Negative Consumer Behavior Essay

To fully fancy what interdict consumer behavior is and what makes a bad customer, we first welcome to understand what consumer behavior is. In their book, Consumer Behavior Concepts and Strategies, Berkman and Gilson (1981) say that the Ameri quite a little Cultural System, which is made of determine and artifacts, strongly influences consumer activity in the United States. In the ordinal century, American Culture reflected a distinct consumption ethic based upon affluence and gratification of desires through material acquisition (Berkman and Gilson, 1981). Consumer Behavior is defined as the activities of people engaged in actual or potential use of commercialize items-whether products, services, retail environments, or ideas (Berkman and Gilson, 1981).Thus, there atomic number 18 unlimited types of behaviors that the consumers can manifest making it difficult to distinguish between good and bad consumer behavior. Sometimes, a consumer behavior that maybe considered negative in one market place can be considered supportive in another. shoplift for example. Some 800,000 times a day, this tableau of temptation, fear and exhilaration plays out in the humdrum aisles of department stores and supermarkets (Adler, 2002).Shoplifting without a doubt is a type of negative consumer behavior since this behavior costs department stores and supermarket thousands of dollars every day. Yet in the February 25, 2002 Newsweek article written by Jerry Adler, Brandy Samson, the manager of a jewelry and accessories store in the Sherman Oaks California Fashion Square, sees shoplifting in a positive way by using it to understand what it is that the consumers want. 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 security and protection market. The rise in shoplifting incidents will lead storeowners to increase their using up on security devices like cameras and sensor tags for clothing. Kelly Barron, the author of the article Your notes or your life? Crime rates are down. Are Americans over deteriorateing for security? says that raze though crime rates have been decreasing over the past years, revenues in the security business are on the rise. Americans keep buying much 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 credit carte du jour use has given birth to yet another type of this multiplex consumer behavior that can be categorized as the compulsive buyers. In their study, jam 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 as status (power), envy provocation, and pleasure seeking (2001). Such beh avior has both positive and negative outcomes. In one hand, the rise of consumer pass alonging increases revenues for certain goods and services. In the other hand, the comparable 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 reached an all-time low of -0.5 percent (Roberts and Jones, 2001).Roberts and Jones noted in their study that past research shows that credit humors facilitate spending and that college students were anchor 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 number of credit card debt and personal bankruptcy filings. Roberts and Jones acknowledge that earlier studies have found that students with amply debt earn lower grades, an d have extravagantlyer probabilities of dropping out of school. You would think that educational organizations would limit the access of credit card vendors into a college campus. However, what is calamity is exactly the opposite. Four of five universities allow on-campus solicitations for credit cards and charge credit card vendors between $175 to $400 per day to rent tables during neophyte orientation. Schools also receive a percentage 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?There are however some consumer behaviors that are easy to distinguish from being negative or positive. The black customer for example, is a type of consumer that is never satisfied that induces high amounts of stress on the employees. Those who have worked in retail and customer service have probably dealt with such consumers. functional 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 main position in marketing theory and is based on the premise that the clear is made through the process of satisfaction of consumers demandsresearchers continually confirm a significant correlation between satisfaction and repeated buying, greater brand loyalty, and dispersal a positive opinion of the product (Dubrovski, 2001). Customer is indeed important to the success of a business, but so is employee satisfaction. See the problem when it comes to dealing with abusive customers? The face-to-face interactions with abusive customers cause employees to increase their emotional labor which is also known as emotional dissonance. Emotional dissonance occurs when expressed emotions conform with organizational norms but clash with true feelings (Rafaeli and Sutton, 19 87). In her study on emotional dissonance, Rebecca Abraham establishes that emotional dissonance provokes unhappiness at a job, which motivates the spirits 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 sensation 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 matter 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 mark et 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 better off with. In the retail business there are some customers that take a great deal of time in deciding 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 welfare and satisfaction of employees should also be a great concern for the employers. I consider 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 cu stomer became extremely angry when we did not have a specific item in the size he was looking for. There was nothing that I could do but to deal with the costumers mistreatment. The types of negative consumer behavior are immense that some are hard to even conceptualize. Such behaviors field 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 Psychology 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? Crime rates are down. Are Americansoverspending for security? Forbes v160 (November 17, 1997) 66.Berkman, Harold W Gilson, Christopher. Consumer Behavior concepts and stra tegies.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.