Nature of Consumer Behaviour

Paper Consumer Behaviour

Introduction

Razor Gaming is as stated a company who specialises in gaming. Having their own gaming gear and generally target gamers. They targeted audience is mostly the PC environment, so gaming laptops, tablets and desktops. The products that they sell are mice, keyboards, mouse mats and game pads. The Razor products are all named after predatory or venomous animals. Razor was founded in 2005 in San Diego, California US. Its founders were Min-Liang Tan(now the CEO and creative director) and Robert Krakoff(Now President), after securing a huge investment from Hong Kong. It has its headquarters in both Singapore and San Francisco, California. In this paper I will be talking about how they use marketing in a consumers behaviour point of view.

Brand Image

Razer Gaming their slogan is for gamers by gamers. They sell professional gamers gear for gaming only. They tend to manufacture product that is intended for professional gamers. Razer are trying to be the Apple of the gaming industry by premium priced products. Razer uses their core expertise to leave a mark on that industry. Their products are utilitarian and value expressed. The gaming are intended for gaming and using their products. It can also be classified as hedonic, because casual gamers buy these products for their hobby. As games are classified as hedonic. Although in the professional scene such as in eSports and Twitch streamers these products become utilitarian. Their consumers have their reasons why they buy their product.

As we go through the consumer value frame work. The internal influences are off course personality, which the attitude towards the product is important. Knowledge is in an important factor in the attitude formation. Gamers need to know about the product. In the ABC-model. The two important factors are especially affective and cogitative. Razer is a cool product and its gives them an advantage to users who use don’t have decent gaming gear. Casual gamers have an experimental hierarchy because its intended for hedonic use.

For professional users it’s the standard learning hierarchy. Professional gamers get for example sponsored by razer and get a mouse for free. They start using it and see that the quality is actually great and will keep buying razer products. That is also why razer started growing. For The external factors; video gaming is a culture on its own more than 155 americans play video games, 4 out of 5 households have atleast one gaming device. 42 percent play each week more than 3 hours. In the early days of gaming mostly teens were playing video game.

Nowadays the average player is around 35 years. The first generation who grew u with gaming is maturing and its not only teenagers who play games. Also the social aspect plays an important factor. The gamers are a aspirational group. They associate themselves as gamers and use razer product to identify themselves as gamers. This can be a reaction to peer pressuring(streamers who are mostly the same age as them). Razer also have their own media where they can advertise their products on. But they mostly get their brand image from earned media(twitch, YouTube, esports).

Razer has an ethos appeal to it. The main gamers are mostly men, the logo of razer has 3 snakes and a green colour. Green is has a big appeal to men, since it one of the more likeable color for both men and woman. The three snakes is a big part of the brand’s image. Razer is known to deliver high-end product thus its trustworthy. The logo is attractive and has a high level of likeability.

The consumer builds a perception about razer based on its image as the world leading brand in gaming gear. It enforces by superior quality to the competition. The comfort of the using razer headsets is the best in its expertise. While the perception of the consumers starts to develop, the identity of the brand will be branded in to the heads of consumers.

We can use Maslov’s pyramid in to consideration because of how they advertise their product use the gaming culture so gamers can associate. The functional elements of the products what does it do? It enhances the gaming experience by giving their consumers a big advantage over other gamers. Moving up the pyramid we have the emotion element. How does it make me feel. Do I as a gamer like this product am I happy about the product. After we achieved these elements we can say did it change my life. The gamer did improve and can take out enemies much faster or do objectives more efficiently. And at last does razer let me identify in a certain group of gamers. That is pretty much the objective of razer the ability to feel connected to a social group. This is the pathos appeal having an emotional connection to the product.

Advertising

Razer Gaming advertises their products on a different way than other brands. They use the raze affiliate program. Its is a way of gamers earning small commissions by placing banners or on their website to refer them to the shop of razer. Once the visitor of the site makes a purchase through these banners or links they can earn money. It is completely free of charge to join the program. These commissions are paid on a monthly net sales. As I already stated earlier in the paper. They also advertise by using famous youtubers to unbox and talk about the product. Famous youtuber TheSyndicateProject started getting sponsored by razer and receiving free and latest stuff. All he has to do is talk about the product and talk about the product. Also the channel that I mentioned earlier dedicated unboxing videos about the product he got from razer. The youtuber in particular has now 10 million subscribers and got a huge reach thru the gaming industry.

Another method is sponsoring Twitch streamers. Giving them a headset and mouse and all they have to do is putting a banner on their stream or talk about it when they start the stream. For example this stream was made possible by razer gaming. These kinds of endorsements by “celebrities” have an Ethos appeal. The attractiveness of the brand. Also they sponsor big Esports event which will also raise the brand awareness. There are huge events like E3 or GameForce in Belgium where they will try and interact with future customers. This is more of an (Banks, 2018) ethos kind of feel where they try to convince gamers to buy their product.

They will try to convince them by letting them use their products on high-end computer where you actually can feel the difference. You will feel that the gear is trustworthy. It also enhances the psychogenic needs. They play more on ambition(becoming a better gamer), power(dominating the games you play) affections(the product will start to grow on the consumer) and information(giving more explanation).

Disadvantage

Due to the premium pricing of razer products it can scare of consumers. Why buy razer product when you can game on a regular keyboard or mouse. The fear of missing out is a big issue. Not every one can afford razer products. The fear factor is big disadvantage for razer. Razer is all social when peer pressuring come to a degree that people have to buy overpriced products when you have a substitute for it.

Conclusion

Razer is premium priced product, it has a big social influence. The product itself is already of big quality but the social factor and the peer-pressuring is a big asset of the brand. While razer is the leading gaming gear manufacturer they will keep the consumers reviews in mind.

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