A Consumer's Buying Behaviour Essay

Word-of-mouth is the major factor to help people make decisions on buying high-involvement products (Gu, Park, & Konana 2012, p. 182).

Buyer’s behavior is strongly influenced by members of their family. Personal factors can also affect the consumer behavior. Some of the important personal factors that influence the buying behavior are: lifestyle, economic situation, occupation, age, personality and self-concept. Age and life-cycle have potential impact on the consumer buying behavior. The occupation of a person has significant impact on his buying behavior. Consumer economic situation has great influence on his buying behavior. If the income and savings of a customer is high then he will purchase more expensive products. On the other hand, a person with low income and savings will purchase inexpensive products. Lifestyle of customers is another import factor affecting the consumer buying behavior. There are four important psychological factors affecting the consumer buying behavior. These are: perception, motivation, learning, beliefs and attitudes. The level of motivation also affects the buying behavior of customers. Every person has different needs such as physiological needs, biological needs, and social needs. Customer possesses specific belief and attitude towards various products. Since such beliefs and attitudes make up brand image and affect consumer buying behavior; therefore, marketers are interested in them.

Research suggests that customers go through a five-stage decision-making process when making any purchase. This is summarised in the diagram below:

Group forces influence buying because there may be a complex set of smaller decisions made or influenced by several individuals. The degree of involvement of each member varies. Three questions are taken into consideration when a decision is being considered, which organizational members take part in the buying process, what is each member’s relative influence in the decision, and what criteria are important to each. All of the deciders from Gentech worked as a group on the purchasing decision each had an involvement and came to a decision as a group.

Understanding consumer behaviour is essential to succeed in business. As Solomon et al. (2013) stresses, businesses exist to satisfy consumer’s needs. By identifying and understanding the factors that influences their customers, firms have the opportunity to develop a more efficient strategy, marketing message and advertising campaigns that is more in line with the needs and ways of thinking of their target consumers (Perreau, 2015).

Finance affects consumers’ decisions when you want to purchase a product but the good is more than the amount of cash you have available. Then you’ll have to take a loan to purchase the item. The interest rate, how easily the money can be borrowed, level of savings and the cost of the money loaned will decide whether or not a consumer will purchase the good. Examples of items when a person might have to organise finance are cars and houses.

Such a bold position requires a new approach to marketing.  The authors present a thesis of the Influence Mix, which introduces that there are three influences on consumer decision-making — the individual’s prior preferences, beliefs and experiences (P), other people and information services in the form of reviews and

There are also two types of social influences, normative and informative, that can affect a consumer’s purchase decision. A normative influence is the desire to conform to the expectations of another. An informative influence is to accept and trust information obtained as reality. (Bishop & Myers 1974). According to Lam & Meyers 1978, normative and informative influences are both relevant when purchasing a car as an individuals opinions can be influenced by group discussion. It is evident that normative social influences have a greater influence on groups as this is when an individual believes that conforming may have positive consequences and not conforming may have negative consequences. Whereas, informational social influences is often when we care about getting the right answer and trying to be rational. Both normative and informative influences affect the consumer purchase decision of purchasing a car.

Consumer behavior is the most important factor which we need to concentrate. The more we understand this factor the more success for our business. In our case, we focus on the following elements:

Understanding consumer buying behavior entails marketing, relationships, and consumer behavior. Consumer behavior comprises all the consumer decisions and activities connected with the choosing, buying, using and disposing of goods and services. Marketers must pay very close attention to consumer behavior that occurs before the purchase and after the particular product has been used. Studying consumer habits is one of the steps in marketing search and analysis. In addition to other basic principles of consumer buying habits, marketers also need to study the decision and actions of real people. Until recent history the study of consumer behavior was focused on generalized consumer decisions. With

Consumer behaviour is the study of how individuals, groups and organizations select, buy, use and dispose of goods, services, ideas or experiences to satisfy their needs and wants. The emerging costumer trends play an important role in analysing the marketing opportunities. A consumer buying behaviour is influenced by cultural, social and personal factors. The consumer passes through five stages of the buying decision process: Problem Recognition, Information Search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision and post purchase behaviour. This model is important for anyone making marketing decision and customer pass through all stages in every purchase.

There are four main factors that influence the consumer’s behavior; cultural, social, personal, and physiological. These factors determine what the consumer will buy, why they buy an item, and if they will be a return customer.

Consumer decision-making is needs-based. Consequently, the process of understanding consumers does not so much rest on identifying the behavioural patterns of a group and then choosing to pitch a product to them, but rather on identifying the specific need which is common to certain people and accordingly striving to satisfy that need (Brady, 2010).

An element to consider is that the buyer is not necessarily the user of the product and may have influences from others. Some consumers are quite loyal to the same brand, making the decision quite routine. In some instances some consumers might not need to make a decision and knows exactly what they want. Other factors that can influence consumers could range from lifestyle, knowledge, attitude, personalities and even roles they play e.g. if the consumer were to buy snack food for a party they may choose a higher quality product that he would choose when selecting for themselves. Motivation also plays a major role where consumers would look at financial position, time constraints and value for money.

Consumer behavior is the behavior that consumers display in searching for, purchasing, using, evaluating, and disposing of, products and services. The study of consumer behavior as a separate marketing discipline all started when marketers realized that consumers did not always react as marketing theory suggested they would. Many consumers rebel at using the identical products that everyone else used, instead they prefer differentiated products that they feel reflect their own special needs, personality and lifestyles.