Consumer Behaviour

What is consumer buying behaviour

  • The decision processes and purchasing activities of people who purchase products for personal or household use and not for business purposes
  • Customers’ overall opinions and attitudes toward a firm’s products have a great impact on the firm’s success
  • To find out what satisfies buyers, marketers must examine the main influences on what, where, when and how consumers buy

Why is it important?

  • By gaining a deeper understanding of the factors that affect buying behaviour, marketers are in a better position to predict how consumers will respond to marketing strategies

Consumer buying decision process
1) Problem recognition

  • occurs when a buyer recognises a different between a desired state and an actual condition
  • problem recognition can be rapid or very slow
  • some consumers are unaware of their needs
  • marketers use personnel, advertising and packaging to help trigger recognition of such needs or problems

What influences consumer behaviour?

2) Information Search
Internal search

  • buyers search their memories for product information
  • if they cannot retrieve information from memory, they then perform an external search
    External search
  • buyers seek informaiton from outside source
  • may focus on communication with friends or relatives
  • can involve comparison between brands
  • independent sources such as choice magazine

3) Evaluation of alternatives
Evoked set

  • A group of brands that a buyer views as
    alternatives for possible purchase
  • Consumers assign a greater value to a brand they have heard of than to one they have not
    Evaluative criteria
  • Objective and subjective characteristics that are important to a buyer – e.g. size, weight and dimensions of a laptop computer

4) Purchase

  • buyer chooses the product or brand to be bought
  • buyer chooses the seller
  • buyer negotiates the terms of the transaction
  • buyer makes the purchase - or terminates the process

5) Post purchase evaluation

  • after purchase, the buyer evaluates the product
    does its actual performance meet expected levels?
    cognitive dissonance
  • a buyer's doubts shortly after a purchase about whether the decision was the right one
  • also known as 'post purchase dissonance' and 'buyer's remorse'

Psychological factors

  • factors that in part determine people's general behaviour, thus influencing their behaviour as consumers
  • operate on buyers internally, but are acted on by outside forces

Social factors

  • the forces other people exert on one's buying behaviour

Situational factors

  • influences result from the circumstances, time and location that affect the consumer buying decision process

Perception

  • the process of selecting, organising and interpreting information inputs to produce meaning
  • information inputs are sensations received through the sense organs (sight, taste, hearing, smell and tough)

Motives

  • internal energising force that directs a person's behaviour toward satisfying needs or achieving goals
  • thirst/hunger
  • cold/hot
  • fear
  • success

Leanring

  • changes in an individual's thought processes and behaviour caused by information and experience
    sources of learning
  • behavioural consequences
  • information processing
  • experience

Attitude

  • an individual enduring evaluation of, feelings about and behavioural tendencies toward an object or idea
    Can be positive or negative
    three major components
  • cognitive - knowledge and information
  • affective - feelings a emotions
  • behavioural - actions regarding the object or idea

Self-concept

  • view of one's self
  • can be positive or negative
    Lifestyles
  • individual's pattern of living expresses through activities, interests and opinions

Roles

  • actions and activities that a person in particular position is supposed to perform based on expectations of the individual and surrounding persons
  • family role, work role, role in an organisation

Family influences

  • consumer socialisation - the process through which a person acquires the knowledge and skills to function as a consumer

Reference group

  • any group that positively or negatively affects a person's values, attitudes por behaviour
    Types of reference groups
  • membership: an individual actually belongs
  • aspirational: an individual aspires to belong
  • dissociative: an individual does not want to belong

Opinion leaders

  • a reference group member who provides information about a specific sphere that interests reference group participants
  • digital networks
    blogs
    wikis
    social networks

Culture

  • the accumulation of values, knowledge, beliefs, customs, objects and concepts that a society uses to cope with its environment and passes on to future generations
  • influences buying behaviour because it permeates our daily lives
  • cultural changes affect product development, promotion, distribution and pricing

Sub-cultures

  • groups of individuals whose characteristic values and behaviour patterns are similar, and difference from those of the surrounding culture
  • youth subculture, based on a sense of belonging and a common purpose
  • subcultures of consumption, based on common interests - e.g. Harley-Davidson owners group (HOGs)