Is it possible to anticipate the consumers’ behaviour in a time of radical and unexpected change? This paper intends to demonstrate that as unpredictable as the future may be, there are certain factors that have always influenced consumers behaviour, which has never been random or erratic, but driven by mental processes that operate at an unconscious level, such as: perception, attitude, motivation. These three coordinates have been constantly the drivers of human behaviour in general. Most decisions seem to be rather the result of cognitive-affective and emotional decisions than reason-based. Globalisation and Internet communications are reshaping consumers’ behaviour, causing the shift from “mega-trends” to “micro-trends” due to the intricate maze of choices.consumer behaviour, perception, motivation, and attitude, cognitive-affective decision vs. reason-based decision

Epure, Manuela

Vasilescu, Ruxandra Eleonora

English

Research Papers in Economics

  1
DRIVERS OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR - 
THE  ECONOMIC CRISIS IN OUR EVERY DAY’S LIFE 
 
 
 
 
Authors: Prof.univdr. Manuela Epure, Spiru Haret University, mepure.mk@spiruharet.ro 
   Lect.univ.dr. Ruxandra Eleonora Vasilescu, Spiru Haret University, 
vasilescu_ruxandra@yahoo.com 
 
Abstract:  
 
Is it possible to anticipate the consumers’ behaviour in a time of radical and unexpected 
change? This paper intends to demonstrate that as unpredictable as the future may be, there 
are certain factors that have always influenced consumers behaviour, which has never been 
random or erratic, but driven by mental processes that operate at an unconscious level, such 
as: perception, attitude, motivation. These three coordinates have been constantly the drivers 
of human behaviour in general. Most decisions seem to be rather the result of cognitive-
affective  and  emotional  decisions  than  reason-based.  Globalisation  and  Internet 
communications are reshaping consumers’ behaviour, causing the shift from “mega-trends” 
to “micro-trends” due to the intricate maze of choices. 
 
Key  words:  consumer  behaviour,  perception,  motivation,  and  attitude,  cognitive-affective 
decision vs. reason-based decision 
 
 
 
1.  Economic crisis affects us all, more or less!  
 
The present worldwide crisis is unpredictable as the ocean and its water-waves. You 
never know which wave will shake you more or which ones will knock you down. 
May be you feel happy, pleased with your professional life and satisfied surrounded 
of your shiny, brandy belongings and …suddenly …the big wave arrived, how will 
you react?  
a)  some of us will panic 
b)  some of us will see the challenges beyond  
c)  some of us will prepare to swim because it’s not the first shaking wave 
in their hard-challenged life. 
d)  some of us will try to run thinking that the wave will never get then 
after all 
e)  some of us will stay like a rock – no reaction at all, freeze everything 
till the ocean will calm down – no expenses, no risks, no nothing. 
But YOU….What are you doing now? Can you fit somehow in one specific above-
mentioned pattern? Looking closely to the nearby reality and acting like well-intended 
professional observers, the present working paper is the results of our research on   2
Romanian/foreign  consumer  behaviour.  It  is  an  introspection  into  the  consumers 
behaviour theory and practical reality trying to reveal the main drivers that shape the 
consumption and the influences which affect the buying decision process, during the 
crisis.  
How will consumption develop in Romania this year? It seems that the financial and 
economic  crisis  have  yet  too  reach  consumers,  and  consumer  mood  has  proven 
incredibly  resilient  in  recent  months.  Despite  all  the  media  fuss  about  the  crisis, 
despite the increasing rate of unemployment the consumer climate seems to have a 
stable trend. Oddly enough, nothing seems to have happened to the purchasing power. 
Forecasts for other European countries highlight this paradox too (e.g. GfK Group 
Report for Germany).  Or is it about the purchasing power?  Obviously the mental 
processes refuse to accept that something has or is changing. And the mental rules! 
Culture  rules!  Our  consumption  of  goods  is  a  function  of  our  (quite  recently, 
actually!) culture. To consume is the measure of the success of a consumer society 
and the measure of individual success! Besides our full adoption and awareness of the 
consumer society, other two contemporary phenomena have swept us off our feet: 
globalization and Internet communications. The choices for the consumer are so wide 
now due to these landmarks of the 21
st century, that the consumption ‘mega-trends’ 
have shifted to ‘micro-trends’, individual, unpredictable trends. But all these trends 
come down to one thing: culture is the basis of consumer assumptions. Emotions, 
belief,  attitude,  feelings  and  behaviour  are  all  learned  responses  that  modify 
instinctive  reactions.  The  more  alternatives  are  to  choose  from,  the  greater  the 
consumer involvement.  
 
2. Defining our research methodology 
The key to understand emotional response could be in finding deep metaphors. 
A very recent published book- MARKETING METAPHORIA, authors Gerald and 
Lindsay Zaltman makes several assertions that are somewhat controversial, including 
that “deep metaphors” are universal across most cultures and products- not a popular 
idea in political and social circles, although more so in psychological ones- and the 
qualitative research on small samples is perfectly okay, which is to say that exploring 
the minds of only few people, one can identify the deep metaphors shared by far more 
people. 
The seven (7) deep metaphors that affect consumer thinking are:   3
1)  Balance - justice, equilibrium and the interplay of elements…The Romanian 
consumer maintains his balance by maintaining appearances.  
2)  Transformation - changes in substances, circumstances and status. We have 
undergone radical changes a short time ago (in history years!), another radical 
change right now comes too soon. It is not acceptable! 
3)  Journey- moving from past, through present to future and how we often frame 
life itself as one big journey, including, for many, an afterlife.. Consumers are 
not passive bystanders during interpersonal sales encounters, but are active in 
that they have goals that have an impact on how events are perceived. 
4)  Container  -  inclusion,  exclusion  and  other  boundaries  involving  physical, 
psychological and social states 
5)  Connection - need to relate to oneself and others encompasses feelings of 
belonging  or exclusion 
6)  Resource – acquisitions and their consequences 
7)  Control- the sense of mastery, vulnerability and well-being 
 
3. Is it possible to know what consumers really think? 
 
“Deep waters are dangerous”….. say the people who will not even consider to face 
the water, or even learn how to swim. Can you trace them among us nowadays when 
the economic crisis strikes? They are almost like any normal people but they stop 
spending money: “… no more shopping, I’m still a lucky person, I had my job and my 
monthly  pay  check  is  in  my  pocket….but  maybe  not  for  long.”    Is  this  thought 
familiar to you? 
The above question is relevant and has gained full application due to the significant 
advances in cognitive sciences of the last decades. The findings have shown that most 
mental processes operate at an unconscious level. The conscious mind is the one we 
are  aware  of.  On  the  other  hand,  the  subconscious  mind  influences  how  we 
consciously perceive and decide. The subconscious mind influences our behaviour, 
what  we  actually  do  in  response  to  a  stimulus.  We  are  scarcely  conscious  of  a 
minimum part of our brain activity, but also we hardly know that our brain makes 
decisions  before  we  may  realize  it,  meaning  before  we  are  consciously  aware  of 
making the decision. According to Michael Gazzaniga “our mind is the last one to 
know about the things” and he adds “the illusory we (the mind) only becomes aware   4
of the facts that the brain has really computed.” (Gazzaniga, 1998). This explains why 
most of the time we don’t know why we do what we do. A new marketing concept has 
developed – neuro-marketing- the way to influence the consumers’ decisions before 
they notice, providing them with products they feel attracted to in a Pavlovian way. 
But that it’s a different story, far more complex and challenging to explore, may be 
later on, in the near future. 
Therefore, language can only partially report on these processes, especially if we 
accept  that  the  human  brain  often  uses  non-linguistic  systems  of  information 
processing, as shown by Kosslyn and his collaborators through the theory on mental 
images (Kosslym, Pinker, Smith, Shwartz, 1979, Ortells, 1996). Sweet talks delivered 
in the commercials make us thinking that if we use a certain cosmetics we will be 
endlessly young…..no wrinkles, no grey hair, no fat….do we really buy the product 
chasing this image of us…endlessly young? 
Gerard  Zaltman,  a  marketing  professor  at  the  Harvard  Business  School  in  his 
successful book –“How do consumers think” lists some marketing errors: 
￿ To believe that consumers think in a lineal, well-reasoned and rational way: 
￿ To believe that consumers are able to explain easily their mental processes and 
behaviour 
￿ To  believe that consumers’ memories accurately represents their experiences 
￿ To believe that consumers think in words. 
Modern consumption theory states that the act of consumption is not limited to a 
simple  economic  practice,  to  a  trivial  act  of  merely  materialist  satisfaction. 
Consumption involves a symbolic relationship of meaning and senses with goods, and 
it is a linking and differentiating instrument towards the others. Within this context 
“having” works as a principal source of identity: acquisition or possession of objects 
of  consumption  contributes  to  the  symbolic  extension  of  the  “self”,  to  the 
achievement of the self-concept. We may distinguish between the real (who I am 
now)  personal  concept  and  the  ideal  (who  I  would  like  to  be)  personal  concept. 
(Hawking, Best, Coney, 2004). 
Then,  a  psychological  benefit  is  a  positive  judgement  the consumer  can  make  of 
him/herself at selecting, buying or using a brand of a product or service. People buy 
the products not only with practical purposes, but also psychological purposes, in 
order  to  increase  or  maintain  the  positive  appraisal  of  his/herself  –concept  (self-  5
esteem). In this way, psychological benefits are associated to brands, probably due to 
an identity built around its attributes and communication. 
Perception comes as a first driver for consumer behaviour, as it is an approximation 
of reality: our brain tries to make sense out of the stimuli to which we are exposed. 
Exposure and interpretation are the two factors that basically influence our perception 
of things, elements, beings. For example, when we see a papaya two hundred meters 
away, we still perceive its correct size.  
When we make a purchase decision, we rationally consider the functional attributes of 
the product/service and the image characteristics of its brand, compared with other 
competitors and substitutes. A list of possible psychological benefits is endless, since 
directions  of  self-fulfilment  are  endless,  too.  However,  every  causal  theory  of 
personality and the motivational models of behaviour coincide in the fact that the 
multiple reasons that core human behaviour may be reduced to a quite limited list of 
factors,  and  at  en  even  deeper  level,  to  few  basic  “super-factors”(Angler  1996, 
Livingston, 2004). The list of motivators used was: to be powerful, to be creative, to 
be productive, efficient, to be self-confident, to be worthy of confidence, to be able to 
teach others, to be attractive, to be intelligent, to feel protected, to be able to take care 
of others, to feel relaxed, to feel unique, exclusive, to be generous, to be accepted, 
admired, to feel free, to be strong, to be worthy of luxury, to be an adventurer, to be 
loved/valued, to be able to love, to be a winner, successful, to feel life under one’s 
own  control,  to  be  morally  honest,    to  be  responsible,  to  be  enterprising,  hard-
working, to be active, to show solidarity, to feel in a good mood …. So, shopping just 
for fun is a quite real behaviour driven by a specific psychological motivator.   
Besides  motivation,  attitude  is  a  strong  driver  for  consumer  behaviour.  What  is 
attitude? It is what we like or dislike, which means that it is our general evaluation of 
something.  For  example,  when  you  believe  that  something  is  bad,  your  attitude 
toward it is one of distaste. The attitudes may be:  
•  toward a product (Dove) 
•  toward a company (Proctor & Gamble) 
•  toward a retailer (Carrefour) 
•  toward various types of brand associations (symbols-meanings: do you like the 
Energizer bunny?   6
Actual (consumer) behaviour is the sum of them all, it is the response to a stimulus, 
the  external  manifestation  of  our  attitudes.  Past  impressions  and  experiences  are 
stored, labelled in some way in order to recall them later and to relate them to one 
another. This symbolic storage of impressions is filtered through a person’s learned 
responses,  that  we  mentioned  above.  In  a  consumption  context,  the  consumer  is 
motivated to deliberate prior to making a decision in order to ensure that the decision 
is the correct one, and running no risks; a consumer is attempting to make an accurate 
assessment of whether to make a purchase or not. The current crisis’ effect on the 
Romanian consumer’s behaviour has not changed the primary goal: to act rather than 
deliberate.  
 
So, people, it is scientifically proved that we need to go shopping … crisis or not! 
 
 
References: 
 
1.  Angler,B.- Introduction in the personality theory, Mc Graw Hill, 1996 
2.  Hawking D, Best R., Coney K. – The consumer behaviour, Mc Graw Hill, 
2004 
3.  Kosslyn S, Pinker S., Smith G., Shwartz S- Demystifications of the mental 
images, The Behavioural of the Brain Sciences, 1979 
4.  Livingston G- Emotions vs Emotional benefits in Marketing, New Orleans, 
QRCA (Qualitative Research Consultants Association), 2004 
5.  O’Shaughnessy J, O’Shaughnessy N.- The marketing power of emotion, New 
York, Oxford University Press Inc., 2003 
6.  Taflinger, Richard F. – Psychology of Consumer Behaviour (source: the 
Internet – http://wsu.edu)  
7.  Zaltman G, Zaltman L.- Marketing Metaphori: What deep metaphors reveal 
about the minds of consumers, Harvard Business Press, 2008 
8.  Zaltman, G- How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the 
Market, 2003 
9.  http://www.warc.com 
10.  http://www.admapmagazine.com/  
11. http://www.marketingmetaphoria.com/ 
12. http://www.consumerpsychologist.com/ 
 
 
 
 
 
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Drivers of consumer behaviour-the economic crisis in our every day's life

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