Consumer preferences and marginal utility, general concepts

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Consumer preferences - is a learning tool demand, which allows you to identify which products and how much in demand among the target audience.Decisions regarding the consumption of specific customer benefits and are the foundation of the market demand.Understanding the needs of your potential buyer - the key to getting a guaranteed profit.Because marketing studies which aim at identifying these preferences, relevant and at the planning stage of production, and at all stages of production, including the control of its quality.Of course, only one consumer preference can not provide accurate information sufficient to predict how demand will be in production.Because the demand is influenced by many factors.

Consumer preferences can be measured.With their analysis uses the concept of marginal utility.It was used more than 150 years ago, a German Gossen, whose followers became the founders of the Austrian school of mathematics and in the economy.It was the first time Gossen so closely to study consumer preferences and marginal utility to determine it is an additional utility derived from each successive consumed goods.A classic example - a lone settler in the forest and a few bags of grain.Then the first bag is designed to save him from starvation, the fifth - to feed a parrot, entertaining host their chatter.Clearly, in this case, the utility will be the fifth bag limit.

based on the experience and psychological observations of the economists of the 19th century.It was derived the law of diminishing marginal utility.It has been found that as a definite utility is saturated and decreases the value of things in the eyes of its owner.Does the marginal utility of the market price?Yes, of course, because the price is determined by including the marginal utility of the last of the goods consumed.So, the less available product to meet the more complex the need for it - the higher the marginal utility, and consequently, and the price.As this law is related and consumer preferences?It's simple: the buyer is constantly weighing the marginal utility of the goods and compares the way different benefits, compares them with each other.If the item loses its usefulness, the buyer will replace it with another.

usually considered consumer preferences applied not to one particular product, and the entire group.We study the range of goods, systematically consumed a certain target audience.We are talking about a complex study of the preferred products: shoes, clothes, food.At the same time to influence the preferences of objective factors include (own income, quality and value of the goods) and subjective (personal tastes).

the study and measurement of consumer preferences is most convenient to use graphs.If used in their construction cardinal approach, the schedule or the total marginal utility is dependent on the amount of consumption of the goods.It is assumed that the buyer ranks benefits within their basket of consumption on the level of their usefulness.

ordinal approach involves the construction of indifference curves, ie those graphs in which each point - equivalent to the consumer benefits from the same level of utility.More information about these approaches to measuring consumer preferences and schedules examples can be found in the specialized literature.

next step in the assessment of demand - correlation revealed preferences to the financial possibilities, iebudget analysis.Consumer choice is the result of optimization where the buyer distributes the revenue so that expended on the last item, currency gives the same marginal utility.

As consumer reaction to changes in prices and incomes can combine them in groups according to various characteristics (income, types of consumption) and graphically display and individual market demand.