A process in which a person evaluates a stimulus change as occurring from either
a loss or a gain position. Framing has been found to influence risk-taking behavior.
Fraudulent symbol: A material good that is stripped of class symbolism when its ownership
is diffused across levels of the class hierarchy.
Free riding: An act whereby a consumer obtains product information from sales personnel
and then uses the information to make a purchase from a low-cost discount store that does
not offer personal service.
Frequency heuristic: The rule of thumb used by consumers in some low-involvement
settings, in which the liking for a brand is based merely on the number of positive and
negative attributes associated with it.
Functions of attitudes: The concept that attitudes exist for a reason, that is, to help people
interact more effectively with the environment.
Fundamental attribution error: The tendency of people to attribute the cause of a person's
actions to that person's disposition and personality.
Gatekeeper: An individual who has the ability to control information to a decision maker.
Generation X: The post babyboom group born between 1965 and 1980.
Generation Y: The 72 million children of the baby boomers, the first of whom will reach
adulthood in the year 2000. They represent 28 % of the current population.
Generic decision-making model: It identifies the stages though which consumers move
when making decisions.
Geodemographics: The use of demographic variables to identify where consumers with
similar buying patterns are geographically concentrated.
Geographic segmentation: The segmentation of a market into homogeneous groups of
consumers with similar needs and wants based on Geography.
Gestalt psychologists: An influential group of psychologists prominent during the early
twentieth century who believed that biological and psychological events do not influence
behavior in isolation from each other.
Global attitude measures: A direct measurement of the overall affect and feelings held by a
consumer regarding an object.
Global marketer: A marketer who attempts to develop "one sight, one sound, and one sell"
for its products.
Global values: Enduring beliefs about desired states of existence or modes of behavior.
Goal-directed action: Behavior directed toward obtaining an incentive object, such as a
product or service.
Goal-directed behavior: Actions directed toward obtaining goods, services, or ideas that
will decrease the gap between a desired and an actual state.
Goods: Tangible products.
Gravitational model: The concept that trading areas act like planets, attracting outside
shoppers in proportion to the relative populations of the towns in question and to the square
of the inverse of the distance between the towns.
Grooming rituals: An individual's acts to ensure that special, perishable properties resident
in clothing, hairstyles, and looks are maintained.
Group: A set of individuals who interact with one another over some period of time and
who share some common need or goal.
Group polarization phenomenon: The tendency of groups to be either more risky or more
cautious than individuals when making decisions.
Group shift: The tendency of group decisions to show either more or less risk-taking
propensities than the average of the decisions of the individuals in the group.
Habitual purchases: Purchases that occur as a result of a habit.
Halo effect: The concept that positive or negative feelings about one characteristic will
generalize to influence feelings about other, possibly unrelated, characteristics.
Hedonic consumption: The consumption of products and services based primarily on the
desire to experience pleasure and happiness.
Hedonism: The desire to gain pleasure through the senses.
Heuristic models of choice: Models of choice in which consumers take shortcuts in
information processing to make decision making less complex.
Heuristics: Simple rules of thumb people use to make estimates of probabilities and values.
Hierarchical models of choice: Models of choice in which the consumer is viewed as
comparing alternatives on attributes one at a time.
Hierarchies of effects: Various models that explain the order in which beliefs, feelings, and
behavior occur.
High culture: Culture that is exclusive in style, content, and appeal. It frequently harks back
to the "old masters" of art, theater, music, and literature.
High-involvement decision making: The decision process that occurs when consumers
perceive high personal importance in a decision. It is marked by extended decision making
and high levels of information processing.
High-involvement hierarchy: The hierarchy of effects in which, belief formation occurs
first, followed by the creation of affect, followed by a behavior.
Higher-order conditioning: Occurs when a conditioned stimulus acts to classically
condition another, previously neutral stimulus.
Hindsight bias: The tendency of people to consistently exaggerate what could have been
anticipated through foresight.
Hispanic subculture: The subculture of the Hispanic population in the United States, in
which four groups have been identified--Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and other
Hispanics.
Hostselling: The use of a program character to promote a product.
Household: A group of people living under one roof.
Humor in messages: A type of message based upon using humor.
Hypothetical value function: The relationship between the psychological valuation of gains
and losses that may result from a course of action and the actual valuation of those losses and
gains.
Id: One of the three elements of the personality identified by Freud. The id is based upon the
pleasure principle, immediate gratification, and moves a person to obtain positive feelings
and emotions.
Idea generation: The first stage of product development.
Ideal self: How a person would ideally like to perceive himself or herself.
Identification: The normal process through which children acquire appropriate social roles
by consciously and unconsciously copying the behavior of significant others.
Image congruence hypothesis: The hypothesis that a consumer selects products and stores
that correspond to his or her self-concept.
Immigration: To come into a country of which one is not a native for permanent residence.
Impersonal threats: Threats to behavioral freedom that come from impersonal sources.
Impulse purchase: Buying action undertaken without a problem previously having been
consciously recognized or without a buying intention formed prior to entering the store.
Incentives: The products, services, and people that are perceived as satisfying needs.
Income effect: An economic principle stating that, when prices are lowered, consumers can
afford more of a product without giving up other alternatives.
Incremental Effects Theory: Over many presentations of a stimulus, a stimulus
representation is gradually into the consumer’s nervous system.
Index of Consumer Sentiment: An index of consumer economic confidence developed at
the University of Michigan Center for Survey Research.
Indirect comparative advertisement: A comparative ad in which the competing brand's
name is never specifically mentioned
Individual difference variables: They describe how one individual differs from another in
distinctive patterns of behavior.
Individual influence factors: Those psychological processes that affect individuals engaged
in acquiring, consuming, and disposing of goods, services and experiences.
Individual level of analysis: An analysis that focuses on identifying the processes that
influence a person in the acquisition, consumption, and disposition phases.
Industrial marketing: The marketing of a product by one firm to another firm.
Industrial purchase behavior: The process corporations use to purchase goods, services,
and ideas.
Inept set: Consists of the brands and products that are considered unacceptable.
Inert set: Consists of the brands and products to which consumers are essentially indifferent.
Influence: The attempt of one person to impact the behaviors, attitudes, or beliefs of another
person.
Informal exchange: Unwritten social contracts are created between parties. Occurring more
frequently
in internal exchanges, social norms and peer pressure replace formal contracts.
Informal group: A group that has no written organizational structure and is often socially
based.
Information: The content of what is exchanged with the outer world as we adjust to it and
make our adjustment felt upon it.
Information overload: A situation experienced by a consumer, in which more information
is received than can be processed in short-term memory.
Information processing: The process through which consumers are exposed to information,
attend to it, comprehend it, place it in memory, and retrieve it for later use.
Information salience: The level of activation of a stimulus in memory.
Informational influence: One method through which a group may influence an individual,
in which the group provides highly credible information that influences the consumer’s
purchase decision.
Ingratiation: Self-serving tactics engaged in by one person to make himself or herself more
attractive to another.
Ingratiator's dilemma: The problem that occurs when the ingratiator is caught manipulating
the target person, the result being a loss rather than a gain of power.
Inner-directed persons: Within the VALS psychographic inventory, persons who seek
intense involvement in whatever they do.
Innovativeness: The degree to which a consumer adopts new products, services, and ideas
prior to others.
Inputs: In balance theory, the contributions to an exchange made by each of the parties to
the exchange.
Instrumental materialism: Obtaining material goods to perform some activity or achieve
some goal.
Instrumental response: The behaviors (operants) of an organism that have been operantly
conditioned.
Instrumental role: Within a group, the role filled by the person who deals with the problem
of getting the group to achieve certain goals and complete certain tasks.
Instrumental values: Behaviors and actions required to achieve various terminal states.
Instrumentality of search: An approach for measuring external search by assessing the
extent to which a person relies on various types of outside information, such as the number
of friends with whom a purchase is discussed.
Integrated group: A category within the VALS psychographic inventory that describes
consumers who are mature and balanced and who have managed to "put together" the best
characteristics of the inner and outer personalities.
Interaction: Occurs when two or more factors combine to cause a consumer to behave in a
different manner than if the two factors were not combined.
Interaction set: Those stores where a consumers allows himself or herself to be exposed to
personal selling.
Internal attribution: An attribution that the cause for an action was internal to the person or
thing in question, rather than to some external factor.
Internal exchange: Exchanges that occur between parties within a group.
Internal roles: Duties inside the family.
Internal search: The first phase of the search process, in which the consumer attempts to
retrieve from long-term memory information on products or services that will help to solve a
problem.
Internalization: Occurs when an individual accepts influence because it is intrinsically
rewarding.
Interpersonal processes: The communications that occur between two people at any
particular point in time.
Interpretant: A person's reaction to and meaning derived from a sign.
Interpretation: A process whereby people draw upon their experience, memory, and
expectations to interpret and attach meaning to a stimulus.
Interpretation process: The process in which people draw upon their experience, memory
and expectations to attach meaning to a stimulus.
Interpretive research methods: Qualitative methods in which the researcher attempts to
identify the meanings of the symbols and rituals employed by consumers.
Intrinsic satisfaction: Satisfaction that results from an internal interest in doing something,
rather than from the external benefits of doing it.
Involuntary attention: An innate response that occurs when a consumer is exposed to
something surprising, novel, threatening, or unexpected.
Involvement: The level of perceived personal importance or interest evoked by a stimulus
(or stimuli) within a specific situation.
Involvement responses: The level of complexity of information processing and the extent of
decision making by a consumer.
Judgment: Assessments of (1) the likelihood that something will occur or (2) the goodness
or badness of something.
Judgmental heuristics: The simple rules of thumb used by people to make estimates of
probabilities and values.
Just-in-time (JIT) purchasing: A corporate philosophy associated with total quality
management in which a company seeks to purchase goods and services at the last possible
minute prior to when they are required for the production process.
Just noticeable difference (JND): The minimum amount of difference in the intensity of a
stimulus that can be detected 50% of the time.
Knowledge uncertainty: Consumers' uncertainty about the available features, their
importance, and their performance for alternative brands.
Laddering: The process of probing to identify the linkages between means (i.e., attributes)
and terminal values (i.e., end states).
Latitudes of acceptance and rejection: The areas surrounding a person's attitude about an
issue. When messages fall within these areas, they are assimilated and, in turn, viewed as
consistent with the attitude of the person.
Law of contiguity: States that things that are experienced together become associated.
Law of demand: States that there is an inverse relationship between the price of the product
and the quantity demanded of the product.
Law of small numbers: People have a strong tendency to believe that a sample is a true
representation of a population even when the sample is extremely small.
Learning mechanisms: Processes through which a person retains information from the
environment.
Learning through education: Obtaining information from companies in the form of
advertising, sales personnel, and the consumer's own directed efforts to seek data.
Learning through experience: The process of gaining knowledge through actual contact
with products. Overall, learning through experience is a more effective means to gain
consumer knowledge.
Lecture: An advertising technique that occurs when a source speaks to the audience in an
attempt to inform and persuade.
Lexicographic heuristic: A noncompensatory choice model in which the consumer first
ranks the attributes and then selects the brand rated highest on the highest-ranked attribute. If
a tie occurs, the next most important attribute is used.
Libido: A term in psychoanalytic theory that refers to sexual energy.
Lifestyle: How people live, how they spend their money, and how they allocate their time. It
is concerned with consumers’ overt actions and behavior. (p. 220)
Life themes: They represent critical values and goals that influence consumers at different
stages of their lives.
Likert scale: An attitude scale that involves asking a consumer to indicate the amount of his
or her agreement or disagreement with a statement.
Limited capacity: A characteristic of short-term memory.
List of Values (LOV) Scale: Assesses the dominant values of a person. Although not strictly
a psychographic inventory, it has been applied to the same types of problems as VALS.
Logical empiricist research methods: Research methods that involve collecting and
analyzing quantitative data.
Long-term memory: The type of memory that has unlimited capacity and that permanently
stores information.
Low-involvement hierarchy: The hierarchy of effects that occurs in low-involvement
decision making, in which beliefs are formed first, followed by behavior, and finally by
attitude formation.
Lower Americans: A description of social class that refers to the combination of the upper-
lower and lower-lower social classes.
Lower-lower class: The lowest of the social classes. Members are typically out of work (or
have the dirtiest jobs) and include bums and common criminals.
Lower-upper class: The next to highest social class, composed of the newer social elite
drawn from current professional and corporate leadership.
Macrosegmentation: Identifying groups of companies having similar buying organizations
and facing similar buying situations.
Managerial applications analysis: An analysis in which the consumer behavior concepts
are identified that are pertinent to a problem and their managerial implications noted.
Market embeddedness: The term used to describe situations in which the social ties
between buyer and seller supplement product value to enhance overall exchange utility.
Market mavens: Individuals who have information about many kinds of products, places to
shop, and other facets of markets. They initiate discussion with consumers and respond to
requests from consumers for market information.
Market research: Applied consumer research designed to provide management with
information on factors that affect consumers’ acquisition, consumption and disposition of
goods, services and ideas.
Market segmentation: The subdivision of a market into distinct subsets of customers, where
any subset may conceivably be selected as a target market to be reached with a distinct
marketing mix.
Market testing: placing a product into limited distribution to consumers in order to identify
potential problems and test the entire marketing mix.
Marketer: The firm, nonprofit organization, government agency, political candidate, or
other consumer who wishes to cause an exchange to occur.
Marketing: The human activity directed at satisfying needs and wants through human
exchange processes.
Marketing concept: The view that an industry is a customer-satisfying process, not a goods-
purchasing process.
Marketing environment: The totality of the forces and institutions that are external and
potentially relevant to a firm.
Marketing mix: The elements of product, promotion, distribution and pricing over which
marketing managers can implement analysis, planning, and control.
Marketing strategy: A strategy implemented by creating segmentation and positioning
objectives for a product that an organization or individual wishes to exchange with a
consumer.
Marketing triad: The interaction of a buying unit, the marketer, and the consumer situation
at a particular time and place to influence an exchange process.
Match up effect: It states that endorsers are more effective in changing attitudes, beliefs and
intentions when the dominant characteristics of the product match the dominant features of a
source.
Match-up hypothesis: A hypothesis stating that the dominant characteristics of the product
should match the dominant features of a source.
Materialism: The importance a consumer attaches to worldly possessions, where at the
highest levels possessions assume a central place in life and provide the greatest sources of
satisfaction and dissatisfaction.
Mature consumer: A person 65 years old or older. Mature consumers differ from younger
people in information- processing and consumption patterns.
Means-end chain: A model that identifies the linkages between consumer desires for
specific product features with increasingly abstract concepts, such as benefits desired and
values that are important to an individual.
Medium: The channel through which a message is passed.
Memory-control processes: Methods of handling information that people use to get
information into and out of memory.
Mere exposure phenomenon: A psychological process in which positive feelings toward
and evaluations of a stimulus may be formed simply through repeated exposures to the
stimulus.
Mere measurement effect: The finding that merely asking consumers about their
purchasing plans in a market research study actually influences their purcahse plans.
Message characteristics: Those aspects of a message that influence consumer reactions,
such as the use of humor or fear appeals.
Message complexity: The complexity of information that a message contains.
Message construction: The problem of how to physically construct a message. Factors to be
considered in message construction are message content and message structure.
Message content: The strategies that may be used to communicate an idea to an audience.
An example of such strategies is a decision to develop complex rather than simple messages.
Message structure: How the source organizes the content of the message, such as where in
the message to place the most important information.
Method of loci: A technique to aid the memorization of lists by creating a mental image of a
house that has locations in which the items of the list may be placed. To recall the list, the
person takes a "mental" stroll back through the house picking up the items.
Microsegmentation: Identifying the characteristics of the decision-making units within each
of the various macrosegments.
Middle Americans: The name given to a combination of the social classes including the
middle class, lower-middle class, and working class.
Middle class: Average-income white-collar workers and their blue-collar friends who live
on "the better side of town" and try to "do the proper things."
Miller's law: The concept that people can process in short-term memory only seven, plus or
minus two, chunks of information at a time.
Model: Someone whose behavior others observe and attempt to emulate.
Modeling: The process through which someone attempts to emulate the behavior of another.
Moderating variable: An individual-difference variable that interacts with the consumer
situation and/or the type of message being communicated.
Monetary acquisitions: Acquisitions made with currency, personal checks, or credit.
Money: Currency accepted for use as a medium of exchange.
Mood states: Temporary variations on how people feel, which can range from happiness to
extremely negative feelings.
Mores: Customs that emphasize the moral aspects of behavior. Frequently, mores apply to
forbidden behaviors, such as the showing of skin by women in fundamentalist Moslem
countries.
Mortality rate: The number of people per 1,000 who die per year.
Motivation: An activated state within a person that leads to goal-directed behavior.
Motivation researcher: Researchers in the 1950s who employed a psychoanalytic approach
to understanding consumers by investigating fantasies, dreams, and symbols.
Multiattribute models: Models that identify how consumers combine their beliefs about
product attributes to form attitudes about various brand alternatives, corporations or other
objects.
Multiple-store model: A model in which three different types of memory storage systems
are identified-sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.
Multistep flow model: A model of personal influence that states that information is
transmitted from the mass media to three distinct sets of people--gatekeepers, opinion
leaders, and followers.
Myths: Stories that express key values and ideals of a society.
NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) A database that classifies
groups of business firms that produce the same type of product.
Need-driven person: A psychographic person identified in the VALS inventory who is
characterized as striving simply to meet basic food and housing needs.
Need for affiliation: A basic social need identified by McClelland that is similar in nature to
Maslow's belongingness need.
Need for cognition: A scale that measures the extent to which consumers have an intrinsic
motivation to engage in problem-solving activities.
Need for power: A basic social need, identified by McClelland. It refers to the desire to
obtain and exercise control over others.
Need for uniqueness: The desires to perceive ourselves as different and original.
Needs: Result from a discrepancy between an actual and a desired state of being.
Need recognition: It occurs when a person perceives that there is a discrepancy between an
actual and a desired state of being.
Negative reinforcer: Reinforcers that increase the likelihood of a behavior occurring by
removing an aversive stimulus.
Negativity bias: The finding that negative information is given more weight than positive
information by consumers when they make decisions to buy a product or service.
Negligent behavior. The actions and inactions of consumers that may negatively affect the
long-term quality of life of individuals and society. Examples include drunk driving, product
misuse, and failing to use seatbelts.
Noncomparable alternatives: Two or more choice options in different product categories,
such as deciding whether to purchase a new car or build a new addition to a house.
Noncompensatory models of choice: Models of choice that emphasize that high ratings on
some attributes do not necessarily compensate for low ratings on other attributes.
Nonmonetary acquisitions: Acquisitions made when goods or services are traded,
borrowed, made, inherited, found, or stolen.
Nonverbal behaviors: Actions, movements, and utterances that people use to communicate
in addition to language. These include movements of the hands, arms, head, and legs, as well
as body orientation and the space maintained between people.
Normative influence: Occurs when norms act to influence individuals’ behavior.
Norm of reciprocity: A societal norm that states that, if a person does something for
another, the second person should respond with appropriate reciprocal action.
Norms: A behavioral rule of conduct agreed upon by over half of the group in order to
establish behavioral consistency within the group.
Nostalgia: "A longing for the past, a yearning for yesterday, or a fondness for possessions
and activities associated with days of yore."
Nuclear family: Consists of a husband, wife, and their offspring.
Object-attribute belief: The belief that an object possesses a specific attribute.
Object-benefit belief: The belief that an object will provide a specific benefit.
Objects: The products, people, companies, and things about which people hold beliefs and
attitudes.
Observational learning: A process in which people develop "patterns of behavior" by
observing the actions of others. (Also called vicarious or social learning
Occupational demographics: The area that focuses on the jobs Americans hold and on the
past and future changes in these jobs.
One- versus two-sided messages: The issue of whether persuasive messages should present
only one side or both sides of an issue.
Ongoing search: Involves the search activities that are independent of specific purchase
needs or decisions.
Operant conditioning: A process in which the frequency of occurrence of a behavior is
modified by the consequences of the behavior.
Operants: The naturally occurring actions of an organism in the environment.
Opinion leader: Consumers who influence the purchase decisions of others.
Opponent-process theory: The psychological process in which a person receives a stimulus
that elicits an immediate positive or negative reaction. This reaction is followed by a second
emotional reaction that is opposite in valence to the feeling initially experienced.
Opportunity cost: The concept that, when a person buys a product or engages in one task,
he or she simultaneously forgoes buying another product or engaging in another task.
Optimum stimulation level: A person's preferred amount of physiological activation or
arousal, which may vary from very low (e.g. sleep) to very high (e.g. severe panic)
Organization: Deals with how people perceive the shapes, forms, figures, and lines in their
visual world.
Organizational buying center: The people in an organization who participate in a buying
decision and who share the risks and goals of that decision.
Organizational buying situations: Researchers have identified three fundamental task
definitions for organizational buying situations-new task, modified rebuy, and straight rebuy.
Organizational culture: The shared values and beliefs that enable members to understand
their roles and the norms of the organization.
Orientation reflex: The physiological response of a person to a novel or unexpected
stimulus that involves an increase in arousal and the orientation of the person to the stimulus.
Outcomes: The results of an exchange that a person assesses in relation to the inputs to
determine if the exchange was equitable.
Outer-directed persons: Psychographic persons identified by the VALS inventory who tend
to focus on what people think of them and gears their lives to the "visible, tangible, and
materialistic."
Overprivileged: Individuals with high incomes within a particular social class, in contrast to
the underprivileged, who have lower incomes.
Pacific Rim: The countries that are situated on the Pacific Ocean.
Paired-associate learning: The learning of pairs of words or concepts by attempting to
associate them with each other.
Pattern advertising: While an overall promotional theme may be employed worldwide, the
implementation of this theme (e.g., deciding whether to translate a slogan directly or to
paraphrase it) is done locally. This approach is in example of what the Japanese
call dochakuka: "think globally, act locally."
Perceived freedom: A motivational need experienced by people to maintain their behavioral
freedom.
Perceived risk: A consumer's perception of the overall negativity of a course of action based
upon an assessment of the possible negative outcomes and on the likelihood that those
outcomes will occur.
Perceived Value: The trade-off consumers make between perceived quality and perceived
price when evaluating a brand.
Perception: The process through which individuals are exposed to information, attend to
that information and comprehend it.
Perceptual maps: A map that shows how consumer position various brands relative to each
other on a graph whose axes are formed by product attributes.
Perceptual organization: How people perceive the shapes, forms, figures, and lines in their
visual world.
Peripheral persuasion cues: Include such factors as the attractiveness and expertise of the
source, the mere number of arguments presented and the positive or negative stimuli that
form the context within which the message was presented.
Peripheral route to persuasion: Persuasion that occurs in low involvement circumstances
when little information elaboration is provided.
Personal influence: Refers to the idea that one individual may intentionally or
unintentionally influence another in his or her beliefs, attitudes, or intentions about
something.
Personal marketing: The marketing of one's own self to others.
Personal value: The meanings of ideal end states and modes of conduct possessed by an
individual.
Personality: The distinctive patterns of behavior, including thoughts and emotions, that
characterize each individual's adaptation to the situations of his or her life.
Persuasion: An explicit attempt to influence beliefs, attitudes and/or behaviors.
Physical Attractiveness: One of the key source characteristics that influence consumer
reactions to communications.
Physical Surroundings: The concrete physical and spatial aspects of the environment
encompassing a consumer activity.
Phased Strategy: Consumers sequentially use two noncompensatory models, or first use a
noncompensatory model and then a compensatory approach.
Piecemeal Report Strategy: The use of the frequency heuristic to influence choice by
comparing a brand’s attributes one at a time to different attributes from different brands in
order to make the marketer’s brand seem to be more appealing.
Pioneering Advantage: It occurs when the first brand to enter a product category achieves a
long-term edge over competitors.
Pipe dream rumors: Represent wishful thinking on the part circulators of rumors.
Pleasure Principle: a principle that leads to seeking instant gratification of instincts.
Popular culture: The culture of mass appeal.
Possession ritual: Involves acts in which a person lays claim to, displays or protects
possessions.
Positioning: Influencing how consumers perceive a brand’s characteristics relative to those
of competitive offerings.
Positive Reinforecer: An appropriate reward that is given immediately after a behavior
occurs to increase the likelihood that the behavior will be repeated.
Postacquisition process: Refers to the consumption, postchoice evaluation, and disposition
of goods, services, experiences and ideas.
Preattention: The unconscious process in which consumers automatically scan the features
of the environment.
Premeditated rumors: Individuals with something to gain set out to spread rumors that may
help them financially or otherwise.
Preneed goods: A good or service that is purchase prior to when it is needed, such as
insurance.
Prepurchase search: Involves those information-seeking activities that consumers engage in
to facilitate decision making about a specific purchase after they have gone through the
problem recognition stage.
Price elasticity: An economic concept that different groups of consumers react divergently
to changes in the price of a product or service.
Price-quality relationship: The greater the price, the less likely a consumer is to buy a
particular product.
Primacy effect: It occurs when material early in the message has the most influence. (versus
material at the end of he message).
Private acceptance: A situation in which a person actually changes his or her beliefs in the
direction of the group.
Priming: A phenomenon in which a small amount of exposure to a stimulus leads to an
increased drive to be in the presence of that stimulus.
Proactive Interference: Material learned prior to the new material interferes with the
learning of the new material.
Problem recognition: The discovery of discrepancy between an actual and a desired state of
being.
Product development: The process which consists of developing, testing, naming, and
packaging prototypes.
Product differentiation: The process of manipulating the marketing mix to position a brand
so that consumers perceive meaningful differences between it and its competitors.
Product disposition: What consumers do with a product once they have completed their use
of it.
Product expectations: The standard against which the actual performance of the product is
assessed.
Product innovation: A product that has been recently introduced and is perceived by
consumers to be new in relation to existing products and services.
Product quality: The customers’ overall evaluation of the excellence of the performance of
a good or service.
Product use: It involves the actions and experiences that take place in the time period in
which a consumer is directly a good or service.
Prospect theory: According to this theory, how people psychologically interpret the
goodness or badness of an option does not necessarily match "objective" or "actual" measure
of its value.
Proportion-of-purchase method: The most frequently used measure of brand loyalty in
empirical research.
Psychodynamic theory of personality: A theory of Freud that human personality results
from a dynamic struggle between inner psychological drives and social pressures to follow
laws, rules and moral codes.
Psychodynamic theory of arousal: A theory that assumes that unconscious wishes to
engage in some behavior can be activated by unconsciously presented stimuli.
Psychological reactance: The negative motivational state that results when a person’s
behavioral freedom has been threatened.
Psychographic Analysis: A type of consumer research that describes segments of
consumers in terms of how they live, work, and play.
Psychographics: The quantitative investigation of consumers’ lifestyles, personalities and
demographic characteristics.
Public policy: The development of laws and regulations that impact consumers in the
marketplace.
Punisher: Any stimulus whose presence after a behavior decreases the likelihood that that
behavior will occur.
Quiet Set: Retail stores that consumers enter, but have no intention of purchasing a product
from.
Reactance: The motivational state of someone whose behavioral freedom has been
threatened.
Reality principle: A principle that moves a person to be practical, and to function efficiently
in the world.
Recall task: Information is retrieved by the consumer from long-term memory (unaided
recall).
Recency effect: It occurs when material at the end of a message has the most influence
(versus material at the beginning of the message).
Recognition task: Information is put in front of a consumer, who simply judges whether the
information has been previously seen.
Reference group: A group whose value, norms, attitudes or beliefs are used as a guide for
behavior by an individual.
Reflected Appraisal: A process in which a consumer examines the manner in which others
in a reference group interact with him or her.
Regional subcultures: Subcultures based upon a geographical sub-area of a larger culture.
Regulatory environment: It consists of al the laws and regulations established by federal,
state, and local governments to exert control over business practices.
Rehearsal: The silent repetition of information to encode into long-term memory.
Reinforcer: Anything that occurs after a behavior and changes the likelihood that the
behavior will be repeated.
Relational exchange: A transaction that involves a long-term commitment in which trust
and social relations play an important role.
Relationship marketing: The overt attempt of exchange partners to build a long-term
association characterized by purposeful cooperation and mutual dependence and the
development of social, as well as structural bonds.
Relationship trust: A willingness to rely on an exchange partner in whom one has
confidence.
Relative income hypothesis: People within the same social class often have different
consumption patterns based on their relative incomes.
Reliability: It is evidenced when a scale is internally consistent, and gives similar results
when an individual is retested after a period of time.
Repeat purchase behavior: The consumer is merely buying a product repeatedly, without
any particular product for it.
Repetition effects: The impact on consumers of repeating an advertising message a number
of times.
Repositioning: Changing how consumer perceive a brand’s characteristics relative of those
of competitive offerings.
Representativeness heuristic: A rule of thumb by which people determine the probability
that "object A" belongs to "class B" by assessing the degree that object A is similar to or
stereotypical of class B.
Response generation: The concept that the recall of a memory results from the person
actively constructing a response, rather than simply pulling from memory, an accurate
representation of the stored information.
Restricted exchange: The simplest type of exchange, involves two parties interacting in a
reciprocal relationship.
Retrieval: The process in which an individual searches through long-term memory to
identify within it the information to be recalled.
Retrieval cues: Verbal or visual information, originally contained in an advertisement, that
is placed on the product or packaging to assist consumers' memories during decision making.
Retroactive interference: The concept that new material presented after old material has
been learned interferes with the recall of the old material.
Risk perception: The likelihood and degree of negativity which consumers perceive that
outcomes may possess.
Rokeach value scale: A scale developed to assess the predominant values of people. It
appears to capture values held cross-culturally.
Role: The specific behaviors expected of a person in a position. Thus, when a person takes
on a role, normative pressures exert influence on the person to act in a particular way.
Role conflict: A case in which individuals simultaneously occupy two roles that may entail
conflicting demands, such as being both a mother and an executive.
Role overload: A state of conflict that occurs when the sheer volume of behavior demanded
by the positions in a person's position set exceeds available time and energy.
Role-related product cluster: The set of products necessary for the playing of a particular
role.
Roles: The specific behaviors expected of a person in a certain position.
Rumors: Information or stories in general circulation that lack factual certainty.
Salience effects: Occur when stimuli stand out from background information, so that
attention is directed toward those stimuli.
Salient beliefs: Important attribute-object beliefs activated when a person evaluates an
attitudinal object.
Satisficing: The concept that consumers will frequently attempt to make only satisfactory
decisions rather than perfect decisions because of limitations in time, information-processing
ability, or appropriate facts.
Schedule of reinforcement: A schedule, formed by the frequency and timing of reinforcers,
that can dramatically influence the pattern of operant responses.
Schema: An organized set of expectations a person holds about an object.
Search process: A search for information that may be either extensive or limited, depending
upon the involvement level of the consumer.
Secondary reinforcer: A previously neutral stimulus that acquires reinforcing properties
through its association with a primary reinforcer.
Segmentation: The division of a marketplace into distinct subsets of consumers having
similar needs and wants, each of which can be reached with a different marketing mix.
Segmenting by demand elasticity: The process of segmenting consumers based upon the
differential slopes of their demand curves (e.g., on airline flights, vacationers versus business
travelers).
Selective attention: The concept that consumers selectively decide to which stimuli they
should attend.
Selective exposure: The concept that consumers actively choose whether or not to expose
themselves to information.
Self-concept: The totality of the individual's thoughts and feelings having reference to
himself or herself as an object.
Self-fulfilling rumors: Rumors are based on a perception of what could happen in the future
if something else were to occur.
Self-gifts: Gifts that are given by a person to himself or herself.
Self-perception: The concept that an individual may observe his or her own actions to infer
attitudes and beliefs.
Semantic concepts: The meanings attached to words, events, objects, and symbols.
Semantic memory: How people store the meanings of verbal material in long-term memory.
Semiosis analysis: The process of identifying an object, a sign, and an interpretant to
analyze the meaning of a symbol.
Semiotics: The investigation of symbols and their meaning.
Sensation: The investigation of the ways in which people react to the raw sensory
information they receive through their sense organs.
Sensory memory: The extremely brief memories that result from the firing of nerve fibers in
a person's brain.
Sentiment connections: A term from balance theory used to denote the observer’s
evaluations of another person and an attitudinal object.
Separatedness-connectedness: A variable that measures the extent to which people
perceive their self-concept as autonomous (separated from other people) versus
interdependent (united with other people).
Serial learning: The process of how people place into memory and recall information
received in a sequential manner.
Serial-position effect: The finding that items at the beginning and end of a list are learned
more rapidly than items in the middle of a list.
Service encounter: A personal interaction that occurs between a consumer and a marketer.
Service quality: A customer's overall assessment of the excellence of a service.
Services: Products exchanged that are intangible and that someone does for someone else.
Shaping: A process through which a new operant behavior is created by reinforcing
successive approximations of the desired behavior.
Short-term memory: The site where information is temporarily stored while being
processed. Short-term memory is noted for its limited capacity.
Sign tracking: The concept that organisms have a tendency to orient themselves toward and
attend to unconditioned stimuli.
Signs: The words, gestures, pictures, products, and logos used to communicate information
from one person to another.
Simple exchange: Characterized by two parties in a reciprocal relationship.
Situational involvement: Involvement that occurs over a short period of time and is
associated with a specific situation, such as a purchase.
Situational traits: Dispositions to act within general situational contexts.
Slippage: The marketing term for the percentage of customers who purchase a product but
fail to redeem a premium offer.
Social class: The relatively permanent and homogeneous strata in a society that tend to differ
in their status, status, occupations, education, possessions, and values.
Social class hierarchy: The ordering of the social classes from lower to higher.
Social comparison: The process through which people evaluate the correctness of their
opinions, the extent of their abilities, and the appropriateness of their possessions.
Social facilitation: The concept that a person become aroused when performing a task in
front of other people. The arousal tends to enhance performance on easy tasks and hinder
performance on difficult tasks.
Social fences: Occur when a short-term punisher causes large numbers of people to avoid
engaging in a behavior that would have benefited the group of people.
Social judgment theory: A psychological theory that describes how an individual reacts to
attitudinal statements depending upon the relationship of the statement to the
person's own attitude.
Social learning: The theory proposing that people will observe the actions of others to
develop patterns of behavior.
Social-psychological personality theories: Personality theories that are based upon
individual differences in how people respond to social situations.
Social relations: The network of ties between individuals. Ties may be strong, weak, or
nonexistent.
Social surroundings: The effects of other people on a consumer in a consumption situation.
Social threats: External pressure by other people to induce a consumer to do something.
Social traps: The psychological phenomenon related to the finding that individuals may
respond to short-term reinforcers, which can lead to long-term negative outcomes for a
group.
Socialization agents: Individuals directly involved with a consumer who have influence
because of their frequency of contact with the consumer, who have importance to the
consumer, or who have control over rewards and punishments given to the consumer.
Socialization background factors: Factors that influence the socialization process, which
include such variables as the consumer's socioeconomic status, sex, age, social class, and
religious background.
Source: An individual or character who is delivering a message.
Source characteristics: Features of the source, that impact the effectiveness of a message
delivery, such as credibility, physical attractiveness, likability and meaningfulness.
Source credibility: A construct used to describe sources of information. The extent that a
source is perceived to have expertise and trustworthiness.
Source expertise: The extent of knowledge the source is perceived to have about the subject
on which he or she is communicating
Source likability: The positive or negative feelings that consumers have toward a source of
information.
Source physical attractiveness: The extent to which a source is perceived to have physical
beauty.
Source trustworthiness: The extent that a source is perceived to provide information in an
unbiased, honest manner.
Specific positioning: The attempt to create strong connections between the product, certain
key attributes, and the product's benefits in consumers' minds.
Spontaneous brand switching: Consumers' tendency to periodically buy a new brand, even
when nothing indicates that they are unhappy with the brand previously used.
Standard rumors: When people seek explanations for unusual events.
Standard Industrial Classification system- A database that classifies and identifies groups
of business firms that product the same type of product.
Standard learning hierarchy: A high-involvement hierarchy of effects in which beliefs
occur first, followed by the development of feelings or affect, followed by the occurrence of
a behavior.
Standardization of the marketing plan: The proposal that marketing plans can be
standardized in international marketing.
Status: A person's social standing in the class hierarchy.
Status crystallization: The consistency with which an individual reveals a particular social
status across a number of dimensions.
Status groups: Groups based upon social distinctions and differences in social prestige and
respect.
Stimulus discrimination: Occurs when an organism behaves differently toward two similar
stimuli.
Stimulus generalization: Occurs, when an organism reacts similarly to two or more distinct
stimuli.
Store layout: The physical organization of a store that creates specific traffic patterns,
assists in the presentation of merchandise, and helps to create a particular atmosphere.
Subculture: A subdivision of national culture based on unifying characteristics, such as
social status or religion, whose members share similar patterns of behavior distinct from that
of the national culture.
Subjective norm: A major component of the behavioral intentions attitude model. The
subjective norm introduces into this model the powerful effects of reference groups on
behavior. It assesses what consumers believe other people think that they should do.
Subliminal perception: The concept that stimuli presented below the level of conscious
awareness may influence behavior and feelings.
Substitute activities: Activities that satisfy the same need for the consumer and are mutually
exclusive (they cannot take place together).
Substitution effect: The economic principle that, when the price of a product falls, it may be
substituted for similar goods that are now relatively more costly.
Superego: In psychoanalytic theory, the conscience or "voice within" a person that echoes
the morals and values of parents and society.
Surface traits: Enduring dispositions to act in context-specific domains.
Surrogate consumer: A person who acts like an agent retained by a consumer to guide,
direct, and/or transact marketplace activities.
Symbolic innovation: An innovation that, through the acquisition of new, intangible
attributes, communicates a different social meaning than it did previously.
Symbolic interactionism: A perspective that views consumers as living in a symbolic
environment and constantly interpreting the symbols around them.
Symbols: Things that stand for or express something else.
Syncratic decision: Important decisions in which the husband and wife participate jointly.
Task definition: The reason or occasion for engaging in a consumer action, such as a gift
occasion, a party, or even a type of meal.
Tastes and preferences: Subjective inclinations that may change and act to shift the demand
curve.
Technological innovation: A change in the characteristics of a product or service that
results through the introduction of a technological change.
Terminal materialism: A type of materialism in which having possessions is seen as an end
in itself.
Terminal materialism is viewed as potentially destructive because it leads to such
unbecoming traits as envy, possessiveness, nongenerosity, and greed.
Terminal values: Desired end states-how people would like to experience their lives.
Theory: A set of interrelated statements defining the causal relationships among a group of
ideas.
Theory of reasoned action: A theory that describes the factors posited to influence the
behavioral intentions of an individual.
Time as a situational variable: The concept that the amount of time available to consumers
forms a situational context that acts to influence their acquisition, consumption, and
disposition of products and services.
Time compression: The electronic process through which radio or television commercials
may be compressed, such that they last a shorter length of time.
Tolerance for ambiguity: A trait that assesses how a person will react to situations that have
varying degrees of ambiguity or inconsistency.
Total quality management (TQM): A management philosophy based on the idea that
successful companies should continuously improve the quality of their products and that
quality is defined by the customer.
Trait: Any characteristic on which a person may differ from another in a relatively
permanent and consistent way.
Transformational advertising: Advertising that causes a consumer to associate the
experience of using a product with a set of psychological characteristics not typically
associated with its use. This acts to transform the experience of purchasing and using the
product.
Trickle-down theory: A model of mass communications that holds that information moves
from the upper classes to the lower classes. For example, fashion trends begin with the
wealthy.
Truth effect: If something is repeated often enough, people who are in a low-involvement
processing mode will believe it.
Two-factor theory: An explanation of advertising wear-out. In one process, the repetition of
a message causes a reduction in uncertainty and increased learning about the stimulus,
resulting in a positive response. In the other process, tedium or boredom begins to occur with
each repetition.
Two-sided message: A message that presents both sides of an argument as a tactic to be
more persuasive.
Two-step flow model: A model of mass communications that holds that mass
communications first influence opinion leaders, who in turn influence followers.
Types of risk: Various risk factors that may influence consumers including financial risk,
performance risk, physical risk, psychological risk, social risk, time risk, and opportunity
loss risk.
Unawareness set: Consists of the unknown brands and products.
Unconditioned response: The reflexive, involuntary response elicited by an unconditioned
stimulus.
Unconditioned stimulus: Any stimulus capable of eliciting autonomically an unconditioned
response.
Underprivileged: The people within a given social class who have low incomes relative to
other members of that social class.
Unique selling proposition: A quick, hard-hitting phrase that captures a major feature of a
product or service.
Unit relation: As defined in balance theorv, a relationship that is attributed when an
observer perceives that two cognitive elements are somehow connected to each other.
Upper Americans: A description of a group of social classes including the upper-upper,
lower-upper, and upper-middle class.
Upper-lower class: A social class described as working, not on welfare, whose living
standard is just above poverty, whose behavior may be judged as crude and trashy, and that
tends to consist of unskilled workers.
Upper-middle class: A social class composed of college graduates, managers, the
intellectual elite, and professionals.
Upper-upper class: The highest status group, marked by its small size and "old" money.
Urban legends: A phenomenon related to rumors, are realistic stories about incidents that
are reputed to have occurred.
Usage situation: A type of situation based upon the task definition. It forms the context in
which a product or service is used and influences the product characteristics sought by a
consumer. (p. 463)
Utilitarian needs: Desires of consumers to correct basic instrumental problems, such as
filling a car's gas tank or removing a spot from a rug.
Validity: It is evidenced when a scale is shown to measure the trait that is designed to assess.
VALS life-style classification scheme: A psychographic approach in which consumers are
divided into four broad groups of individuals-the need-driven, the inner-directed, the outer-
directed, and the integrated groups.
VALS 2: A new psychographic model developed by SRI International that identifies
relationships between consumer attitudes and purchase behavior based upon three categories
of self-identity orientations.
Valuation of pins and losses: A process described in prospect theory in which a person
values the level of positive or negative outcomes.
Value-attitude system: The relation of global values to domain-specific values to
evaluations of product attributes within a consumer's belief system.
Value -expressive influence: The concept that the values and attitudes of a reference group
will influence a person who wishes to be part of and liked by that group.
Values: Enduring beliefs about ideal end states and modes of conduct. They dictate what is
good, right and appropriate in behavior.
Variety-seeking purchases: Buying a new brand spontaneously, even though no
dissatisfaction is expressed with the previously purchased brand.
Vehicles: The specific means within a channel by which a message is communicated, such
as Vogue magazine as a vehicle within the print medium.
Vicarious learning: A type of learning that occurs when a person observes the
reinforcements received by others contingent on their actions.
Vivid messages: Messages using vivid, concrete words, which to have a greater impact on
receivers than messages containing more abstract information.
Voluntary attention: A process in which the consumer actively searches out information to
achieve some type of goal.
von Restorff effect: The effect by which a unique item in a series of relatively homogeneous
items is recalled much more easily than those surrounding items, because the effects of
proactive and retroactive interference are minimized.
Warner's index of social characteristics: Uses four variables as indicators of social class-
occupation, source of income, house type, and dwelling area.
Weber's law: The concept that as the intensity of a stimulus increases, the ability to detect
a difference between two levels of the stimulus decreases.
Word-of-mouth communications: Exchange of comments, thoughts or ideas between two
or more consumers, none of whom is a marketing source.
Word-of-mouth network: The relations between individuals through which personal
influence may occur.
Working class: The social class composed of individuals who engage in blue-collar trades,
such as carpentry, plumbing, and assembly line work.
Working memory: (a common term for short-term memory) A hypothetical memory
component in which individuals actively process information.
Zapping: The process in which consumers avoid seeing commercials by switching channels
on their television with a remote control device.
Zeigarnik effect: An effect that occurs when an individual is involved in a task that is
interrupted or not completed. People continue to process information about the task until it is
completed.