Consumer Behaviour - Holiday Decision Making Process

Solomon, M. R., Zaichkowsky, J. L., & Polegato, R. (2011). Consumer behaviour: Buying, having, and being (5th Can. ed.). Toronto: Pearson Prentice Hall

Rational consumers know what he or she wants and makes the most out of an available opportunity. Are consumers really rational or can they sometimes be irrational? Economist must analyze the decisions of the rational consumer by exploring the concept of utility, opportunity cost, and the demand in order to determine or explain how or why a consumer is either rational or irrational. This should be more understood and looked into because a clear understanding of consumer behavior will help to accurately predict consumer response to marketing innovations.

This paper will cover the study of behavioral economics and its effect in consumer decision-making. The impact of human factors, importance of making rational decisions, and how all this ties into the economic market will be discussed in the report. This paper will include models, tables, and real world examples of a decision making process as it relates to behavioral economics and consumer buying process. The usefulness of the utility theory will be illustrated as an example pertaining to consumer behavior. The findings will show how consumer rational is

There is just something intriguing about how consumers think and how they decide whether to make certain purchases or not. A lot of this has to do with the way businesses market their products to buyers. There are some psychological aspects to why consumers behave the way that they do. These buyers can be swayed by factors such as the environment around them, their feeling about particular brands, how the products are advertised, key words, and the level of knowledge and understanding they possess.

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.

Once there is the decision to consume or purchase good s or services the common factor then becomes the need for that product which is at times evaluated based on attainability and price. In many situations if consumers are not motivated by the need to purchase then the possibility lies that they will not purchase. There may be different justifications that consumers internalize when making the decision to purchase a particular product at its given price. Different decisions supports the need to purchase a product such as

Consumer behavioural models describe the decision-making or choice process of consumers. Comprehensive models of consumer’s behaviour include Nicosia model13, Howard Seth model14, Sheth family decision making15, Bettman information processing model and the Seth-New-Gross model16.

Psychological factors affect the way consumers think and behave while making a buying decision. For example some consumers do compulsive purchases because of their mood, which often are completely irrational. According to Black, Donald W. (2007), Compulsive buying disorder (CBD) is characterized by excessive shopping cognitions and buying behavior that leads to distress or impairment.

Consumer behavior 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. Consumer buying behavior is influenced by four key set of buyer characteristics: cultural, social, personal, and psychological (Kotler). In other words it is the interplay of forces that takes place during consumption process within the consumer self and his environment. The interaction takes place between three elements knowledge, affect and behavior. It starts from pre-purchase activities and continues till post purchase experience.

It plays a very important role and position in marketing decision making. It can be explained as a tendency of making “unreflective”, spontaneous, immediate, kinetic, unplanned and sudden purchases. Impulse buying has got two parts- cognitive and affective where cognitive is related with planning and latter one with situational factors leading to an impulse purchase. It provides hedonic reinforcement and reduces overload of selection. It is revealed that cognitive component of impulse buying is negatively related with subjective wellbeing, whereas affective component is associated to negative affect and customer susceptibility to interpersonal influence. It was concluded by exploring relation of impulse buying with individual traits.

It may happen that not all needs cause “action”, sometimes the intensity is too low the means for its fulfillment are lacking. The next step is to search for alternatives. When the consumer feels the need to purchase a product or service, he stands in front of the necessity of searching for goods and services. By means of which a need is met. At this step there are two levels of consumer involvement in the process of finding information on the product, resulting in breakdown: consumer cognitively engaged (characterized by high involvement) and consumer not involved (characterized by low involvement). According to marketing researchers seeking alternatives is the most important step in making decisions, because at this point the consumer makes a choice of product and a particular brand. The customer can look for information about the product through the media such as newspapers, radio, television, mail, direct mail, as well as advertising and promotions, and on the advice of friends, neighbors and family. The last step before making a purchase is to judge alternatives. The consumer after the stage of looking and selecting all available alternatives, analyzes them, and determines the criteria that will be used in the selection. When a consumer judges the various alternatives according to selected criteria, they must make the integration of these assessments

Many acts of consumption are based not so much on needs, but on wants. Understanding the consumer’s behavior and needs are necessary for the

Let me ask you first how many times a day does you act like a consumer? If we stop to think about it, we find that the entire day is filled with consumption and consumption decisions. What should I wear, what will I eat for breakfast? How can simple decision be so important to society? Consumers answers these question by choosing the options that offer the most value. Consumer behavior is really all about value. (Babin/Harris, pg1)

Consumer Behavior, why not Customer Behavior? V1.0 © NCC Education Limited Consumer Behavior The behavior that consumers display in (1) searching for, (2) purchasing, (3) using, (4) evaluating, and (5) disposing of products and services that they expect will satisfy their needs. The Female Brain $-€-£ Harvard University’s N E F- C . .

Consumer behavior is an extensive variety of study about the choice making procedures that a buyer set aside a few minutes of making a purchase. As indicated by Kotler et al, (2009) "Purchaser behavior is the investigation of how people or gatherings purchase, utilize and discard merchandise, administrations, thoughts or experience to fulfill their needs or needs". And Kotler et al. (2008) likewise expressed that "They are amazingly attempting to research the customer purchasing behaviour to figure out what customers purchase, where and how they purchase, when and why they purchase. It is simpler for analysts to discover the responses for what, how, where, when and a number of consumer purchase however it is not that much simple to discover why they purchase. The reason is "the answers are regularly bolted inside of the purchaser 's head". As indicated by above articulations, it is not simple to discover why consumer purchases a specific item or administration and it ought to be unique in relation to merchandise to