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of measuring and how panies can obtain primary consumer behavior information. The work deals with the topic of chances and restriction and transfers into the practical approach and reflection of the topic. Consumer behavior can be defined as the behavior that consumers display i n searching for purchasing, using, evaluating and disposing of products, services and ideas which they expect will satisfy their needs. The study of consumer behavior is the study of how individuals make decisions to spend their available resources (which can be money, time or effort) on consumptionrelated items. It includes the study of what, why, how, when, where and how often consumers buy something. Only in this way an anization will be able to influence and predict reasons for purchase. If management can understand these customer responses better than its petitors, then it is a potentially significant source of petitive advantage. The days when an anization could just produce a product and service in the hope that it might sell are rapidly disappearing. It is increasingly important for anizations to clearly understand the benefits wanted by customers as well as the reasons for purchase and with some goods, repurchase on a regular basis, both in home and international markets. Consumer behavior is influenced by internal and external factors. The internal factors, which influence buying behavior are: demographics, psychographics (lifestyle), 唐 山 學(xué) 院 畢 業(yè) 論 文 22 personality, motivation, knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and feelings. On the other side the external influences are: culture, locality, family, royalty, ethnicity, social class, reference groups, lifestyle and market mix factors. A market is simply a group of users with similar needs. It follows from this that a market consists of subgroups or segments, containing users with slightly different needs to those of other segments. Market segmentation is therefore the process of identifying different groups of users within a market who could possibly be targeted with separate products or marketing programmes. Research also supports more informed decisions about product, promotion (marketing munications), price and place (distribution). Here are some keyquestions in order to develop a customeroriented strategy: How is the market segmented? How profitable is each segment? What are the characteristics on consumers in each segment? Are customers satisfied with existing offerings? Psychographics is an operational technique to measure lifestyles. It provides quantitative measures and can be used with the large samples needed of market segments. Psychographics measures are more prehensive than demographic, behavioral and socioeconomic measures. Demographics identify who buys products, whereas psychographics focuses on why they buy. The term psychographics is often used interchangeably with AIO measures. AIO measures describe the activities, interests and opinions of consumers. AIO ponents are defined as: Activity: although these acts are usually observable, the reasons for the actions are seldom subject to direct measurement Interest: the degree of excitement that acpanies both special and continuing attention to an object, event or topic Opinion: means a spoken or written answer that a person gives in response to a question. It describes interpretation, expectation and evaluation. Such as beliefs about other people39。s intention or anticipation concerning future events. For example consider car and SUV buyers. When Ford was planning a gaselectric hybrid version of its Escape SUV,it identified market segments by gender, environmental consciousness, technology orientation and roughroad driving. More women than men were buying the regular gas Escape SUV and many were firsttime SUV buyers yet there was also a sizeable segment of men, both greenies and geekswho were interested in 唐 山 學(xué) 院 畢 業(yè) 論 文 23 powerful, spacious, allwheeldrive hybrid vehicles. Digging deeper, the pany learned that consumers in this segment were more affluent, better educated, older and watched less TV than the segment of nonhybrid Escape owners. Segmenting the market and understanding consumers39。 needs helped Ford to design the new hybrid SUV and to create munications to reach the specific segment for that vehicle. In general, consumer research helps marketers to develop productspecific plans as well as broader strategies for market segmentation, targeting and positioning. Consumer behavior is dependent on few factors that need to be considered in any industry. In the Automotive industry, there are several intertwining factors known. The Inter as one knows well has its importance in nearly every form of trade. Trade is directly dependent on munication, and these days the Inter is considered to be the most important and reliable means of munications for trade. In view of the Inter being an important medium through which customers may be municated with, customer behavior bees an important subject. Observing customer behavior in the recent past, it is observed that there is immense scope for expanding the auto motive industry. This is because there appears to be a better response from customers through the Inter. Purchases of parts are easily made and are believed to be considerably reliable. For purchasing vehicles, advertising through the Inter is the first step towards pulling in customers. Indeed, this step is believed to be effective as there are a number of individuals who first see adds online, and then decide to physically check a promotion out. With the Inter growing more and more mon in the UK, it is expected that there will be much more activity on the part of consumers, which means that the automotive industry is going to do even better than it has in the past. The world has reac