Consumer Buying Behavior

Consumer behavior refers to the mental and emotional process and the
observable behavior of consumers during searching, purchasing and post
consumption of a product or service.

Consumer behavior involves study of how people buy, what they buy, when they
buy and why they buy. It blends the elements from psychology, sociology,
sociopsychology, anthropology and economics. It also tries to assess the influence
on the consumer from groups such as family, friends, reference groups and society
in general.
Buyer behavior has two aspects: the final purchase activity visible to any observer
and the detailed or short decision process that may involve the interplay of a
number of complex variables not visible to anyone.

Factors Affecting Consumer Buying Behavior

Consumer buying behavior is influenced by the major three factors:
1. Social Factors
2. Psychological Factors
3. Personal Factors.

A. Social Factors
Social factors refer to forces that other people exert and which affect consumers’
purchase behavior. These social factors can include culture and subculture, roles
and family, social class and reference groups.

Example:
By taking into consideration Reference group, these can influence/ affect the
consumer buying behavior. Reference group refers to a group with whom an
individual identifies herself/ himself and the extent to which that person assumes
many values, attitudes or behavior of group members. Reference groups can be
family, school or college, work group, club membership, citizenship etc.
Reference groups serve as one of the primary agents of consumer socialization and
learning and can be influential enough to induce not only socially acceptable
consumer behavior but also socially unacceptable and even personal destructive
behavior. For example, if fresher student joins a college / university, he/she will
meet different people and form a group, in that group there can be behavior
patterns of values, for example style of clothing, handsets which most of group
member prefer or even destructive behavior such as excessive consumption of
alcohol, use of harmful and addictive drugs etc. So, according to how an individual
references him / herself to that particular reference group, this will influence and
change his/her buying behavior.

B. Psychological Factors
These are internal to an individual and generate forces within that influence her/his
purchase behavior. The major forces include motives, perception, learning, attitude
and personality.

Example:
Attitude, is an enduring organization of motivational, emotional, perceptual and
cognitive processes with respect to some aspect of our environment. Consumer
form attitude towards a brand on the basis of their beliefs about the brand. For
example, consumers of Sony products might have the belief that the products
offered by Sony are durable; this will influence those customers to buy Sony
products due to this attitude towards the brand.

C. Personal Factors
These include those aspects that are unique to a person and influence purchase
behavior. These factors include demographic factors, lifestyle, and situational
factors.
Example:
Lifestyle is an indicator of how people live and express themselves on the basis of
their activities, interests, and opinions. Lifestyle dimension provide a broader view
of people about how they spend their time the importance of things in their
surroundings and their beliefs on broad issues associated with life and living and
themselves. This is influenced by demographic factors and personality.
E.g. A CEO or Manager is likely to buy more formal clothes, ties and shoes or
PDAs and less informal clothes like jeans as compared to a Mechanic or Civil
engineer. So according to their lifestyle and profession, the buying behavior of
people differ from one another.

Consumer Buying Behavior Decision Process

Definition:
Consumer buying decision process is the processes undertaken by consumer in
regard to a potential market transaction before, during and after the purchase of a
product or service.
Consumer decision making process generally involves five stages:
Problem Recognition
Purchase decision making process begins when a buyer becomes aware of an
unsatisfied need or problem. This is the vital stage in buying decision process,
because without recognizing the need or want, an individual would not seek to buy
goods or service.
There are several situations that can cause problem recognition, these include:

• Depletion of stock
• Dissatisfaction with goods in stock
• Environmental Changes
• Change in Financial Situation
• Marketer Initiated Activities

Its when a person recognizes that she can not make a call from her mobile phone
that’s when she recognizes that her phone has been damaged i.e. the phone has
hardware problems and needs to be repaired or buying a new piece.

Information Search
After the consumer has recognized the need, he / she will trying to find the means
to solve that need. First he will recall how he used to solve such kind of a problem
in the past, this is called nominal decision making. Secondly, a consumer will try
to solve the problem by asking a friend or goes to the market to seek advice for
which product will best serve his need, this is called limited decision making.
Sources of information include:

• Personal sources
• Commercial Sources
• Public sources
• Personal experience

Example: (continuing from previous…)

The user of the phone after recognizing that her phone is damaged, she will
eventually try to find out how she can repair her phone. If she cannot repair it
herself she will ask a friend to help out, if the friend can not solve the problem she
will go to mobile repair shop, if they also can not repair it then she will try to find
which mobile phone is good and that can serve her need. In this process of
information collection it will yield awareness of set of brands of mobile phones she
can buy.

Alternatives evaluation
Consumers’ evaluates criteria refer to various dimension; features, characteristics
and benefits that a consumer desires to solve a certain problem. Product features
and its benefit is what influence consumer to prefer that particular product. The
consumer will decide which product to buy from a set of alternative products
depending on each unique feature that the product offers and the benefit he / she
can get out of that feature.
Example: (continuing from previous…)

When that user got enough information concerning the different brands of mobile
phones available in the market, she will decide which kind of a mobile phone and
brand she’s going to buy depending upon her need for that particular mobile, either
a mobile for multimedia and entertainment, smartphone or classic phone.

Purchase Action
This stage involves selection of brand and the retail outlet to purchase such a
product. Retail outlet image and its location are important. Consumer usually
prefers a nearby retail outlet for minor shopping and they can willingly go to a far
away store when they purchase items which are of higher values and which involve
higher sensitive purchase decision. After selecting where to buy and what to buy,
the consumer completes the final step of transaction by either cash or credit.
Example: (continuing from previous…)
After selecting brand of the phone and model from different alternatives of mobile
phones, she will make a final decision of where to buying that phone and make the
final transaction procedures.

Post-purchase Actions
Consumer favorable post-purchase evaluation leads to satisfaction. Satisfaction
with the purchase is basically a function of the initial performance level
expectation and perceived performance relative to those expectations. Consumer
tends to evaluate their wisdom on the purchase of that particular product. This can
result to consumer experiencing post purchase dissatisfaction. If the consumer’s
perceived performance level is below expectation and fail to meet satisfaction this
will eventually cause dissatisfaction, and so the brand and/ or the outlet will not be
considered by the consumer in the future purchases. This might cause the
consumer to initiate complaint behavior and spread negative word-of-mouth
concerning that particular product.

Example: (continuing from previous…)

If she decided to buy a multimedia phone she will try to compare the quality of
music it provides and pictures taken if they meet her expectations. If she will find
that her expectation are meet she will be satisfied, if she found that there are more
additional features that she did not expect this mobile phone to have, she will be
delighted, otherwise she will be dissatisfied.