CONSUMER BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS AND SOCIAL MARKETING:
THE CASE OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION
Gordon R. Foxall
Cardiff University, United Kingdom
Jorge M. Oliveira-Castro
University of BrasÃlia, Brazil
Victoria K. James
M. Mirella Yani-de-Soriano
Valdimar Sigurdsson
Cardiff University, United Kingdom
ABSTRACT
Consumer behavior analysis represents one development within the behavioranalytic tradition of interpreting complex behavior, in which a specific conceptual framework has been proposed (i.e., the Behavioral Perspective Model). According to this model, consumer behavior occurs at the intersection of a consumer-behavior setting and an individual’s learning history of consumption and is a function of utilitarian (mediated by the product) and informational (mediated by other persons) consequences. The model has been useful in analyses of consumers’ brand choice and reactions to different settings. In the present paper, the model was applied to the interpretation of environmental deleterious behaviors (use of private transportation, consumption of domestic energy, waste disposal, and domestic consumption of water). This application pointed to specific marketing strategies that should be adopted to modify each of these operant classes.
CONSUMER BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS AND SOCIAL MARKETING
how it may be applied to and actively employed in social marketing programs aimed at the conservation of natural resources.
CONSUMER BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS AND THE BPM
Consumer behavior analysis has the agenda of applying basic behavioral laws and principles to real life consumer behavior. In doing this consumer behavior analysis models should be more able to accurately describe, predict and affect consumers. However, adding in the real life effects of consumer behavior will
certainly make the resulting models more complicated.
FOXALL, OLIVEIRA-CASTRO ET AL.
recuperation it provides. This type of holiday may also generate some punishing utilitarian consequences, such as having to face a long and tiring trip and spending a lot of money. As another example, one of the main utilitarian reinforcing consequences of owning a car is to be able to get door-to-door transportation, which any car can offer. Owning a car can also produce some punishing utilitarian consequences such as having to deal with its eventual breakdowns.
CONSUMER BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS AND SOCIAL MARKETING
THE USEFULNESS OF THE BPM IN INTERPRETING CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
In all the examples of informational and utilitarian reinforcers and punishers given so far, we referred to events that usually have reinforcing and punishing functions for most people. This does not imply these functions should not be empirically tested for “the only way to tell whether or not a given event is
reinforcing to a given organism under given conditions is to make a direct test. We observe the frequency of a selected response, then make an event contingent upon it and observe any change in frequency. If there is a change, we classify the event as reinforcing to the organism under the existing conditions”
Consumer Brand Choice
The marketing literature suggests that, when purchasing fast moving consumer goods (fmcgs), consumers have a repertoire of two to four brands in each product category from which they select, as if randomly, on each shopping occasion (cf. Ehrenberg, Uncles & Goodhardt, 2004). Early consumer behavior
analysis work studied the issue of repertoire buying through the development of methodologies based on behavioral economics, specifically matching, maximization and demand processes (see for example Foxall & James, 2001; Foxall & Schrezenmaier, 2003). In summary, the results suggested that consumers
will buy the cheapest brand within their repertoire although this is not always the cheapest of all the brands available. This indicates that brands within a given product category are not all functionally substitutable. One possible source of non-substitutability among brand may be based on the level of utilitarian and
informational reinforcement (as discussed previously) they offer to consumers (Foxall, 1999).
Brand Choice: Informational and Utilitarian Reinforcement
Based on this distinction between utilitarian and informational reinforcement, which suggests different types of reinforcers influence consumer choices, Foxall, Oliveira-Castro and Schrezenmaier (2004) examined whether consumers’ brand repertoires (patterns of repertoire buying as discussed above) are related to the
levels of utilitarian and informational reinforcement offered by the brands. The authors based their analyses on purchase data from a sample of 80 consumers buying nine products (i.e., baked beans, cookies, breakfast cereals, butter, cheese, fruit juice, instant coffee, margarine, and tea) during a period of 16 weeks.
The Scope of the Consumer Behavior Setting
Alongside informational and utilitarian reinforcement, the scope of the behavior setting is an important variable in the BPM. According to the BPM, behavior is a function of the consumer situation. From the work of Schwartz and Lacey (1988) it has been proposed that purchase and consumption activities occur in a continuum which ranges between relatively open to relatively closed consumer behavior settings.
A BEHAVIORAL CLASSIFICATION OF CONSUMER CHOICE
Working with the proposed bifurcation of utilitarian and informational reinforcement already described, the BPM suggests that four operant classes of consumer behavior can be described according to the pattern of reinforcement (i.e., high/low utilitarian and high/low informational) which maintains it. These are shown in Table 1. Behaviors classed as accomplishment are maintained by high levels of both utilitarian and informational reinforcement and may include conspicuous consumption behaviors such as buying status cars.
TABLE 1. OPERANT CLASSES BASED ON THE LEVELS OF UTILITARIAN AND
INFORMATIONAL REINFORCEMENT.
forcement are substantially lower than for the other classes of behavior, but are far from unimportant and may be controlled negatively by the removal of a threat. A more detailed discussion and interpretation of the four operant classes can be found in Foxall (1990, 1993, 1994). These operant classes can be operationalized alongside the scope of the setting to produce eight separate contingency categories to analyze a broad range of behaviors. These categories are summarized in Table 2.
TABLE 2. CONTINGENCIES CATEGORIES BASED ON THE BPM
(ADAPTED FROM FOXALL, 1998, P. 104).
TABLE 3. CONSEQUENCES OF ENVIRONMENT-IMPACTING CONSUMPTION.
TABLE 4. SUMMARY OF DE-MARKETING STRATEGIES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL
PROBLEMS
CONCLUSION
In order to develop efficient strategies of environmental conservation, we need to identify the variables that influence consumer behaviors that produce unwanted environmental impact. Within an operant framework this implies, among other things, examining the consequences that maintain such behaviors. Only after identifying what events are reinforcing and punishing for individuals under given conditions, can one, based on an operant framework, make specific predictions and plan well-grounded interventions concerning the behavior of individuals. The distinction between informational and utilitarian consequences proposed by the BPM is a step in the direction of identifying what functions as reinforcers and punishers for consumers in general. This distinction has been useful in analyzing consumers’ brand choice and verbal responses to different consumer settings.
The present paper applied such distinctions to analyses of some relevant classes of behavior related to environmental conservation, namely, use of private transportation, consumption of domestic energy, waste disposal, and domestic consumption of water. Each of these operant classes appears to be maintained by different levels of informational and utilitarian consequences, which suggests intervention plans should adopt differentiated and specific marketing strategies to modify each behavior class.
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