Culture is one of the factors that influence behaviour. Culture can be defined as our attitudes and beliefs. It is developed along with age in the society. For an individual growing up, a child is influenced by their parents, brothers and sisters. They learn about their religion and culture which helps them to develop opinions, attitudes and beliefs. These factors will influence a buying behaviour of the consumer, other factors like friends or people they look up may also influence their choices of purchasing a particular product. Culture is the most basic cause of a person’s wants and behaviour. Culture is learned from family, church, school, peers, and colleagues. It reflects basic values, perceptions, wants, and behaviours. Cultural shifts create opportunities for new products or may otherwise influence consumer behaviour.
According to Penn`s article, she states that cultural influences can affect the buying behaviour of the individual. A person’s culture is his set of values and beliefs learned in the context of a community. These values and beliefs lead to certain buying behaviours. Your social class based on your occupation, income and education can influence buying behaviour as can your association in a group such as family and friends at work or at school. Often, there is an opinion leader in the group who has influence over the buying behaviour of others because of specialized knowledge of sheer force of personality (Kumar & Jain, 2017:46).
People’s social status plays an important role in the consumer buying behaviour. Social class distinctions allow companies to position their products to appeal to certain social classes. The easiest example is automobiles. Marketing for Mercedes Benz is completely different from the marketing campaign from Honda or Toyota because they target individuals from the upper class. Another powerful and easy factor that companies manipulate in their marketing efforts is the social factor. To be part of a group, or represent a certain lifestyle, you must have certain possessions. Personal and Psychological factors are very specific realms and the target market segment becomes even smaller. That means even less amount of people can use these products. This reflects in higher prices to account for the decrease in volume (Martinez-Caraballo, Salvador, Berne, ; Gargallo, 2013:57).
Purwanto (2013:71) defines sub-culture as a smaller part of a culture or groups of people with shared value systems based on common life experiences and situations. Sub-cultures are described as possessing unique beliefs, values and customs that set them apart from other members of society (Motale, 2015:34)). Sub-culture provides specific ways of recognition and socialisation for their members (Kotler ; Keller, 2012:175).
Music can be defined as a pleasant sound that impacts consumers’ conscious and unconscious decisions (Hussain & Ali 2015:36). Soundhariya and Sathyan (2015:248) are of the view that soft, light music soothes customer’s minds and helps them make good decisions. Idris (2013:23) is of the view that background music is the art of arranging sounds continuously, unified, and evocative composition through the melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre.Teik, Mhao, Juniaty, Jhet, Wong, Rick, ; Gullantheivello (2015:137) stated that younger shoppers who were exposed to background music tended to spend more time shopping, while older shoppers showed similar tendencies in the presence of foreground music. Based on Kulkarni (2012:152) study’s recommendations, retailers should carefully select a music genre, style and tempo from their marketing toolbox.
Impact of consumer purchasing behaviour
Brand loyalty and brand equity
As stated by Baskar and Sundaram (2014: 113) creating and sustaining durable brands and faithful customers have become an extremely difficult task in the competitive environment of the modern world. Larger rates of return and brand loyalty have recently been found to be absolutely related. Market share of any company increases with a rise in brand commitment.
In India, Braskar and Sundaram (2014: 113) used the brand equity in which they combined the variables like brand awareness, brand association, perceived quality, brand trust and brand commitment to form what they termed as a macro term (Kumar, Dash & Purwar, 2013: 142). Baskar and Sundaram (2014: 116) found a substantial positive association between brand attributes and consumers acquiring brands, a significant association between demographic factors and consumers purchase of brands, a substantial relationship between ethical concerns of shoppers and purchase of brands, an important association between brand equity and consumers purchase of brands, an association between brand real reviews and consumers purchase of brands and finally an association between brand real reviews and brand equity. Furthermore (Kumar, Dash & Purwar, 2013: 142) found a high positive significant romantic relationship between brand awareness, recognized quality, brand association, and brand loyalty with brand equity. The literature review cited above have all been based on research in India and as it is known that culture has a great influence on attitudes, therefore, it is likely that in some cultures brand image might not exactly affect consumer behaviour as in India.
