he influence of different cultural, social, personal influence, media variables on consumer buying behavior. With these factors they also studies the brand equity of Coco Cola and Pepsi with various factors such as brand strength, brand performance etc. They also looked at sponsored events with celebrity endorsement campaigns. They used the quantitative approach as their methodology by using questioners they gathered information specific to Coco Cola and Pepsi consumers, trying to know what drives people to have Coke or Pepsi. They divided there sample in three different age groups and saw the life cycle stage of every respondent. The conclusion they reached was that their analysis, that they have drawn shows the following conclusion that advertising, social factors, brand and age all affect consumer preferences to some extent. The limitations to this study were that the researcher had preconceived notion about Pepsi and Cokes advertisement however there research focused more on advertisement as compared to other cultural and social factors.
社会因素很重要，但它们需要在营销和广告中持续存在，这样营销人员才能对目标群体有所了解。在一项关于“可口可乐或百事可乐；这就是问题”的研究中，研究人员研究了不同文化、社会、个人影响和媒体变量对消费者购买行为的影响。通过这些因素，他们还研究了可口可乐和百事可乐的品牌资产，以及品牌实力、品牌表现等各种因素。他们使用定量方法作为方法，通过问卷调查收集了可口可乐和百事可乐消费者的具体信息，试图了解是什么促使人们购买可口可乐或百事可乐。他们将样本分为三个不同的年龄组，并观察每个受访者的生命周期阶段。他们得出的结论是，他们的分析表明，广告、社会因素、品牌和年龄都会在一定程度上影响消费者的偏好。这项研究的局限性在于，研究人员对百事可乐和可口可乐的广告有着先入为主的概念，但与其他文化和社会因素相比，研究更多地关注广告。
Reference groups and formal groups form part of the social factor that influences consumer buying behavior. “In Social Comparison and Informal Group Influence”(George, 1976), according to a theory of Festinger which states that individual have a habit of comparing themselves with others and see the consequence of their behaviors. With social comparison ones evaluation about themselves increases or decreases and due to this people give themselves internal rewards. A consumer can thus use two ways to approach his group, either through a reflected appraisal, or through a comparative appraisal. The study was carried out by sending out questionnaires to 408 females who used cosmetics. The hypothesis that were tested by this survey was that is a positive relationship between consumers communication with informal groups and a need to obtain information from them, secondly, there’s a positive relationship with the credibility of the source and thirdly the greater the consumer is associated with the group the greater the influence on purchase decision. The information gathered supported all of the above hypothesis, thus the findings can be useful for marketers in the sense that if they want to penetrate a market, they need to find out if similar characteristics exist in it, since consumers then are significantly exaggerated by the behavior of their social group, or people they find are similar to them. However, this study cannot be used by the marketers who can’t operate in such a market where no similarities among customers.
参考群体和正式群体是影响消费者购买行为的社会因素的一部分。“在社会比较和非正式群体影响中”，根据费斯廷格的理论，该理论指出，个人有将自己与他人进行比较的习惯，并看到自己行为的后果。通过社会比较，人们对自己的评价会增加或减少，因此人们会给自己内部奖励。因此，消费者可以使用两种方法来接近自己的群体，要么通过反映评估，要么通过比较评估。这项研究是通过向408名使用化妆品的女性发放问卷进行的。本次调查验证的假设是，消费者与非正式群体的沟通和从他们那里获取信息的需求之间存在积极关系，其次，与信息来源的可信度存在积极关系；第三，消费者与群体的联系越密切，对购买决策的影响越大。收集到的信息支持了上述所有假设，因此，这些发现对营销人员来说是有用的，因为如果他们想进入市场，他们需要找出市场中是否存在相似的特征，因为消费者会被他们的社交群体的行为或他们发现的人与他们相似。然而，这项研究不能被那些不能在这样一个客户之间没有相似之处的市场中运作的营销人员使用。
Social factors such as price, quality, product attributes and other factors influence a person’s mind set for purchase decisions. “Explaining the Choice of Organic Produce: Cosmetic Defects, Prices, and Consumer” (Gary D. Thompson and Julia Kidwell, 1998) explains how consumer’s decision differ in buying organic or normal quality products. The researcher used random utility and discrete choice models to see how consumers choose between organic verses a predictable product. Choice between the two items was measured on a scale of price, attributes of the product as well as a person’s income, quality of the product an
