Essay on "Consumer Choice Factors Influencing"

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One could argue that "information" is too broad a description for a single influential factor, and indeed there are many different types and sources of information that can affect consumer choice, consciously and unconsciously, and purposefully and accidentally. Direct and conscious efforts to affect consumer choice can be considered marketing, and even the information that falls under the label of "marketing" can take many different forms (Kerin et al. 2008). Marketing can differentiate a specific product from others like it in positive ways, by promoting "special characteristics" of the product, or in a negative fashion by denigrating other products of the same class and type (Geoffs 2010). Marketing can also be used for many other purposes, but all of the have the same goal in mind -- convincing the consumer that they need to buy a particular product or service.

These efforts can be directed at any and all of the first three phases of the consumer's decision-making process. A lot of marketing actually defines the need for the consumer -- just think about any toy commercial. Kids didn't used to sit around saying, "Gee, I wish I had some sort hand-held video gaming console on which to spend hours every day," but through advertising the need or desire for such devices was created. Marketing aimed at the second and third stages of the decision process is relatively the same; this is where the product differentiation aspect of marketing comes into play (Geoffs 2010). The multi-tasking nature of information is what makes it so essential as a factor influencing consumer choice.

Marketing at Work

The explanation of information and the way it is utilized to affect consumer choice provided above is necessarily simplistic, but it is not at all inaccurate. Companies use marketing tactics and the spread of information -- and sometimes, usually illegally and always unethically, misinformation -- in order to influence consumers, attempting to get them to choose the companies' own products and/or services while avoiding those of its competitors (Brown 1996; Kerin et al. 2008). This provides increased profits for the company, enabling them to grow and often obtain a larger market share -- when marketing tactics are effective enough -- reducing their competition's profits at the same time. This works according to the principle that consumers, like everything else, are essentially a limited commodity, and that once a certain saturation has been reached increasing sales for one company will decrease sales for another… READ MORE