The Consumer Buying Behaviour - Report Example

The Consumer Journal Report Contents Introduction 3 of External and Internal Influences 3 Perception 3 Learning 3 Motivation 4 Personality 4 Attitude 4 Group Influence 4 Culture 4 Observation and Analysis 5 Conclusion 7 Reference List 8 Introduction Consumers are recognized as the centre of any marketing strategy or tactic. As such, it is critical to understand the specific and more personal influences which affect these consumers while making purchase decision. The decision making process of consumers is itself complex with multiple stages. The first stage is recognizing where an individual develops a want or need to be satisfied. For example, a customer wants to upgrade his/her lifestyle by purchasing a car. The next step is the search process where the customer looks for available options such as available car brands under his/her budget. This is followed by evaluation of alternatives, where the customer seeks the best deal satisfying personal parameters such as engine, speed, size and price. The next two stages are purchase decision as well as post purchase behavior (Schiffman and Kanuk, 2005). An important point to be noted here is that at every stage, the customer is influenced by certain external and internal factors, affecting the decision process. In the current paper, these external and internal factors will be described in detail. Description of External and Internal Influences Perception Perception is the process information is interpreted so that it makes sense in the brain. Being an internal factor, perception has a major influence on the purchase process. In general, purchasing car is a high involvement decision process involving a lengthy time frame and numerous external and internal factors. Perception for services and products are developed through various sources such as television, internet and other external sources. Learning Learning can be described as any change across the organization and content of the long-term memory of an individual. Consumer behavior can be largely described as a learned behavior. In general, learning results from processing of information and results in memory change. The information is processed from external and internal stimuli. Motivation Motivation is a force which activates and energizes the behavior of a customer, provides direction and purpose for that behavior. According to Maslow’s motivation theory, these needs can be critical or basic. Personality Personality can be described as a set of diverse behavioral tendencies and internal traits resulting in behavioral patterns that become consistent after some time. The basic traits of a consumer affects his/her personality and in turn, their decision making process. Attitude Attitudes can be emotional feelings, mental positions, unfavorable or favorable evaluations as well as action tendencies of customers towards services, products, ideas, companies, institutions or issues. It is a learned and enduring predisposition which forces an individual to react in a particular manner. The three major components of attitude are cognitive, affective and behavioral. Cognitive behavior is the knowledge and information while buying car. Affective component is the feeling or emotions about the product. This can be influencing by culture, family or society. Similarly, behavioral influence includes situation and intention of the customer. Group Influence Group is a set of two or more people sharing similar values, norms and beliefs and their behavior is generally interdependent. Groups provide rewards, identity and information. Influential groups include reference groups as well as aspirational groups exerting strong influence on members as well as non-members in their purchase, consumption and communication process. Culture Culture includes factors influencing a customer’s behavior and thought process such as law, knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, custom, traditions and values among others. Cultural values influence the norms and sanctions ultimately influencing the consumption pattern. Factors that are other-oriented such as romance, collectivism, child or adult and age influence the decision making. Observation and Analysis The analysis here will describe my observation of the processes and behavioral traits occurring during the purchasing of a car. The person involved in the purchase of the car was my friend While purchasing a car, my friend was selectively exposed to information through various sources which affected his perception towards the brands he was expecting to buy from. This selective exposure gave rise to selective retention and selective distortion. I observed that my friend has been exposed to a particular car brand more than other brands in the same category. This car brand was BMW SUV. This might have resulted in my friend retaining the brand in his mind while searching for the brand in a showroom as well as during internet search, before taking final decision. Selective retention was also affected by my friend’s personal beliefs and feelings. For instance, car brands from nations such as US and Japan are considered to be qualitatively better him compared to other car brands from developing nations. Apart from that, the perception was influenced through advertisements such as full page advertisements which were retained more compared to half page advertisements in the mind of my friend (Schiffman and Kanuk, 2005). In case of high-involvement products such as car, learning is highly motivated. For instance, my friend was a first time buyer, and he tried to gain more knowledge about car purchasing process from experienced buyer from his office and other social groups. He also learned about the car through various sources such as friends, salespeople, online communities and company website. I found that an effective way of attracting my friend through learning process was by offering test drives. Learning was also influenced by reinforcement, stimulus repetitions as well as importance such as brand value, brand equity and overall popularity of the multiple car brands he had in his mind before final selection (Assael, 2011). If marketers are able to differentiate their brand from others, this will create a stimulus discrimination and willingness by the customer, such as my friend, to learn more about the car brand. Purchasing a car triggered critical motivation in my friend as it was related to self-esteem as well as self-actualization in my friend. It was an effective motivation for buying a high-involvement product such as car as my friend wanted to satisfy family needs of travelling together. It was also a preservation motive for my friend, focusing on increasing status in the office or society. The purchase motive for a car was identified through latent and manifest motives. For instance, manifest motives while purchasing a car were found to be size, high quality and peer-influence. Latent motives were found to be more powerful and popular among friends and society. A car which successfully fulfills the manifest and latent motives will therefore be the final choice for my friend. The overall personality exerted influence on the overall purchase intension of my friend. This is due to the fact that my friend was an extrovert person and he prefers to be around people, groups and thus, world prefer buying a big can such as SUV or Sedan rather than a small hatchback. Similarly, my friend is a conscientious person and would opt for a car satisfying his precise requirements such as efficiency and speed rather than social status. A bunch of human traits or characteristics which can be related to a brand are known as brand personality. For instance, in this case my friend is tough and daring and would relate to a car having a rugged brand personality, such as BMW SUV. Similarly, my friend belongs to upper class and has a charming personality and would prefer car brands which are sophisticated such as Skoda or BMW (Assael, 2011). While purchasing a car, overall intention such as luxury, need or meeting family needs, influences the model type, price and even design and color. In this case, my friend is from an upper class income group and is newly married. However, being a young and enthusiastic executive, my friend ideally preferred mid- high segment SUV or a Sedan, such as BMW, which would satisfy his travel and family needs (Chidambaram and Alfred, 2007). Attitude towards a car brand was also altered because of celebrities endorsing the product, as the celebrity was positively perceived by my friend. My friend has many small and large groups and I observed that few small but critical groups influenced the purchase decision of my friend. For instance, my friend had a small group with frequent interactions, and high-involvement purchase decision such as car was influenced by the members of that group. Situational changes also influenced the reference group of my friend, and as my friend was a mid-level executive, he was influenced by his colleagues, old friends and immediate family members more than his weekend gym group or college friends. Groups also exerted normative influence such as fulfilling expectations of group for gaining reward. I observed that perceived values and norms of a particular group was that bigger cars are more comfortable and powerful compared to compacts. This perceived norms of his core group also influenced my friend’s own value and attitude towards the purchase decision (Carol and William, 2005). I also observed that culture had a critical influence on my friend’s purchasing process. For instance, being a young executive, my friend preferred bold car brands such as Toyota or BMW SUVs (Chidambaram and Alfred, 2007). Factors that are environment-oriented such as status vs. performance, extent of cleanliness and orientation towards nature also influenced his decision making process. For example, my friend is a constant supporter of environment awareness and pollution reduction campaigns and I observed that he would opt for similar cars such as Ford Eco Sport, which are known to emit minimum pollution and other emissions. Self-oriented values in my friend included job type, seriousness towards life, future plans as well as approach towards life (Marieke, 2004). Conclusion The objective of the above report was to analyze the internal and external factors influencing the decision making process. Since the product, car, is a high involvement process, the decision process will be critical and lengthy, involving multiple stages. The above analysis suggested that both internal and external factors exert heavy influence on the decision process. Internal factors such as motivation, personality, perception and attitude are enduring and are influenced by external factors such as culture, tradition, groups and external environment in which the individual lives. Therefore, marketers need to properly understand and analyze these external and internal factors so that the decision making process by the customer is beneficial for both customer and the marketer. Reference List Assael, H., 2011. Consumer Behavior and Marketing Action. New Delhi: Cengage Learning. Carol, J. G. and William, C. L., 2005. Social Facilitation: Affect and Application in Consumer Buying Situations. Journal of Food Products Marketing, 11(1), pp.75–82. Chidambaram, B. and Alfred, J. 2007. A study on brand preference of passenger car with reference to Coimbatore city. Indian journal of marketing, 34(9), p. 30. Marieke, D., 2004. Consumer behaviour and culture: Consequences for global marketing and advertising. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Schiffman, G. and Kanuk, L. L., 2005. Consumer Behavior. Prentice Hall of India: New Delhi. Read More