Culture and Consumption Motivation

Richard C. Reed

American Intercontinental University

Culture & Consumption Motivation

MKT655 – Research Methods in Marketing

7 March 2012

Abstract

Marketing Research is vital for organizations to evaluate the consumption habits and the needs of perspective consumers. A survey of culture and consumption motivation was conducted by our research team to identify various hypotheses that can allow our organization to make better decisions on how to market to various customers, based on the identified factors given in this research.

Culture & Consumption Motivation

Introduction

The Reed marketing organization conducted marketing surveys to better understand what motivates consumers to buy. We utilized surveys and reviews from academic articles to gather pertinent data to address various questions about consumer’s motivation when making purchasing decisions. We have included facts from 5 different cultural surveys to answer several different hypotheses’ concerning what motivates men and women to make buying decisions.

Research Background on Motivation to Buy

The question of what motivates people to make purchasing decisions has been pondered for well over one hundred years. The answer to this question is very dynamic and somewhat ambiguous. A company that truly understands the answer to the question can have phenomenal success. A company not fully understanding the motivation of consumers can pour millions of dollars into projects that are doomed from the very start. In the early 1900’s a key push for research came from self-styled institutional economist, Thurstein Veblen. He started investigations of consumption and consumer behavior as a central component of an empirical assault on the deductive system of neo classical economics. The gathering of aggregate quantitative data on consumption in the national economy and improving the theoretical understanding of consumer behavior by empirical study was believed to be a vital element in...