1. Buyer Characteristics Factors
   1. Cultural
      1. Culture
         1. Most basic cause of a person’s wants and behavior. Marketers are always trying to spot cultural shifts to discover new products that might be wanted.
      2. Sub-Culture
         1. Groups of people with shared value systems based on common life experiences and situations.
      3. Total Market Strategy
         1. Many marketers now embrace a total market strategy which is the practice of including ethnic themes and cross-cultural perspectives within their mainstream marketing.
      4. Social Classes
         1. society’s relatively permanent and ordered divisions whose members share similar values, interests, and behaviors. Can not be determined by a single factor but is measured as a combination of occupation, income, education, wealth, and other variables.
         2. Upper Class, Middle Class, Working Class, Lower Class.
   2. Social
      1. Groups & Offline Social Networks (Word of Mouth & Buzz Marketing)
         1. Membership groups (direct influence and to which a person belongs)
         2. Aspirational groups (wishes to belong to)
         3. Reference groups (a comparison or reference in forming attitudes or behavior)
      2. Opinion Leaders
         1. People within a reference group who, because of special skills, knowledge, personality, or other characteristics, exert social influence on others. This small percentage of Americans is referred to as the influentials or leading adopters. Cristiano Ronaldo, Obama.
      3. Online Social Networks
         1. Online communities where people socialize or exchange information and opinions. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Quora
      4. Family
         1. The family is the most important consumer buying organization in society, and it has been researched extensively. Marketers are interested in the roles and influence of the husband, wife, and children on the purchase of different products and services.
      5. Roles & Status
         1. A role consists of the activities people are expected to perform according to the people around them. Each role carries a status reflecting the general esteem given to it by society.
   3. Personal
      1. Age Life stage
         1. People change the goods and services they buy over their lifetimes. Examples like Tastes in food, clothes, furniture, and recreation are often age-related. Buying is also shaped by the stage of the family life cycle.
      2. Occupation
         1. A person’s occupation affects the goods and services they purchase as their demands would be different from one another.
      3. Economic Situation.
         1. Marketers watch trends in spending, personal income, savings, and interest rates to understand better what the customer would be more able to buy on demand.
      4. Lifestyle
         1. A person’s pattern of living as expressed in his or her psychographics.
      5. Personality
         1. refers to the unique psychological characteristics that distinguish a person or group.
      6. Brand Personality
         1. Sincerity
            1. (down-to-earth, honest, wholesome, and cheerful)
         2. Excitement
            1. (daring, spirited, imaginative, and up-to-date)
         3. Competence
            1. (reliable, intelligent, and successful)
         4. Sophistication
            1. (upper class and charming)
         5. Ruggedness
            1. (outdoorsy and tough)
   4. Psychological
      1. Motivation
         1. Abraham Maslow sought to explain why people are driven by particular needs at particular times. He determined that human needs are arranged in a hierarchal fashion.
            1. 1. Physiological
            2. Basic needs like Water, Food
            3. 2. Safety
            4. Basic security needs like a roof under your head
            5. 3. Belongingness
            6. to belong to a community
            7. 4. Ego
            8. Treat yourself to something fancy
            9. 5. Self-Actualization
            10. Realizing you're above the rest and buying that product would represent that
      2. Perception
         1. Selective attention
            1. Screen out most information
         2. Selective Distortion
            1. Interpret information that support what they already beleive
         3. Selective Retention
            1. Retaining information that supports attitudes and beleifs
      3. Learning
         1. Drive
            1. Strong internal stimulus that calls for action.
         2. Stimuli
            1. Drive becomes a motive when it is directed towards a demand in the customer
         3. Cues
            1. Minor stimuli that determine when, where, and how the customer can reach
         4. Responses
            1. Action that the customer took to respond towards the ad
         5. Reinforcement
            1. Positive or negative support towards the brand
      4. Beliefs
         1. Descriptive thought that a person has about something through doing & learning & that influences their buying behavior. It’s generally Based on Knowledge, Opinion & Faith.
            1. Core beliefs and values
            2. Secondary beliefs and values
      5. Attitude
         1. Person’s relatively consistent evaluations, feelings, and tendencies toward an object or idea. Attitudes are difficult to change.