Building a theory framework of Vietnamese consuming culture on the concepts of consumer behavior

An Giang University Journal of Science – 2017, Vol. 5 (2), 32 – 39 32 BUILDING A THEORY FRAMEWORK OF VIETNAMESE CONSUMING CULTURE ON THE CONCEPTS OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOR Vo Van Thang1, Nguyen Huu Tri1, Ho Bach Nhat1 1An Giang University Information: Received: 17/02/2017 Accepted: 16/03/2017 Published: 06/2017 Keywords: Consumer behavior, consuming culture, conceptuals of consumer behavior ABSTRACT Theories of customers behavior are not only neccessary to businesses, but also important to all relevant non-government agencies and government agencies to protect customers interests and adjust policies related to marketing activities at national macro-level. Particularly, behaviors culture in consuming of an individiual is very compex, depending very much on characteristics, psychology, and lifestyle of an individual and also depending on the society an individual is living in. The behavior of consuming culture greatly varies between societies, geographic areas, etc. under the influence of local culture. This paper aims to build a theory framework of behavior culture in consuming of Vietnamese under the theoretical frameworks of consumer behavior of previous scholars. 1. INTRODUCTION Consumption behaviour is complex and influenced by many factors. Although these factors have been studied and developed from different sectors and markets, they often address the three basic issues: attitudes and perceptions, behaviors, and relationships among them (Phillip Kotler, 1998). Many scholars have drawn consumer decision- making models and developed many theoretical frameworks to understand the factors affecting consumer behaviours (Blackwell and GCT, 2006); Kotler, 2004; and Solomon, 2009). Some principals and paradigms on the purchase process were offered, one of which was the model of Howard and Sheth (1969) who generated a general purchasing model and it was considered as the foundation of behavioural cultural sciences. Howard and Sheth’s model is inherited, adapted and supplemented by many researchers of cultural behaviour sciences such as Kotler (2004), Webster and Wind (1972), and Putsis and Srinivasan (1994). Webster and Wind (1972) developed a behavioral model that included organizational consumption behavior, while organizational behavior greatly differed from individual behavior, so researchers added suppliments, replacement and calibration to suit the practices. Robertson and Kassarjian (1991) explored the psychological choices affecting emotions in the human brain and perceptions affecting the minds of individuals as well as the collective about product purchasing decisions. Solomon (2009) created a new model with five steps, including both internal and external factors used to simplify elements of the underlying buying process and named it as a buying decision model (Hawkins, Best, and Coney, 1998), along with specific aspects defined and added to the process structure as empirical behavioural models. An Giang University Journal of Science – 2017, Vol. 5 (2), 32 – 39 33 Modern models for consumer’s behaviours typically have five main steps: identification of needs, information seeking, evaluation, selection or alternatives, and ending with behavior after purchase (Kotler, 2004). Consumers, when buying a particular product, can go through these steps at different degrees (which can be ignored in a few steps) depending on contextual factors, individual characteristics, and product type (Zaharia, 2005). Today's modern decision-making models are popular and widely used in many areas developed by Solomon (2009) and Kotler (2004). They include the following steps: (1) needs, (2) searching information, (3) assessing alternatives, (4) choosing, (5) buying decision or action, (6) post buying assessment such as satisfaction, impact towards the next buying action. In this paper, theoretical frameworks of consumer behavior of previous scholars are considered as the most important foundation to build a theory framework of Vietnamese’s consuming culture. 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOR TO BUILD THE FRAMEWORK OF VIETNAMESE’S CONSUMING CULTURE The theorical framework of Howard – Sheth (1969) addressed three groups of customers: buyers, users, payers to buy and offer three levels of decision-making, including (1) the customer has no information or any basic knowledge about the brand and also does not like any products or services. Customers tend to find all the relevant information of different brands in the market before making a purchase decision; (2) the customer has little knowledge of the market, or has little understanding about what they want to buy. To choose a product or service they like, they search for information related to other competing brands; and (3) behavior is habitual. Customers know the difference between brands and they can distinguish “characteristics" between the different brands and decide to buy which item suits them best. Howard-Sheth’s model tries to explain consumers’ purchasing decision-making through the three levels of inputs, meaningful stimulus, and symbolic stimulus. The author emphasized factors of price and quality. However, in practice, these factors are not applied to all aspects of society. In addition, there is no direct influence of cultural factors such as religion, culture, etc. on the decision making process. At the same time, culture, religion, etc., are viewed as external factors that have no real impacts on the consumer, which is the weakness of the model in behavioural research. According to Blackwell et al. (1993), the purchase process of the consumer went through two major processes: (1) information processing from perceptions, attention, comprehension, acceptance, memory to form information in the consumer memory; (2) purchasing decision making process from demand awareness, information search, selection evaluation, buying decision and post buying reaction. This process was influenced by inputs that are external stimuli and influencing factors such as individual characteristics and environmental factors. The behavioral patterns of buying has generated an increase in knowledge about consumer behavior and has been revised several times to increase the descriptive and explanatory relationship between the four components in the model as follows.  Decision making process: five basic steps in buying and consuming a product / service decision: (1) awareness, (2) alternatives, (3) evaluation of alternatives, (4) purchase and (5) results. In fact, it's not necessarily that every customer goes through these five steps, but it depends on the problem-solving process; customers may skip steps or change its sequence.  Input: consumers get information from marketing or non-marketing sources, this source of information affects the cognitive stage of the decision-making process. When customers have not made a specific decision, the search for information will continue and An Giang University Journal of Science – 2017, Vol. 5 (2), 32 – 39 34 will help them find alternatives that are more appropriate to their expectations.  Process information: this process includes the status, the customer's exposure: attention, awareness, acceptance, and congestion information the customer receives. The first person must understand the message, create space for his or her perceptions of this information, translate the stimuli and memorize the message by transferring the input information to memory.  Factors that affect the decision-making process are two factors: personal and environmental. Personal factors include: motivation, attitudes, lifestyles, personality, etc.; Social factors include: culture, reference group and family. The model of Blackwell et al. (1993) incorporated many factors influencing the buying process: lifestyle, culture, personality, etc (see Figure 1). However, the model did not indicate what shapes those/this factor? Why did different individuals make different buying decisions? The model also pointed to a number of factors that influence consumer behavior, which were quite complex, could affect retention in consumer memory and influenced their buying decision process. Figure 1. Behavioral patterns of buying (Blackwell et al., 1993) Phillip Kotler's consumer behavior model (2012) indicated that consumers before going to purchase decisions usually go through a five-stage process as Figure 2. An Giang University Journal of Science – 2017, Vol. 5 (2), 32 – 39 35 Figure 2. Consumer behavior model (Phillip Kotler, 2004) Analyzing these stages help to understand the factors that affect consumer behavior at different times and contexts as follows.  Problem recognition: The first step in the buying process is to recognize a consumer's desire for satisfaction. They need arises from internal and external stimuli. However, when recognizing demand, immediate or no response depends on other factors such as the importance of demand, urgency and economic ability.  Information search: When the urge of demand is strong enough, consumers begin to seek information to understand the product. The level of information search more or less depends on the power of the urge, the amount of information available initially, the ease level of search, the satisfactory level of the search. The impact of these sources of information varies depending on the type of products and customer characteristics.  Evaluation of alternatives: Once the brand of the product is known, the consumer will proceed with the next step of evaluating alternative alternatives to reach the brand selection decision to purchase.  Purchase decision: After evaluation, the consumer forms the intention to buy the product that is most highly rated and s/he comes to the decision to buy it. But in the line between the buying intention and buying decision, some issues may happen, which changes the purchasing decision. These issues can be other people’s views, opinions of family, friends, or other circumstantial factors such as insufficient money, the need to spend on other things.  Post-purchase behaviour: After the purchase, the consumer of that product often feels satisfied or dissatisfied. Consumers feel satisfied when the product meets their expectations well. If there is a need to buy the product again, they are ready to buy that brand again. On the contrary, if the product is not as expected, the consumer will be dissatisfied, exasperated and may occur such things as the return of the product, disseminating bad information about the trademark to others. Theory of planned behavior-TBP (Ajzen, 1991) showed that the behavior was determined by the intention to perform that behavior (see Figure 3). An Giang University Journal of Science – 2017, Vol. 5 (2), 32 – 39 36 Figure 3. Theory of planned behavior-TBP (Ajzen,1991) Ajzen’s theoretical framework (1991) indicated two main factors affecting the intention are personal attitudes and subjective norms. The theory of planned behavior comes from the limit of the behavior that human has little control over. The third factor that Ajzen argues to have affect on people’s intent is the perceived behavioral control which reflected the ease or difficulty of performing the behavior and whether not performing the behavior is controlled or restricted. Mc Neal’s theoretical framework of consumer behavior (1973) agrued that the model of consumer behavior is subject to environmental (where consumers are living in) influences (Figure 4). The activities of consumer behavior were affected by five factors, including event, need, tension state, cognition and action under the effect of environment. Figure 4. Basic model of consumer behavior (Mc Neal, 1973) An Giang University Journal of Science – 2017, Vol. 5 (2), 32 – 39 37 Based models/theoretical frameworks in above, the theory framework of Vietnamese’s consuming culture go through a five-stage process combined the influences of culture environmental as follows.  Consumer decision-making process: consumers will be influenced by a variety of factors before making a purchase decision. However, in normal shopping, consumers may skip a few factors and the impact of these sources of information varies depending on the type of products and customer characteristics.  Culture elements: Culture is expressed in all activities and fields of the society, communities, families, and individuals. Up to now, there are many different concepts of culture depending on different viewpoints and purposes in accordance with the research problem. The traditional values of sustainability such as ethnicity and religion help to establish consumer customs. In addition, there are a multitude of cultural factors that are easy to change and access from one market to another, and create new consumer trends. In a large culture there will be small cultural branches that have a uniformity of cultural values (i.e. different ethnic groups, different regions, and different religions) which are affected by local or indigenous culture. Researchers need to consider individual culture as the deepest cultural level in different culture levels affecting consumer behaviours, which is closely linked to conceptions, beliefs, behaviours, attitudes, etc. Each individual's personality is influenced by a variety of factors such as gender, age, income, and marital status. Culture influences the buying decision process so that they can have adaptive plans and strategies and discover new cultural trends to develop new products. They also need to develop new business methods more appropriate.  Social factors: consumer behaviors are influenced by social factors such as reference group (affect to person's perspectives, behaviours, lifestyle, and consumer behaviours), family (remarkable impact on personal consumption behaviours), and role and status (a person could have different role and position, and in each role, a person hold a position which reflects the respects of society on him/her and the role and position of a person will decisively affect on his/her shopping)  Personal factors: consumer behavior of a person is affected by personal characteristics, including age, occupation, economics status, lifestyle, and conception of self.  Psychological factors: consuming behavior of a person is affected by four basic psychological factors, including motivation, awareness, knowledge, belief and attitude.  Environment influences: consuming culture is affected by satisfication and dissatisfication of cosumers under the environment influences of event, need, tension state, cognition and action. To sum up, the theory framework of Vietnamese’s consuming culture is desmonstrated as Figure 5. An Giang University Journal of Science – 2017, Vol. 5 (2), 32 – 39 38 Figure 5. Theory framework of Vietnamese consuming culture The level of environmental influences highly depends the cover of triangle due to five-stage process. This proves that Vietnamese consuming culture will be strongly affected by the factors of personal and psychological due to environmental influences. 3. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION Although scholars have promoted many theoretical frameworks of consumer behavior, five models or theoretical frameworks in above still prioritized in many researches on consumer behavior/ consuming culture. However, these theoretical frameworks of consumer behavior have not suitable yet when apply to study on consumer behavior in Vietnam. 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