Consumer Buying Behavior Essay

Consumer Buying Behavior

Buying Behavior is the decision processes and acts of people involved in buying and using products (Kengthon, 2011).

Need to understand:

• Why consumers make the purchases that they make?

• What factors influence consumer purchases?

• The changing factors in our society.

Consumer Buying Behavior refers to the buying behavior of the ultimate consumer (Kengthon, 2011). A firm needs to analyze buying behavior for:

• Buyer’s reactions to a firms marketing strategy has a great impact on the firm’s success.

• The marketing concept stresses that a firm should create a Marketing Mix that satisfies (gives utility to) customers, therefore need to analyze the what, where, when and how consumers buy.

• Marketers can better predict

Examples include soft drinks, snack foods, milk etc.

• Limited Decision Making- buying product occasionally. When you need to obtain information about unfamiliar brand in a familiar product category, perhaps. Requires a moderate amount of time for information gathering. Examples include Clothes--know product class but not the brand.

• Extensive Decision Making/Complex high involvement, unfamiliar, expensive and/or infrequently bought products. High degree of economic/performance/psychological risk. Examples include cars, homes, computers, education. Spend alot of time seeking information and deciding.

Information from the companies MM; friends and relatives, store personnel etc. Go through all six stages of the buying process.

• Impulse buying, no conscious planning.

The purchase of the same product does not always provoke the same Buying Behavior. Product can shift from one class to the next.

For

Actual purchasing is only one stage of the process. Not all decision processes lead to a purchase. All consumer decisions do not always include all 6 stages, determined by the degree of complexity ( Bennett, 1976) as discussed below.

The 6 stages are:

1. Problem Recognition (awareness of need)--difference between the desired state and the actual condition. Deficit in assortment of products. Hunger--Food. Hunger stimulates your need to eat.

Can be stimulated by the marketer through product information--did not know you were deficient? I.E., see a commercial for a new pair of shoes, stimulates your recognition that you need a new pair of shoes.

2. Information search-- o Internal search, memory. o External search if you need more information. Friends and relatives (word of mouth). Marketer dominated sources; comparison shopping; public sources etc.

A successful information search leaves a buyer with possible alternatives, the evoked set.

Hungry, want to go out and eat, evoked set is o Chinese food o Indian food o Burger king o Klondike kates