Antecedent conditions are situational characteristics that a consumer brings to a particular information-processing, purchase, or consumption environment. Antecedent conditions include economic resources, mood, and other emotional perceptions, such as fear, and they can shape the value in a situation by framing the events that take place.
Buying power - Found in the form of cash on hand, credit card spending limits, or money available by draft or debit card. Thus, consumer buying power may determine where people shop.
Consumer Budgeting - While the majority of consumers do not perform a formal budgeting process, consumers who do budget end up with different spending habits than those who do not. Even consumers who do not prepare a formal budget do perform mental budgeting, which is an accounting from memory for recent spending.
When consumers enter each exchange environment, they may have natural tendencies toward one shopping orientation or another. Gift shopping can dramatically shift a shopper's orientation and change the shopping experience altogether.
Each consumer brings their current mood to the particular consumption situation. Consumers in particularly bad moods may be prone to binge consumption, such as eating an entire bag of Matt's Chocolate Chip cookies. Mood can also affect shopping. The mood that consumers bring to the shopping environment can exaggerate the actual experience. Shoppers who go shopping in a bad mood are particularly prone to buying less and experiencing lower consumer satisfaction than consumers who are in good moods.
Consumers today live with the ever-present reminders of vandalism, crime, and even terrorism. Shopping malls, markets, airports, and other places where large numbers of consumers gather are consistently mentioned as potential terrorist targets providing another reason for consumers to feel less secure. Fearfulness can affect consumers in multiple ways:
Consumers who go shopping in a fearful mood will not go about their shopping in the same manner.
Fearful consumers will tend to buy less and enjoy the experience less.
Consumer may cope with the fear of shopping by utilizing non-store outlets, such as the Internet, as a seemingly safer means of doing business.
Retailers can enhance the shopping experience for consumers by making them feel safe in a number of ways, which are discussed in Exhibit 11.9