Consumer Behaviour: a Purchase Decision Process

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According to Sheth, Mittal, and Newman (1999), consumer behaviour can be defined as the mental and physical activities performed by households and business consumers that end up in decisions and actions to pay for, purchase, and use products and services.

Before purchasing, a consumer must go through a purchase decision process. This process involves stages passed through when making choices of which services or products to buy. The stages are explained in details each at a time throughout this essay.

The first stage in consumer purchase process is need/problem recognition. Grønhaug & Venkatesh, (1991) explained that problems are triggered by internal and external stimuli which result to mental and physical reaction.

Some mental activities such as being hungry, thirsty, cold, etc. leave a consumer with a problem that requires a solution. Likewise, physical activities such as advertisement, radio slogan, store atmosphere, friends’ appearance, etc. can trigger a need to a consumer of wanting to have a product or service such as the one being advertised, the one possessed by friends or the one seen during visits to store.

Business consumers also have mental activities that trigger problem such as the desire to be famous and to attract most customers. Physical activities that may lead to need recognition involve advertisement, development of new product and need for expansion.

Innovators problem is brought about by the desire to buy a new product. Adopters’ problem is triggered by the need to change their lifestyle through trying something new. Early majority possesses a need only after other people have acquired a product.

Late majority’s need arises when all other consumers have rushed to a new product while excessive traditionalists realize a problem for a product once it has become an absolute need to all consumers and the prices have gone down.

Both household and business consumers are ready to exercise their role as buyers, payers and users of product in order to satisfy or solve their problems by recognising the need for a product. Marketers do their best to improve their strategies, which involve advertising, sales persons and displays in order to trigger need recognition among consumers.

The second stage involves information search. This follows after a need is recognised where Belch, Belch and Belch (2007), argues that consumers engage in both mental and physical search.

Household search information mentally in processes such as memories of past experience, perception, and information based on one’s desire for a specific product features.

Their physical activities involved in information search include commercial sources, reading consumer reports, sharing with friends and family, visiting company websites, meeting with sales people and reading/watching advertisements.

Business consumers, however, do not gather information mentally, but they do physically by looking at advertisement, visiting suppliers’ websites and reading consumer reports. Marketers endeavour in providing information to consumers by all means in order to ease their quest for information search.

Innovators gather information from internet, journals, magazines, etc. in order to get innovative ideas whereas adopters depend on the feedback of other satisfied users before they purchase.

Early majority, late majority and excessive traditionalists rely on media for information before they decide to purchase a product. “Since consumers are the users, buyers and payers they have to search for relevant information in order to purchase something that will give them satisfaction” (Widing, Sheth, Pulendran, Mittal & Newman, 2003).

Evaluation of alternatives is what follows after information is gathered. Households consider mental attributes of a product such as colour, safety, attractiveness and the psychological feeling it brings in the mind.

Physical attributes may include location, cleanliness, size, price, etc. Business consumers on the other hand do not have mental attributes, but have physical such as location of the product, bulkiness, quantity and price among others.

All types of customers evaluate products in accordance to their stage in the life-cycle. According to Kotler and Armstrong (2008), marketers do not have a say here as all is left on the consumer to decide. Consumers have a task of identifying which product they will buy, pay for and later use to satisfy their needs.

After evaluating alternatives, the consumer is now set to purchase a product. Purchase intentions do not necessarily lead to actual purchase. Marketers facilitate consumers in acting on their intentions of purchase.

This is done by physical activities such as promotion, provision of credit, incentives, etc. to encourage purchase. Mental factors such as, past experience, attitude of others, shopping experience, tastes and preferences, etc. may influence the purchase intentions.

Business consumers only get influenced physically by promotions as well as incentives and are not likely to change their purchase intentions. Innovators may be influenced by other buyers in the same group whereas adopters use other consumers as references before they make a purchase decision.

Early majority tend to prefer the well established product in the market while late adopters are influenced by price. Excessive traditionalists discourage other consumers from buying the same product with them. In the purchase stage, customers buy, pay for products and eventually use the products thereby exercising their roles.

Post purchase behaviour follows automatically after purchase. Both household and business consumers engage themselves in mental evaluation of the product in line with their expectations. Satisfaction and dissatisfaction is mental and it affects the consumer perception of value, communication and repeat purchase.

Lamb, Hair & McDaniel (2007) claimed that marketers engage in physical activities such as producing post purchase communications, follow-up calls and advertisements in an attempt to convince consumers that what they did was right.

All buyer types do not have repeat-purchase as they focus on the next product to fall on their trap, e.g. a new product in case of innovators. After using the product, the consumer may decide to exercise their roles on the same product again or go for a new one.

During the consumer purchase process, it is evident that marketers play a great role in trying to influence the consumers’ decision. However, consumers tend to be much influenced by the mental attributes during purchase.

Households and business are influenced differently and perceive products differently. Customer roles are exercised fully after purchase of a product and can be repeated if the consumer considers repeat purchase.

References

Belch, G.E., Belch, E.G. & Belch, M.A., 2007. Advertising and promotion: an integrated marketing communications perspective, Osborne: McGraw-Hill Irwin.

Grønhaug, K. & Venkatesh, A., 1991. Needs and Need Recognition in Organisational Buying, European Journal of Marketing, 25(2), pp.17 – 32.

Kotler, P. & Armstrong, G., 2008. Principles of marketing, California: Pearson/Prentice Hall.

Lamb, W.C., Hair, F.J. & McDaniel, C., 2007. Marketing, Connecticut: Cengage Learning.

Sheth, J.N., Mittal, B. & Newman, B.I., 1999. Customer behaviour: consumer behaviour & beyond, Birmingham: Dryden Press.

Widing, R., Sheth, J.N., Pulendran, S., Mittal, B. & Newman, B.I., 2003. Customer Behaviour: Consumer Behaviour and Beyond, Melbourne: Thomson.

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Consumer Behaviour: a Purchase Decision Process

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