Buyer Behaviour: Analysis of the Ritz Hotel - Assignment Example

BUYER BEHAVIOUR - ANALYSIS OF THE RITZ HOTEL By Location Buyer Behaviour - Analysis of the Ritz Hotel The Ritz Hotel is a 5-star hotel that is situated in Piccadilly in the English capital of London. Its most prominent facility is the palm court. It also has some other famous facilities such as the Rivoli Bar. The Ritz Hotel also has private dining rooms and Antoinette suites and rooms. The hotels also have a casino in its basement that is known by the name the Ritz Club. Their casino is quite unique, especially due to the fact that they always charge an entry fee and also have very high minimum bets. In this industry customer preference is very important, thus making consumer motivation, perceptions, learning and attitude formation very important to the Ritz Hotel in London. With reference to the Ritz Hotel this paper aims at evaluating how consumer motivation, perceptions, learning and attitude formation could influence purchasing. In order to attract the maximum number of customers, it is important for a business to have the knowledge of how rational consumers will make their decisions on consumptions. Consumers usually have specific desires and preferences that can always be represented by a numerical utility function. In the choices made by consumers, it can always be said that the they intend to solve an optimization problem. The optimization of choice usually has three components, namely: the object of choice, which refer to the specific thing being chosen; the objective function, which refers to the purpose the object is supposed to serve; and the constraints, which basically restrict a consumer’s choice of certain products (Foxall 2004, p. 92). In making choices, consumers are always inhibited by budget constraint. Budget constraint implies that consumers can only consume what they can afford. In relation budget constraint it can be said that the Ritz being a 5-star hotel and having the pricing policies is likely to be unattractive to low income earners. According to the Maslows hierarchy of needs, the choice of a consumer can also be affected by how much the product or service is of importance to their life(Tyagi & Kumar 2004, p. 111) However, Ritz Hotel is likely to be highly favored by user preference. In a situation where a consumer’s choice is not hindered by budget constraint they are likely to choose the services offered by the Ritz Hotel because of the high quality. For example, high minimum bets and entry fee for the casino have not hindered those who can afford it from visiting the casino. The preference will likely be as a result of the completeness and transitivity of the services offered by the hotel. In accordance to Freudian Theory, human beings will always be forced by the Cathexis to go for what they need, especially in the cases that they have the capability of getting them (Wadman, 2000, p. 145).One thing that has made it possible for the Ritz Hotel to remain competitive is the fact that they are able to provide services that are complements of each other. The restaurant, the casino, club, rooms and suites, all complement each other. Often people never really buy their exact preferences. In some cases they might be forced to settle for something else if in any is neither affected by preference nor price. For instance, a person might be in a situation where they have the capability and willingness of paying for a service offered by a hotel. At the same time it might not be conversant with any of the services that are available in the market (Ramesh Kumar 2009, p. 123). In such a case, it has always been noticed that there are some factors such as name or even the alphabetical order appearance of the name. Some names can also be attracting to some consumers as compared to others. There are some psychological factors that usually affect the behavior of consumers. Convincing a consumer that the products or services that a business organization provides are exactly what they need is always the main goal of a marketing professional. There are some psychological tenets that a marketer can take advantage of in the process of convincing consumers that their product and services are the best option that they would ever have. The tenets usually have the ability to explain and predict exactly what people would like to consume (Batra & Kazmi 2008, p. 201). There are four psychological factors that usually affect consumers’ decisions to spend money on specific things. Consumer buying behavior is always motivated by their needs. The higher the need that the consumer has for a specific thing the higher the possibility that they will spend money on it. Therefore, as an hotel Ritz are right to offer accommodation services because they know for sure that people will definitely need them at some point. Consumer motivation is in some cases done through advertising (Hoyer & Macinnis 2008, p. 175). Ritz Hotel it is noticeable that they highly rely on their brand name to advertise their services. The Ritz Hotel is usually associated with comfort, elegance, prestige, sophistication, and class. By using an advertisement campaign that uses the brand name as the pillar they will be able to get the consumers to think about comfort, elegance, prestige, sophistication, and class whenever the name Ritz Hotel is brought up. A good example is the TV commercial dubbed “ Let Us Stay With You” which was aimed showing their potential customers what they ofer in termes of comfort and elegance through showing the quality of the facility and the human resources. This will mean that they will be able to remain attractive to people that need comfort, elegance, prestige,sophistication, and class in terms of the services that they provide. Perception, distortion, attention, and retention can also affect the decision of a consumer to spend money on a certain good or service. In this case, a consumer’s perception will be highly be affected by the selective manner in which people usually view their environment and the information that happen to come their way (Fennis & Stroebe 2010, p. 187). In a business such as Ritz Hotel, humor or surprise can always be used to get the attention of consumers. Some traces of humor and surprise can be seen in the “more than just a hotel” advertisement which begins by showing some of the aspects that consumers wish would have been added to five star hotel and shows how they have worked to give the same to their consumers. After getting the attention, the hotel would give the important information of the services that they have with full avoidance of any form of distortion. If the reception of the message is good, then the response of the consumers is likely to be positive through making the information stick in the minds of the consumers. If a consumer falls for a commercial only to learn later that the message of the commercial was not exactly what the product of service entails, they might learn to avoid such products or services. Therefore, companies such as Ritz Hotel should make sure that they have good, high quality and classy products before they go for a commercial to do the same. Failure to do so will mean that they might only be able to get consumers only to lose them after one occasion. On occasions where they have failed to reach to the expectations of the consumers, it would be advisable to come up with a different message that would remove the previous condition to make way for the new message (Khan 2006, p. 206). Culture could be said to involve factors such as values, rituals, ethics, traditions, and norms. Culture and its factors are always very important to the society and its members (Mooij 2011, p. 103). Culture usually influences the choice of consumers through the values and norms that are set by the societies in which they live. Culture does not only influence consumer behavior, but also reflects it. As much as marketing cannot change cultural value, marketing can still influence culture. For instance, marketing can influence what people view as class as sophistication. Therefore, marketing can be used as a way of creating a new culture. For example, in the case of Ritz Hotel they can come up with a marketing campaign aimed at attracting more customers over the weekend. This can lead to the development of a culture of having a good time at the Ritz Hotel over the weekends. As a result of being part of a certain culture, people usually learn cultural values and preferences that would in turn affect their preference in consumption. As a business organization, Ritz Hotel should learn to take into account cultural factors that might have influence in their operation in the industry and make sure that they adapt their marketing strategies and services. Culture has a way of influencing consumers’ behavior, perceptions, expectations, and habits of consumers. In relation to culture the hotel should make sure that their services are diverse enough so that they can be able to attract people of diverse culture (Kardes, Cronley & Cline 2011, p. 167). As a 5-star it will be good to take into consideration the fact that they will be having consumers from all over the world willing to pay for their services. However, the expectation of all their customers will be that the services that will be offered to them at the hotel will be up to the standards of their cultures. Ritz hotel will be able to benefit from making sure that their cultures are in line with the beliefs and attitude of their targeted group. Given the pricing policy it is clearly evident that the hotel targets the rich and affluent. This means that their marketing strategy is supposed to be aimed at creating a belief in the consumers’ minds that the services that they offer are of comfort, elegance, prestige, sophistication and class. It is clearly evident that the Ritz Hotel will have to take into consideration the influence that consumer motivation, perceptions, learning and attitude formation might have on consumer choice. As seen through this paper, it will be important to get to know these factors of consumer behavior so that you can be able to influence the behavior of consumer to favor you. Not all consumers behave in the same way, therefore, knowing the factors that influence their behaviors and how to use them to your advantage can be very important to a marketer. Bibliography Batra, SK & Kazmi, SHH 2008, Consumer behaviour: text and cases, Excel Books, New Delhi. Fennis, BM & Stroebe, W 2010,The Psychology of Advertising,Taylor & Francis, Hoboken. http://public.eblib.com/EBLPublic/PublicView.do?ptiID=537880. Foxall, G 2004,Consumer psychology in behavioural perspective,Beard Books, Washington, DC. Hoyer, WD & Macinnis, DJ 2008,Consumer behavior, South-Western, Mason, OH. Kardes, FR, Cronley, ML & Cline, TW 2011,Consumer behavior, Cengage Learning, Mason, OH, South-Western. Khan, MA 2006,Consumer behaviour and advertising management, New Age International (P) Ltd., Publishers, New Delhi. Mooij, MKD 2011, Consumer behavior and culture: consequences for global marketing and advertising, SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks. Ramesh Kumar, D 2009,Consumer behaviour and branding: concepts, readings and cases,Pearson Education, New Delhi. Tyagi, CL & Kumar, A 2004,Consumer behavior,Atlantic, New Delhi. Wadman, WM 2000,Variable quality in consumer theory: toward a dynamic microeconomic theory of the consumer,Sharpe, Armonk, NY [u.a.]. Read More