Negative Consumer Behavior Essay

To fully understand what ban consumer doings is and what makes a bad customer, we first lose to understand what consumer port is. In their book, Consumer expression Concepts and St judgegies, Berkman and Gilson (1981) say that the Ameri tail Cultural System, which is made of values and artifacts, strongly influences consumer bodily process in the United States. In the twentieth century, American Culture reflected a distinct consumption ethic based upon affluence and gratification of desires by dint of material acquisition (Berkman and Gilson, 1981). Consumer Behavior is defined as the activities of people active in actual or potential use of marketplace items-whether products, services, sell environments, or ideas (Berkman and Gilson, 1981).Thus, there ar unlimited typecasts of behaviours that the consumers can exhibit do it unenviable to distinguish between good and bad consumer conduct. Sometimes, a consumer behavior that maybe considered negative in unrivalled mar ket place can be considered positive in another. Shoplifting for example. Some 800,000 times a day, this tableau of temptation, fear and exhilaration plays out in the humdrum aisles of segment stores and supermarkets (Adler, 2002).Shoplifting without a doubt is a type of negative consumer behavior since this behavior costs de officement stores and supermarket thousands of dollars every day. Yet in the February 25, 2002 Newsweek bind written by Jerry Adler, Brandy Samson, the manager of a jewelry and accessories store in the Sherman Oaks California Fashion Squ be, sees shoplifting in a positive sort by using it to understand what it is that the consumers indispensableness. She continued to say We know whats hot among teens by seeing what they steal (Adler, 2002).Though shoplifting has negative effects for one type of market it is a positive consumer behavior in another like the certification and protection market. The rise in shoplifting incidents will lead storeowners to growt h their degenerateing on security devices like cameras and sensor tags for uniform. Kelly Barron, the author of the article Your money or your support? Crime rates ar down. Are Americans everyplacespending for security? says thateven though crime rates pee been decreasing over the past years, revenues in the security business are on the rise. Americans keep buying more(prenominal)(prenominal) and more protection. Revenues for the security industry have risen 46% over the past five years, to an estimated $57 billion (Barron, 1997).The vast increase of course denotation mentality use has given birth to yet another type of this complex consumer behavior that can be categorized as the autocratic buyers. In their study, James A. Roberts and Eli Jones, say that the consumer culture is defined as a culture in which the majority of consumers avidly desire, pursue, consume, and display goods and services that are valued for non-utilitarian reasons, such(prenominal)(prenominal) as status (power), envy provocation, and pleasure seeking (2001). Such behavior has both positive and negative outcomes. In one hand, the rise of consumer spending increases revenues for certain goods and services. In the other hand, the same behavior increases debt. For the first three month of 1999, consumer spending increased at an annualized rate of 6.7 percent. Purchases of durable goods, non-durable goods, and services all registered healthy gains. During the same period, savings r to each oneed an incomparable low of -0.5 percent (Roberts and Jones, 2001).Roberts and Jones noted in their study that past research shows that attribute cards facilitate spending and that college students were found to spend more at a given store if the store accepted credit cards as a mode of payment. It was also noted that such compulsive buying activities was a significant reason for the large military issue of credit card debt and personal bankruptcy filings. Roberts and Jones acknowledge th at earlier studies have found that students with graduate(prenominal) debt earn lower grades, and have higher probabilities of displace out of school. You would think that educational organizations would limit the access of credit card vendors into a college campus. However, what is happening is exactly the opposite. Four of five universities allow on-campus solicitations for credit cards and charge credit card vendors between $175 to $four hundred per day to rent tables during freshman orientation. Schools also receive a destiny of all student charges when they authorize the issuance of an affinity card (Roberts and Jones, 2001). So is compulsive buying behavior negative or positive? at that place are however some consumer behaviors that are easy to distinguish from universe negative or positive. The abusive customer for example, is a type of consumer that is neer satisfied that induces high amounts of dialect on the employees. Those who have worked in sell and customer ser vice have probably dealt with such consumers. Working in a clothing store has given me the opportunity to experience the stress created by dealing with the so-called abusive customers. This negative behavior creates a conflict between customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction.The consumer satisfaction category has the principal(prenominal) position in marketing theory and is based on the infix that the profit is made through the process of satisfaction of consumers demandsresearchers continually sanction a significant correlation between satisfaction and repeated buying, great brand loyalty, and spreading a positive opinion of the product (Dubrovski, 2001). node is indeed important to the success of a business, but so is employee satisfaction. turn around the problem when it comes to dealing with abusive customers? The face-to-face interactions with abusive customers cause employees to increase their aflame labor which is also known as emotional dissonance. ablaze dis sonance occurs when expressed emotions conform with organizational norms but clash with veritable feelings (Rafaeli and Sutton, 1987). In her study on emotional dissonance, Rebecca Abraham establishes that emotional dissonance provokes sorrowfulness at a problem, which motivates the intentions to quit.At my former job, a clothing store, I was able to observe high employee turnover rates due to job dissatisfaction. Not a day passed by without a single interaction with an abusive customer. I wouldnt doubt that the high volume of such interactions lead to the high employee turnover. This particular store did nothing to decrease the high employee turnover, probably costing them hundreds of dollars. When does employee satisfaction become more important than customer satisfaction? Abusive customers, no exit what they spend and no matter how high their lifetime value is, are expressing negative consumer behavior. This particular clothing store that I used as an example should evaluate or re-examine their values because in theend nobody will want to work for them.Exhibiting negative consumer behavior in one type of market may result in a positive outcome in another market. Some types of consumer behaviors are so complex that it is extremely difficult to distinguish it from being a positive or negative behavior. It depends on what side of the market the specific business is. In this paper I illustrated for the most part a few of these complex consumer behaviors.However, there are some consumer behaviors that a business owner might be get out off with. In the retail business there are some customers that take a great deal of time in decision making what it is that they want to purchase. If you are a storeowner, you might want to have your employees spend less time pleasing these types of customers. After all time is money. The benefit and satisfaction of employees should also be a great concern for the employers. I believe that the more satisfied an employee is with their job, the better they will perform at it.Thus, it is important to protect employees from abusive customers. I can recall a time when a customer became extremely angry when we did not have a specific item in the size he was looking at for. There was nothing that I could do but to deal with the costume designers mistreatment. The types of negative consumer behavior are immense that some are hard to even conceptualize. Such behaviors range from lack of spending, usually expressed by the elderly, to theft and overspending. Future research should examine these activities.BibliographyAbraham, Rebecca. The impact of emotional dissonance on organizational commitmentand intention to turnover. Journal of psychological science v133, n4 (July, 1999) 441.Adler, Jerry. The Thrill of Theft its not just the movie stars. Why, each year,ordinary people shoplift $13 billion of lipsticks, batteries and bikinis from stores.Newsweek (Feb. 25, 2002) 52.Barron, Kelly. Your money or your life? Cr ime rates are down. Are Americansoverspending for security? Forbes v160 (November 17, 1997) 66.Berkman, Harold W Gilson, Christopher. Consumer Behavior concepts and strategies.Kent Publishing Company. Boston 1981.Dubrovki, Drago. The role of customer satisfaction in achieving business excellence.Total Quality Management. (December 2001) 920Rafaeli, A. Sutton, R. Expression of emotion as part of the work role. Academy ofManagement Review. (1987) 12, 23-37.Roberts, James A Jones, Eli. Money attitudes, credit card use, and compulsive buyingamong American college students. Journal of Consumer Affairs, Winter 2001,35(2) 213-240.