The importance of knowing your customers behavior is essential. Business should apply certain concepts to learn their consumers behavior. This blog illustrates about brand focus and consumer behavior concepts. This concept would provide us a detail explanation of customers behavior towards the brands. Scopus journal articles are utilised to elaborate relevant article for the concepts.
BLOG TOPIC 1-BRAND FOCUS: APPLE
The topic I would be discussing is on brand focus of Apple, with the application of Intrapersonal Gifting, Intercategory Gifting and Maslow Hierarchy of Needs concepts. As a customer myself, almost every gadget that I own is from Apple. Apple’s identity and unique products had result them in success and caught a strong brand image in the eyes of customers (Razak et al 2020). According to (Reisinger 2018), a study showed that millennial’s has strong bond with Apple. This is because millennial’s are more dependent on mobile devices, social media or they have a trust on the brand (Tsukayama 2015).
First and foremost, the concept that needs to be considered is Intrapersonal Gifting which is defined as “when the giver and the receiver are the same individual” and the other term is self-gifting (Schiffman & Wisenblit 2015, p.375). The need of an individual to self-gift is because they want to seek variety or to reach a certain level of stimulation and therefore, the result would end with individuals feeling satisfied about their purchase (Gupta 2020). For example, generation z purchases Apple products for their own consumption such as, utilizing it for textbook materials and surfing the internet (Gentina 2018). One of the ways Apple wants to contribute to their future customers is by having free online classes for youth to capture their mind (Moorman 2018). This would give future customers a sense of closeness with the Apple products.
Moreover, the second concept that needs to be discussed is Intercategory Gifting which is illustrated as a group getting a gift for a person or a gift given from a person to a group (Schiffman & Wisenblit 2015, p.375). According to (Shanka 2011), individuals gives gift to their closest people because it conveys a strong relationship with the receiver, and it may give a sense of gratefulness. The exchange of gift usually takes place during Christmas, Birthdays, Graduations, Anniversary and many more (Shanka 2011). For example, during Mother’s Day, Apple had gifts that were under 50 dollars such as phone case, a light purse, a temperature mug, a necklace (AppleInsider Staff 2020). Children’s would purchase gifts from apple store and gift it to their Mothers on Mother’s Day and that would make their mom feel special. For instance, children would prefer to get one amazing Apple product for their mom rather than each of the children gifting it individually. This could help the children to save money, time and effort (Schiffman & Wisenblit 2015, pg. 375)
The third concept is Maslow Hierarchy of Needs which contains five stages of needs which are Physiological Needs, Safety, Social Needs, Self-Esteem and Self-Actualization (Sharma et al 2020). In addition, “this theory states that individuals seek to satisfy lower level needs before higher-level needs (Schiffman & Wisenblit 2015, p.90). However, Social Need is the only level of need, I’ll be applying for Apple product. Social Needs includes the needs of love, belonging, affection, friendship and it’s the third level of hierarchy (Schiffman & Wisenblit 2015, pg.90). The social need can be connected to the concept of gifting behavior because as we know that gifting is also considered as sense of affection. According to (Higgins 2007), the author of the article gifted himself an iPhone because Apple managed to convince him through their advertisement, and he did not regret about it because the product has fulfilled his expectation and satisfaction. This would give him a sense of belonging towards Apple.
BLOG TOPIC 2- CONSUMER BEHAVIOR FOCUS: SAMSUNG
In my blog topic 2, I have chosen Samsung as my brand to explore on the theories of Consumer Behavior which includes an Issue, Viral Marketing and Theory of Reasonable Action.
Firstly, the main issue is the case of, where several Samsung users faced incidents of explosions from utilizing Samsung Galaxy smartphones (Chong 2017). These incidents occurred due to swelling in the batteries and overheating (Chong 2017). For instance, a similar incident took place in South Korea in 2011, where the battery exploded while the man was walking down the street and the explosion caused a small burned wound on his thigh (Chong 2017). According to (Wu et all 2019, p.89), the reasons why a product crisis occurs is because the product did not meet the requirements of safety or failure to detect the flaws of fire and chemical which is dangerous, and it can cause product damages. If Samsung faces product injuries, it would bring a negative impact not only on their reputation but also to their consumers. This would affect consumers purchase behaviour where they would have less trust on the brand and their purchasing intention would drop (Wu et all 2019, p.89). One of the suggestion proposed to improve this issue was by having a safety measure check for batteries (Yun et al 2018).Representatives should ensure that they test the batteries before releasing the product, so they can win customers trust on the brand and the number of purchase would rise back again.
The second concept is Viral Marketing which is described as where consumers convey their information or message to other’s from utilizing the internet platform (Sharma & Kaur 2020). There is a real-world example in the case of, Apple users throwed negative comments on Samsung’s advertisement, for directly comparing both Samsung Galaxy S9 with iPhone 6(Shah 2018).The advertisement showed that an individual was facing lots of issues with her phone because of her damaged battery while at the immigrant, airplane and taxi, forcing her to go to Apple Store and one of the representative told her one of the solution is to upgrade her phone , which she did but she upgraded to Samsung smartphone (Shah 2018). Adding on, Apple user were unhappy with the advertisement as they found it unreasonable for Samsung to compare it to an old product (iPhone 6) (Shah 2018). Even though, the issue has led to a negative impact in the market, but Samsung has caught customers attention. People tend to trust online advertisements, and this would influence customers behavior towards Samsung as they are more involved with the advertisements (Saremi & Montazemi 2019). Nevertheless, Samsung is being sued by Apple because of the issue, but the negative impact is found to influence the consumer behavior because it may change their perception towards the brand (Voorveld 2018).
Thirdly, is the concept that needs to be discussed is the Theory of Reasoned Action, which is defined as it contains the components of cognitive, affective and conative (Schiffman & Wisensblit 2015, p.184). According to (Xiao 2019), these components would lead to subjective norms of individuals that are influence by individuals’ beliefs and normative beliefs. For instance, the Samsung consumers would get influence by social beliefs before purchasing a product (Priya & Suganya 2018). If society has given positive reviews of the product, this would lead consumers to buy the product. Similarly, if consumers purchase is satisfied with her purchase, the more positive behaviour the individual has on the product and this would increase their behavioural intention and performance behaviour (Isaid & Faisal 2015). The society’s preferences would affect on individuals buying behaviour.
REFERENCE LIST
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