Definition of Motivation

Motivation

Motivation is concerned with:

Needs-the most basic human requirement

Drives-tells how these needs translate into behavior

Goals-what these behavior aim to achieve

Types of Needs

Physiological (or primary) needs: Those needs, which are innate, or biogenic needs and sustain life. E.g., food and air

Psychological needs: Personal competence

Learned (secondary or cultural) needs: Acquired needs

Needs Arousal

Needs are aroused by four distinct stimuli:

Physiological

Cognitive

Environmental

Emotional

What Determines Customer Needs?

Personal characteristics of the individual

Genetics – the branch of science dealing with heredity and chemical/biological characteristics – E.g. food allergies

Biogenics – characteristics that individuals possess at birth – E.g. gender and race

Psychogenic – individual states and traits induced by a person’s brain functioning – E.g. moods and emotions.

Physical characteristics of environment - E.g. Climate, including temperature, attitude and rainfall.

What Determines Customer Wants?

The individual context

Personal worth or the financial resources available to the indi– vidual – E.g. luxury versus budget cars

Institutional context – the groups and organizations that a person belongs – E.g. teen clothing styles

Cultural context – the influence of a customer’s culture and cultural values – E.g. ethnic foods

The Environmental Context

Economy

Technology

Public Policy

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Abraham Maslow hypothesized that within every human being there exists a hierarchy of five needs:

Physiological

Safety

Social

Esteem

Self actualization

Sheth’s Five Needs

Sheth had identified five levels of needs, which we are mentioning below, with some examples:

Functional needs –Those needs which satisfy a physical/functional purpose, e.g. soap

Social needs –Needs that allow identification with desired group, e.g. logos

Emotional needs –Those needs which, create appropriate emotions, e.g. joy on getting gift

Epistemic needs –The  Need  for  knowledge/information,  e.g. newspaper

Situational needs –The needs, which are contingent on time/place, e.g. emergency repairs

McCLELLAND’S Three Needs Theory

As we know, having studied this before McClelland had identified three types of needs: Need for achievement, Need for Power, and Need for affiliation

Need for achievement: drive to excel: drive to achieve in relation to a set of standards; to strive to succeed.

Need for power: the need to make others behave in a way that they would not have behaved otherwise.

Need for affiliation: the desire for friendly and close interpersonal relationships.

Motives and Motivation

Now that we know about needs and wants in details, we need to now move on the motivation. But before going into an in-depth discussion on these, we will first understand the distinct meanings of the three interrelated terms motives, motivating, and motivation.

Motives: Motives give direction to human behavior. We can say that a motive is an inner state that energizes, activates, or moves and directs or channels behavior towards the goal.

Motivating: This implies an activity engaged into by an individual, by which he or she will channelise the strong motives in a direction that is satisfactory.

Motivation: Motivating can be described as the driving force within individuals that impels them into action. For instance, at the basic level, our body has a need (say hunger), which will translate into a drive (here the drive will e to obtain food) and the goal will be to satisfy the need (in this example to fee full in the stomach).

Positive or Negative Motivation

Motivation can be either positive or negative. A positive motivation happens when an individual experiences a driving force towards an object or person or situation. This is also called person motivation. On the other hand, a driving force compelling the person to move away from someone or something will be known as negative motivation.

Consumer Motivation

The study of Consumer Motivation essentially addresses the question: “Why do people shop?” The answer, really, is that people shop for a variety of reasons and it is very difficult to make generalizations. Shopping for food can, on one level, is seen as satisfying some basic survival need. The problem with that, however, is that most of us buy far more food than we would actually need for basic subsistence and many of the items we purchase in a supermarket are “luxuries” (relatively speaking).

Personal Motives

Role Playing – some shopping activities are associated with a particular role in society (housewife, mother, student, etc).

Diversion – shopping can be a form or recreation, or an escape from daily routine.

Self-Gratification – shopping can be mood-related, for instance where people engage in “retail therapy” to cheer them up or alleviate depression.

Learning – shopping is an ideal way to learn about new fashions and trends.

Physical Activity – for some people, a stroll around the mall can be their main form of exercise.

Sensory Stimulation – shoppers often report that they enjoy handling merchandise, the sounds of background music, the scents of perfume counters, etc, and visit stores or malls to indulge in this.

Social Motives

Social Interaction – people enjoy the opportunities for social interaction with friends, strangers, sales staff, etc.

Peer Affiliation – certain shops allow customers mix with key reference groups; e.g. people with shared interests, members of a social category they either belong to or aspire to etc.

Status & Authority – shopping experiences are sometimes seen as ways of commanding respect and attention; e.g. during encounters with sales staff.

Pleasure of Bargaining – some shoppers love to “haggle”, a way of obtaining goods at a better price or of priding oneself on the ability to make “wise” purchases. The above categories are by no means mutually exclusive. Some 70% of the population visits a shopping mall at least once per week and they are liable to do so for a variety of reasons at any one time. Shopping is certainly far more than merely going to a store to buy a product one needs or wants – people often go to the mall with no intentions of spending any money at all!

Customer Moods

Moods  are  emotions  felt  less  intensely  and  are  short-lived.

Marketing stimuli can induce positive or negative moods:

Ambience of store or service delivery facility

Demeanor of salesperson

Sensory features of the product

Tone and manner of advertising

Content of message from salesperson or ad

Hedonic Consumption

Hedonic consumption is use of products/services for intrinsic enjoyment rather than to solve a problem in the physical environment. It creates pleasure through the senses:

Sensory pleasure from a bubble bath

Aesthetic pleasure from an original work of art

Emotional experience from a scary movie

Fun and enjoyment from playing sport.

How involved with the product are most prospective buyers in the target market segment? Involvement is used here in a more precise way than in everyday language and refers to the degree to which people regard the product as important and personally relevant. As indicated in the class, the more involved a person is with a product, the more likely they are to engage all the stages of the PDP and expend time and effort on making a choice. Conversely the less involved they are, the more likely it is that they will do less searching and less evaluation of alternatives. The implications of this are significant. If people will do only a small amount of searching for information you will have an advantage if you provide them with relevant information and make it available to them in an appropriate way and your competitors do not. For instance, it may be highly beneficial to offer inducements to salespeople in retail outlets to provide information about your brand if that information alone is largely all that is going to be used to decide which to purchase. Alternatively one might try to influence the degree of involvement people have with a product. For instance the linkage between toothpaste and “cavity prevention” created through advertising and the advice of dentists is an attempt to increase the importance people attach to using toothpaste.