Identify the major steps in the consumer buying decision process and the sets of factors that may influence this process.

Identify the major steps in the consumer buying decision process and the sets of factors that may influence this process.

Buying behavior consists of the decisions and actions of people involved in buying and using products.

Consumer buying behavior refers to the purchase of products for personal or household use.

Organizational buying behavior is the purchase of products by producers, re sellers, governments, and institutions.

Understanding buying behavior helps marketers predict how buyers will respond to marketing strategies.

The consumer buying decision process consists of five steps: recognizing the problem, searching for information, evaluating alternatives, purchasing, and post-purchase evaluation.

Factors affecting the consumer buying decision process fall into three categories: situation influences, psychological influences, and social influences.

Distinguish between a marketing information system and marketing research.

Distinguish between a marketing information system and marketing research.

Strategies are monitored and evaluated through marketing research and marketing information systems, which store and process internal and external data and produce reports in a form that aids marketing decision making.

A marketing information system manages marketing information that is gathered continually from internal and external sources.

Marketing research is the process of systematically gathering, recording, and analyzing data concerning a particular marketing problem.

Technology is making information for marketing decisions more accessible. Electronic communication tools can be very useful for accumulating accurate and affordable information. Information technologies that are changing the way marketers obtain and use information are databases, online information services, and the Internet.

Many companies are using social media to obtain research data and feedback from customers.

Describe how market measurement and sales forecasting are used.

Describe how market measurement and sales forecasting are used.

Market measurement and sales forecasting are used to estimate sales potential and predict product sales in specific market segments.

Explain how the marketing environment affects strategic market planning.

Explain how the marketing environment affects strategic market planning.

To achieve a firm's marketing objectives, marketing-mix strategies must begin with an assessment of the marketing environment, which, in turn, influences decisions about marketing-mix ingredients. Marketing activities are affected by the external forces that make up the marketing environment.


These forces include economic, socio-cultural, political, competitive, legal and regulatory, and technological forces.


Economic forces affect customers' ability and willingness to buy. Socio-cultural forces are societal and cultural factors, such as attitudes, beliefs, and lifestyles, that affect customers' buying choices. Political forces and legal and regulatory forces influence marketing planning through laws that protect consumers and regulate competition.

Competitive forces involve the actions of competitors. Technological forces can create new marketing opportunities or cause a product to become obsolete.

Understand the meaning of marketing and the importance of management of customer relationships.

Understand the meaning of marketing and the importance of management of customer relationships.

Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders. Maintaining positive relationships with customers is crucial.

Relationship marketing is establishing long-term, mutually satisfying buyer-seller relationships.

Customer relationship management uses information about customers to create marketing strategies that develop and sustain desirable customer relationships.

Managing customer relationships requires identifying patterns of buying behavior and focusing on the most profitable customers.

Customer lifetime value (CLV) is a combination of purchase frequency, average value of purchases, and brand-switching patterns over the entire span of a customer's relationship with the company.

Contemporary Views on Motivation: Goal-Setting Theory

Contemporary Views on Motivation: Goal-Setting Theory

Employees are motivated to achieve goals they and their managers establish together.

Goals should be very specific, moderately difficult, and ones that the employee will be committed to achieve.

Rewards should be tied directly to goals achievement.

1. Contemporary Views on Motivation: Equity Theory
2. Contemporary Views on Motivation: Expectancy Theory (Victor Vroom)

Contemporary Views on Motivation:Expectancy Theory (Victor Vroom)

Contemporary Views on Motivation:Expectancy Theory (Victor Vroom)

Vroom's theory is based on the idea that motivation depends on how much people want something and on how likely they think they are to get it.

• Motivation depends on how much we want something and on how likely we think we are to get it.

• Implies that managers must recognize that.
- Employees work for a variety of reasons.
- The reasons, or expected outcomes, may change over time.
- It is necessary to show employees how they can attain the outcomes they desire.

1. Contemporary Views on Motivation: Equity Theory
2. Contemporary Views on Motivation: Goal-Setting Theory

Contemporary Views on Motivation: Equity Theory

Contemporary Views on Motivation: Equity Theory

• People are motivated to obtain and preserve equitable treatment for themselves.
• Equity: the distribution of rewards in direct proportion to the contribution of each employee to the organization.
• Workers compare their own input-to-outcome (reward) ratios to their perception of other's.

• Workers who perceive an inequity may
- Decrease their inputs
- Try to increase outcome (ask for a raise)
- Try to get the comparison other to increase inputs or receive decreased outcomes
- Leave the work situation (quit)
- Switch to a different comparison other

1. Contemporary Views on Motivation: Expectancy Theory (Victor Vroom)
2. Contemporary Views on Motivation: Goal-Setting Theory

Historical Perspectives on Motivation:Reinforcement Theory

Historical Perspectives on Motivation:Reinforcement Theory

Behavior that is rewarded is likely to be repeated, whereas behavior that is punished is less likely to recur.

Reinforcement: an action that follows directly from a particular behavior.

Types of reinforcement

- Positive reinforcement: strengthens desired behavior by providing a reward.
- Negative reinforcement: strengthens desired behavior by eliminating an undesirable task or situation.
- Punishment: an undesired consequence of undesirable behavior.
- Extinction: no response to undesirable behavior in order to discourage its occurrence.

The Features of Theory Z

The Features of Theory Z

The best aspects of Japanese and American management theories combine to form the nucleus of Theory Z.

TYPE J FIRMS (Japanese)
- Lifetime Employment
- Collective decision making
- Collective responsibility
- Slow promotion
- Implied control mechanisms
- Non-Specialized career paths
- Holistic concern for employees

TYPE Z FIRMS (Best Choice for American Firms)
- Long-Term Employment
- Collective decision making
- Individual responsibility
- Slow promotion
- Informal control
- Moderately specialized career paths
- Holistic concern for employees

TYPE A FIRMS (American)
- Short Term Employment
- Individual decision making
- Individual responsibility
- Rapid Promotion
- Explicit control mechanisms
- Specialized career paths
- Segmented concern for employees

Historical Perspectives on Motivation: Theory X, Y and Z.

Historical Perspectives on Motivation: Theory X

• Generally consistent with Taylor's scientific management
• Employees dislike work and will function only in a controlled work environment

Keywords:
Attitude toward work - Dislike
Control Systems - External
Supervision - Direct
Level of Commitment - Low
Employee Potential - Ignored
Use of Human Resources - Limited

Historical Perspectives on Motivation: Theory Y

• Generally consistent with the human relations movement
• Employees accept responsibility and work toward organizational goals if they will also achieve personal rewards

Keywords:
Attitude toward work - Involvement
Control Systems - Internal
Supervision - Indirect
Level of Commitment - High
Employee Potential - Identified
Use of Human Resources - Not Limited

Historical Perspectives on Motivation:Theory Z

Some middle ground between Ouchi's Type A (American) and Type J (Japanese) practices is best for American business

Emphasis is on participative decision making with a view of the organization as a family

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow believed that people act to fulfill 5 categories of needs. 

1. Self-Actualization Needs
2. Esteem Needs
3. Social Needs
4. Safety Needs
5. Physiological Needs

What Is Motivation?

What Is Motivation?

The individual internal process that energizes, directs, and sustains behavior; the personal "force" that causes us to behave in a particular way

Morale

• An employee's feelings about his or her job, superiors, and about the firm itself
• High morale results from the satisfaction of needs or as a result of the job and leads to dedication, loyalty, and the desire to do the job well
• Low morale leads to shoddy work, absenteeism, and high turnover rates

Understand the types, development, and uses of teams.

The types, development, and uses of teams :

A large number of companies use teams to increase their employees' productivity. In a business organization, a team is a group of workers functioning together as a unit to complete a common goal or purpose.

There are several types of teams that function in specific ways to achieve different purposes.

A problem-solving team is a team of knowledgeable employees brought together to tackle a specific problem.

Self-managed work teams involve groups of employees with the authority and skills to manage themselves.

A cross-functional team is a team of individuals with varying specialties, expertise, and skills.

A virtual team is a team consisting of members who are geographically dispersed and communicate electronically.

The five stages of team development are forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning.

As a team develops, it becomes more productive and unified in order to achieve its assigned objective and goals. The four roles within teams are task specialist, socioemotional, dual, and nonparticipative.

Each of these roles plays a specific part in the team's interaction. For a team to be successful, members must learn how to resolve and manage conflict so that the team can work cohesively to accomplish goals.

Explain several techniques for increasing employee motivation ?

Several techniques for increasing employee motivation :

Management by objectives (MBO) is a motivation technique in which managers and employees collaborate in setting goals. MBO motivates employees by involving them directly in their jobs and in the organization as a whole.

See: What Is Motivation?

Job enrichment seeks to motivate employees by varying their tasks and giving them more responsibility for and control over their jobs.

Job enlargement, expanding a worker's assignments to include additional tasks, is one aspect of job enrichment.

Job redesign is a type of job enrichment in which work is restructured to improve the worker-job match.

Behavior modification uses reinforcement to encourage desirable behavior. Rewards for productivity, quality, and loyalty change employees' behavior in desirable ways and increase motivation.

Allowing employees to work flexible hours is another way to build motivation and job satisfaction. Flextime is a system of work scheduling that allows workers to set their own schedules, as long as they fall within the limits established by employers.

Part-time work is permanent employment in which individuals work less than a standard work week.

Job sharing is an arrangement whereby two people share one full-time position.

Telecommuting allows employees to work at home for all or part of the work week.

All of these work arrangements give employees more time outside the workplace to deal with family responsibilities or to enjoy free time.

Employee empowerment, self-managed work teams, and employee ownership are also techniques that boost employee motivation.

Empowerment increases employees' involvement in their jobs by increasing their decision-making authority.

Self-managed work teams are groups of employees with the authority and skills to manage themselves.

When employees participate in ownership programs, such as employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), they have more incentive to make the company succeed and therefore work more effectively.

Describe three contemporary views of motivation: equity theory, expectancy theory, and goal-setting theory.

Describe three contemporary views of motivation: equity theory, expectancy theory, and goal-setting theory.

Equity theory maintains that people are motivated to obtain and preserve equitable treatment for themselves.

Expectancy theory suggests that our motivation depends on how much we want something and how likely we think we are to get it.

Goal-setting theory suggests that employees are motivated to achieve a goal that they and their managers establish together.

See: What Is Motivation?

Understand some major historical perspectives on motivation.

Some major historical perspectives on motivation :

One of the first approaches to employee motivation was Frederick Taylor's scientific management, the application of scientific principles to the management of work and workers. Taylor believed that employees work only for money and that they must be closely supervised. This thinking led to the piece-rate system, under which employees are paid a certain amount for each unit they produce

See: What Is Motivation?

The Hawthorne Studies attempted to determine the effects of the work environment on productivity. Results of these studies indicated that human factors affect productivity more than physical aspects of the workplace do.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs suggests that people are motivated by five sets of needs. In ascending order of complexity, these motivators are physiological, safety, social, esteem, and self-actualization needs. People are motivated by the most basic set of needs that remains unfulfilled. As needs at one level are satisfied, people try to satisfy needs at the next level.

Frederick Herzberg found that job satisfaction and dissatisfaction are influenced by two distinct sets of factors. Motivation factors, including recognition and responsibility, affect an employee's degree of satisfaction, but their absence does not necessarily cause dissatisfaction. Hygiene factors, including pay and working conditions, affect an employee's degree of dissatisfaction but do not affect satisfaction.

Theory X is a concept of motivation that assumes that employees dislike work and will function effectively only in a highly controlled environment. Thus, to achieve an organization's goals, managers must coerce, control, and threaten employees. This theory generally is consistent with Taylor's ideas of scientific management. Theory Y is more in keeping with the results of the Hawthorne Studies and the human relations movement. It suggests that employees can be motivated to behave as responsible members of the organization.

Theory Z emphasizes long-term employment, collective decision making, individual responsibility for the outcomes of decisions, informal control, and a holistic concern for employees.

Reinforcement theory is based on the idea that people will repeat behavior that is rewarded and will avoid behavior that is punished.

Explain what motivation is.

Explain what motivation is.

Motivation is the individual internal process that energizes, directs, and sustains behavior.

Motivation is affected by employee morale—that is, the employee's feelings about the job, superiors, and the firm itself.

Motivation, morale, and job satisfaction are closely related.

See: What Is Motivation?

Describe cultural diversity and understand some of the challenges and opportunities associated with it.

Describe cultural diversity and understand some of the challenges and opportunities associated with it.

Cultural diversity refers to the differences among people in a workforce owing to race, ethnicity, and gender. With an increasing number of women, minorities, and immigrants in the U.S. workforce, management is faced with challenges and competitive advantages.

Some organizations have implemented diversity-related training programs to make the most of cultural diversity. With proper guidance and management, a culturally diverse organization can prove beneficial to all involved.

Discuss performance appraisal techniques and performance feedback.

Discuss performance appraisal techniques and performance feedback.

Performance appraisal, or evaluation, is used to provide employees with performance feedback, to serve as a basis for distributing rewards, and to monitor selection and training activities. Both objective and judgmental appraisal techniques are used. Their results are communicated to employees through three performance feedback approaches: tell-and-sell, tell-and-listen, and problem solving.