Consumer Decision-Making Process: A Study On The Process Of The Consumer Behavior

Consumer Behavior

Consumer behavior is the process consumers go through when they make purchases and it involves factors that influence their decision and usage. This study is conducted to understand the customer's behavior in buying the products from a particular large format departmental store by analyzing some details. What influences a customer in a purchase situation? Why did he purchase the specific product? Was it for price or quality? Did he ask friends or family for help in hiss decision? Did an ad catch his eye? Consumers are constantly evolving in their buying behavior based on their life situations. Consumer behavior is the process consumers go through when they make purchases and it involves factors that influence their decision

A departmental store has to understand these steps in order to properly move the consumer to the product and close the sale.
Consumer Decision-Making Process
The consumer decision-making process consists of five steps, which are need recognition, information search, evaluations of alternatives, purchase and post-purchase behavior. These steps can be a guide for marketers to understand and communicate effectively to consumers. One note is that consumers do not always move in the exact order through the process; it can depend on the type of product, the buying stage of the consumer and even financial status.
Need Recognition
The very first step in the process is when consumers realize that they have a need for something. Marketers want to create an imbalance in consumers between their present status and their preferred status. This imbalance will create a need and make a consumers search out and buy a product or service. Need recognition occurs when a consumer is faced with a difference between an actual and a desired state. A need can occur immediately and can be a very basic impulse that consumers experience. This is called an internal

Consumer behaviour helps us understand why and why not an individual purchases goods and services from the market.
There are several factors which influence the buying decision of consumers, cultural factors being one of the most important factors.
What are Cultural Factors ?
Cultural factors comprise of set of values and ideologies of a particular community or group of individuals. It is the culture of an individual which decides the way he/she behaves. In simpler words, culture is nothing but values of an individual. What an individual learns from his parents and relatives as a child becomes his culture.
Example - In India, people still value joint family system and family ties. Children in India are conditioned to stay with their parents till they get married as compared to foreign countries where children are more independent and leave their parents once they start earning a living for themselves.
Cultural factors have a significant effect on an individual’s buying decision. Every individual has different sets of habits, beliefs and principles which he/she develops from his family status and background. What they see from their childhood becomes their