Victoria University Assignment: Consumer Behavior & Howard Sheth Model

This essay explores consumer behavior through the lens of the Howard Sheth model, a cognitive approach that examines consumer decision-making processes. It details the model's components, including input variables (significative, symbolic, and social stimuli), hypothetical constructs, exogenous variables, and outputs. The essay links the model to an Airbnb advertisement, demonstrating how advertising and promotional activities influence consumer buying motives and behaviors. It argues that the advertisement provides decision mediators that enable consumers to choose Airbnb by understanding its potential to fulfill their needs and requirements. The analysis also touches on the model's application in mobile marketing and its role in understanding the rationality of consumer choices based on brand information and processing ability. The essay concludes by emphasizing the model's usefulness in estimating consumer purchases, facilitating customer loyalty programs, and monitoring spending patterns.

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Marketing & Management
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The topic of “Consumer behaviour” has become so much popular lately in the world
of business and marketing since the consumers are given more choices to make their
decisions from. Consumer behaviour is the art of how the individuals’ decisions lie about the
products or the services that they buy (Mohammadi and Mohamed, 2011). It is crucial to
understand consumer behaviour to see how the possible consumers would react to a new
product or service. And better understanding of consumer behaviour would help companies
to increase their market share (Kolb, 2006). This decision making process of consumers can
be so complicated because of the pressure that the consumers get from the external forces
(Siwach and Dahiy, 2009). To minimise this complications, models and theories have been
developed.
Cognitive approach is used in many consumer behaviour theories and it can be
divided mainly in to two parts as Prescriptive model and Analytical model which are again
divided in to four sub-parts as Consumer Decision Model, Theory of Buyer behaviour,
Theory of reasoned action and Theory of planned behaviour (Moital, 2007). According to
Solomon, (2015) Cognitive approach is when a buyer purchases a particular product or
service when there are other brands of that product or service are already available in the
market. Solomon (2015) and also Blythe (2013) have discussed about the five phases of
cognitive approach which are Recognition, Information, Choice, Purchase and Post Purchase.
Howard and Sheth introduced this theory called Buyer behaviour and it is also known
as the Howard and Sheth model. This model explains the behaviour of consumers’ decision
making in regards to the brand choice within the constraints of limited individual capacities
and incomplete information. Howard and Sheth wanted to develop a model which could be
used to evaluate a vast range of purchases while using the word “buyer” instead of the

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“consumer” (Bray JP, 2008). According to the Howard and Sheth, (1969) the four major
components of this model are inputs, hypothetical construct exogenous variables and outputs.
According to Howard and sheth, (1969) the input variables consist of three distinct stimuli as
Significative stimuli, Symbolic stimuli and Social stimuli. Bray JP, (2008) explains
Significative stimuli as physical brand characteristics as proclaimed by the selling
organization, Symbolic stimuli as the verbal and visual product characteristics which refers as
to the understanding of an individual based on the information showed by the selling
organization and last Social stimuli as the family influence, social factors including the
characteristics of the family, the reference and the social class to which the individual
belongs.
Hypothetical construct is the central part of the model concerned with the consumer’s
decision contemplation. The consumer decisions and behaviours on the market are
represented with the help of this Howard Sheth model or theory that explains the choice for
the product made by the consumers. It is though based on the information and processing
capability, which is done by analysing the external symptoms of consumer behaviours and
then allows the customers to make suitable choices for the product or service that they want
to purchase.

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According to Prasad and Jha (2014), within the organisational setting, motive,
attitude, intention and purchase decisions are all based on the brand knowledge and
marketing activities followed by the businesses. The advertising and promotional activities
are related to the enhancement of brand awareness among the clients, which facilitated their
buying behaviours and motives and allowed them to make important decisions regarding their
purchases (Prasad and Jha 2014). Baker and Saren (2016) also argued the fact that decisions
are made based on the rules that the purchasers have employed for matching the motives and
fulfil those motives. The decision mediators are the various features and characteristics of the
services delivered by a business or brand, which influence the behaviours and attitudes of the
consumers and even serve the role of ordering and structuring the motives of purchasers,
furthermore ensure fulfilment of potential of the brand and ensure higher level of consumer
satisfaction as a whole too (Baker and Saren 2016).
Advertisement link for Airbnb: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpQ0u2USslg
One such advertisement could be the Airbnb advertisement that showed the various
services offered by the company including accommodation services, flight services, etc. The

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services that are delivered have been made accessible for viewing to the clients in a company
managed website and also through social media platforms, which has facilitate the social
media marketing and promotional activities to raise awareness among the clients (Cohen,
Prayag and Moital 2014). Based on East et al. (2016), it is understood that advertisements and
promotions through social media involvement has grabbed the attention of clients regarding
the services, which is required for influencing the consumer buying motives and behaviours,
furthermore made them intend to make the purchase with the help of a proper decision made
(East et al. 2016). This is how the buyer behaviour model or theory has been linked with the
advertisement for Airbnb.
From the advertisement, it could be understood that the purchasers developed enough
decision mediators, which enabled them to choose a particular brand though understanding
whether the brand has great potential to fulfil the motives and their requirements or not
(Parsons, Maclaran and Chatzidakis 2017). The behavioural modelling helped in estimating
the purchases made by consumers and even allowing the brand to deliver customer loyalty
programs, which allows for monitoring the spending patterns with more granularity. The
model or theory has also been applied in mobile marketing, which has helped in explaining
the rationality of choice, furthermore make choice for the specific products based on their
needs and requirements according to various terms and conditions related to information
about the brand, its products and reduced processing ability (Jisana 2014).

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Reference
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