Before consumer behaviour “motivational research was a popular marketing theory that viewed consumers as creatures often influenced by erotic impulses”.
It was this theory of motivational research that created the birth of consumer behaviour. Many people thought that motivation research had fallen through during its existence “after its time of great media attention, when it disappeared from public sight, It became obvious that it did not disappear at all, but continued on, ever growing, in the work of marketing practitioners, and then was developed by university researchers”.This is when the field of motivation research turned to consumer behaviour. Consumer behaviour is an emergent of motivation research Thus I will speak about motivation research, its history and how it progressed to consumer behaviour. Motivation research was closely related to the work that had been developed in several of the behavioural sciences. These ideas of behavioural science stemmed from areas of psychology (Freud) and areas of sociology and even some areas of economics.
Motivation research progressed from these theories and researchers took information from university studies in a bid to understand why consumers buy or do not buy products. Motivation research was the introduction of market research because of the concepts it drew from social sciences such as psychology and sociology. Motivation research introduced new methods of marketing research by applying method which have been used successfully in other social sciences. Newman wrote that “buying and consumption are human acts serving human purposes which marketing has known too little about.
.They can be better understood if behavioural theories enter the picture”. This is how motivation research developed theories of market research. Newman was trying to make the point that the buying and consumption of products is down to how people think, or how the products attributes can be associated with a consumers values or how a product can be associated with or improved social status. Newman thought that if marketers understood how people thought of a product and what it represented then marketers would be able to answer why people buy and consume products.This theory of market research grew as motivation research attempted to focus on inner conditions that affect a person’s buying or not buying of a product.
However psychology was not the only behavioural science approach in motivation research. Throughout a person’s life he or she will develop a personality through his or her experiences and through their interactions with the people around him. This is why they must be viewed as a member of numerous groups and they will be largely influenced by what their friends, parents, siblings think of them.This is where sciences like sociology and social psychology are important for assessing group attitudes. The point I am trying to make here is that all of these theories were used in motivation research each in a different way but in terms of individuals and groups, never the less they shed light on human nature, going back to the question why? - do consumers purchase or not purchase a product. During the progression of motivation research, researchers began to realise neighbourhood’s word of mouth was a major factor on the buying decisions of its members.
This then developed into the social class scheme, which stressed that membership in a specific social class meant abiding by a code of values, which in turn influenced consumption. This concept of social class developed, by which researchers began to realise that between people in markets there were different levels of communication, differences in moral viewpoints, differences of humour, and differences in sophistication. Simply that different social class had different points of views on what a product represented for them, for example a higher social class may see a product as a representation of their wealth.If that was to be broken down even further, no two people think and/or act in the exact same way. Researchers realised that the symbols we use to communicate are often meaningless to the class we are trying to sell.
Continuing from products being symbols developed a theory of Product symbolism. This states that consumers often buy symbols that product represent to them rather than just the product. I believe that this is one of the most relevant theories, even in today’s society. Consumers don’t just buy products they buy what they represent, e. g. a person will buy a highly recognised car brand like BMW in order to represent his or her income.
“Such lifestyle values as the worship of youthfulness, the search for individuality, and the trend towards more casual and informal living need to be emphasized in successful advertising”. These were key points at the time and are still relevant today because people buy products to be associated with what the product represents. Therefore if you advertise a certain trait e. g.
Youthfulness with your product it will make it more attractive to people who are seeking this trait.Martineau made this point to enforce his belief that people purchase not for the product but what is associated with it, in this case a person would buy a product to be up-to-date. “By contrast with the dismal deficits of railroad passenger operations, every airport is bulging with travellers, who see present air transportation as what they want in their style of living: excitement, adventure, super up-todateness,…” Overall motivational research vastly increased the understanding of consumers and their behaviour.It was also used for motivation research was used for product design, trade relations, training of sales people and store layout.
As a result businesses dedicated time to motivation research as they seemed to profit from it. After everything that motivation research did for business and understanding consumers it developed once more. However it did not seem like that as during the 1960’s motivation research lost a lot of its media coverage. People thought that motivation research had grown too old, but it continued to grow in fact it had a great deal of growth ahead of it.In 1961 a young academic published an article praising Motivation Research in a regional journal. His name was James Engel, who was seven years later to be lead author on the pioneering textbook on Consumer Behaviour.
The book’s organisation of topics has continued to be used by most consumer behaviour texts. This organization of topics was taken from Motivation Research. Motivation research is the main reason for the emergence of consumer behaviour as well as theories of social science like psychology and sociology.In fact the study of these sciences made it possible to understand why consumers purchase and consume product. All the theories mentioned above all relevant and can be seen in modern methods of advertising and retailing of products, although the theories have sophisticated it is easily seen that motivation research did have a huge part to play in consumer behaviour.
In conclusion it was theories of economics, psychology and sociology combined with motivation research that formed the birth of consumer behaviour.
