Motivation is described as “the creation of stimuli, incentives, or work environments which enable people to perform to the best of their ability while pursuing different degrees of success” (Motivation, 2009). Motivation is essentially viewed as the quintessential antecedent to getting others to achieve their goals and realize their full potential as human beings. According to Sadri and Bowen (2011), motivation can be measured in a myriad of different ways. Motivation can be measured as to which direction it is heading- or how a person decides to choose one activity over another. Motivation is measured in terms of intensity, or how hard a person tries to achieve fulfilling all criteria leading to successful completion of a goal. Motivation is also measured in terms of persistence, or how long a person continues striving towards a goal despite adverse conditions or insurmountable odds. Motivated individuals often work harder, produce a higher quality and greater quantity of work, are more likely to participate in social activity and teamwork, and are less apt to not completing a goal once they set their minds to it (p.45). The goal is to understand the different psychological processes which guide a person to keep pursuing a goal and to do this it is first best to turn to science to help understand the magic drivers behind motivation. Behavioral scientist, Dr. Abraham H. Maslow proposed a theory of needs which endeavors to understand the basic needs that are both critical and beneficial to human existence. These five different categories of needs form a hierarchy which surfaces with physiological needs, then safety needs, next love needs, then esteem needs, and at the pinnacle of the hierarchy the need to self-actualize (Maslow, 1954). To this day it has become a celebrated and integral part of marketing, human resource, motivational, and management literature according to Chisnall (2005). Maslow shows how once basic physiological needs are met, other needs begin to manifest. At the top of Maslow’s hierarchy is self-actualization, where individuals achieve their personal potential. This concept of self-actualization is the innate ability of an individual to strive towards realizing their maximum potential as an individual. It can be viewed as the blueprint, or a grand design of one’s lifetime expectations and experiences according to Maddi (1972). This tendency towards self-actualization is the thrust of life which pushes a person, and guides a person through such qualities as curiosity, creativity, or the joy of discovering new things. According to Rogers (1961), this inherent force is common to all living organisms. How one view’s oneself, how others relate to the self, and what values are attached to oneself contribute to one’s own self-concept. The self-concept consists of all the assessments of one’s self-value and worth. The hierarchy of needs provides a rational framework for motivation, and human nature determines that motivation is intrinsically linked to rewards. Traditional marketing engrosses itself with the exchanges businesses make with customers according to Key Concepts in Marketing (relationship marketing, 2009). This means that special emphasis is usually placed on producing products that satisfy consumers immediate needs according to the definition. This in turn leads to the emphasis being placed on a single transaction and on acquiring new customers either from identical market segments, or from new ones. This sometimes false assumption among advertisers that customers who have bought once will just spontaneously buy again unless they are dissatisfied for some reason reduces the customer from being an individual- with individual needs and wants- to being only a member of a market segment. The level to which an individual processes an advertisement is thought to be arbitrated by motivational level, as well as the convenience and ability to process the information. Motivation levels in this way refer to consumer’s arousal or desire level to process the information that is presented to them during the advertisement, which means motivating the individual to allocate the resources needed to process the message. Measuring these different levels show that when the consumer focuses only on the message- or when motivation is low- basic categorization occurs; understanding the meaning- or meaning analysis- requires moderate motivation; and information integration requires the highest level of motivation because the individual is tasked with doing something about it to fulfill a need. Consumers may have different motivational levels before becoming exposed to an advertisement. Advertisers will seek to increase an individual’s motivation level to attend to the message and to process the information. This means deploying strategies to attract attention to adverts such as using provocative or alluring material, introducing novel stimuli such as varying the voices or images used, including prominent stimuli like famous people or popular events, and increasing the complexity by editing varied scenes. Strategies can also be deployed which can increase a consumers’ motivation level- such as creating a message which applies to the individual through the use of rhetoric or appeal which increases the level of curiosity. While people may be motivated to process an advertisement, it does not necessarily mean they will be motivated to purchase the product or service. While an advertisement may be watched longer or processed more succinctly, it does not necessarily mean that the product or the message was liked. If the advertisement is inconsistent with existing knowledge, the message will be rejected. Consumer attitudes towards products and services ultimately affect consumer purchases, so for a company to understand the attitudes of consumers towards their product or service it is necessary to build and apply a consumer behavior model. The study of advertisings’ effectiveness is inevitably attached to the consideration of consumer’s attitudes, how attitude changes are brought about, and what effects these changes in attitude have on consumer’s purchases. “The mathematization of these different ideas serves to clarify the implied relationships, provides a formal basis for measuring the quantities involved, and provides impetus for positive progress in establishing relationships among advertising, customer’s attitudes, and customer’s purchases” according to Lipstein (1965).. Changes in consumer attitudes can be viewed as probabilities and by arranging them into square arrays known as Markov chains, the company can project the probability of transitions occurring in consumer attitude. The traditional use of Markov chains in marketing assumes that the transition probabilities are stationary i.e. [2,4,5]. The far more interesting and important case is that in which the transition probabilities become altered. The mathematical approach formalized by Lipstein analyzes these non-stationary chains while building part of a consumer behavior model as part of its development. The consumer behavior model can then be analyzed and studied by using theorems on matrices to monitor changes in consumer behavior, its effect on the brands share, and the effectiveness of advertising. The consumer behavior model, in its most basic form, is a communications sequence starting with the transmitter which represents the advertiser’s effort, the connector which represents the media outlet, the receiver which represents the formation of consumer attitude, and actual buying behavior which represents the fifth and final loop in the feedback chain. The conceptualization of this process is represented above. The purpose of the model is an attempt to realize that consumer purchasing in a time sequence analysis means increased or decreased expenditures on advertising for the company. The diagram shows four stages in the basic consumer behavior model. According to “A Mathematical Model of Consumer Behavior” (1965), only three of the four stages are active at any one time. The media outlets are viewed as inactive influences although they can still act as positive elements in certain types of advertising campaigns. From a measurement point of view, it appears to be sufficient to consider the three active elements: advertising effort, attitude formation, and buying behavior. Conceptually, the assembly of the model starts with the behavior of the individual consumer, and by an aggregating process builds up to total market behavior. The buying behavior of the individual customer is therefore reduced to predisposition towards a brand that makes up a particular product category. Predisposition is a quantity of measurement showing customer attitude towards a particular brand, and is used to measure brand intent. According to the article, it has been observed that repeat buying rates for the same brand over time tend to be larger than the measurement of repeat rates on attitude preference toward the same brand. This shows inconsistencies may occur which prevent a customer from obtaining the brands they desire. This may be because of gaps in distribution channels, forcing companies to rethink their marketing strategies. If a brand is not carried in a certain store a customer is familiar with, the customer is more likely to buy a product from a different brand just because the desired brands company did not set aside the resources to procure shelf space for the desired product.
Posted on: Sun, 03 Nov 2013 15:08:27 +0000
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