Marketing Communications

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Marketing Communications
Consumer Behaviour And Marketing Communication

The following are some categories of patronage motives:

•    Price

•    Width and breadth of lines carried

•    Convenience of location

•    Reputation of the outlet

•    Services offered, such as credit, delivery and others

•    Outlet policies regarding customer’s complaints and return of goods

•    Friendship with the owner or a person working in the outlet

•    Special inducements, such as price drawings or trading stamps

THE SELF-CONCEPT
Self-concept is the way a person sees himself or herself and how he or she believes others see him or her
at a particular time. Four major self-concept components have been identified as follows:

1. REAL SELF: how a person really pictures himself in his own mind. The way a person
   actually is.


2. SELF-IMAGE: how a person would like to see himself.


3. LOOKING GLASS OR SOCIAL SELF: how a person thinks other people really see him.


4. IDEAL SELF OR SELF-ACTUALISATION: how a person would like other people to see him.

An individual’s self-concept is the result of many environmental and psychological forces such as heredity,
the environment, family, friends, social class, culture, and other factors like economic – the self-concept
begins its formation in childhood and tends to stabilize as the individual matures. Individual tends to
protect his/her self-concept; therefore, when an individual forms a self-concept, he resists pressures to
change it; if it has to change, it is slowly done over time.

Consumers perceive products and services that they own or intend to own with a symbolic meaning
in relation to themselves and others. These products and services are used to adjust themselves to the
various self-concepts. (Kotler and Keller, 2013; Robertson, 1967; Everett, 1983)

RELATIONSHIP OF SELF-CONCEPT TO MARKETING COMMUNICATION

For promotional purposes, marketers should know that part of self -concept that affects their prospects.

Consumers use products and services to adjust the real self to the ideal self and the other real self to
the other ideal self. In the process of purchasing particular products and services, consumers let others
know what they are and what they intend to be.

All promotion efforts must clearly recognize the importance of the self-concept. Messages that protect
and enhance the self-concepts of promotion targets are likely to be more effective than messages that
threaten self-concepts. Threats may secure attentions but may never secure the essential purchase actions.