CONSUMER DECISION PROCESS
The major influence of the buyer decision is to cope with the buyer’s decision process If the marketer reads the major factors wrongly, reading of the buyer’s decision process would also be affected The buyer might be one and the user might be another person. To properly uriderstand buyer decision process, one must first understand the buying roles. Initiator (daughter.first brings the idea, for example, of buying a TV from recent exchange offers), Influence (Daughter’s friends influence her view), Gate keeper (Father informs that there is no budget and the offers are fake. Father is unwilling to go for exchange offer) ; Decider (Mother\therefore decides to further the wishes of her daughter) ; Buyer (Father and Mother go to shop and buy the Television), and User (the family uses Telvision for education, entertainment, and enjoyment).
While taking into accoun1 various buying roles, the consumer decision process has to be thoroughly scrutinized for effective delivery of the product. Th fact wiii steps are taken into account:
1. Need Recognition. The customer feels that some product is desire to satisfy the emerging need. If it is hupger, food is desired. If it is personal safety, grilling of doors and windows would be desirable. Depending upon the type of need, the related satisfiers would be reached.
2. In formation Search. The felt need must have some satisfiers. To’ look at this possibility,, scanning of the information sources takes place. The sources might be personal (friends, colleagues, family etc.), infomercial TV, radio, retailer, etc), public (looking at others, consumer information Dentures), or experiential (meeting people who lave the type of product one is looking for). The consumer leans about the various alternatives, their features, strengths and weaknesses.
3. Evaluation of Alternatives. Once the learning process is complete, a detailed analysis of the alternatives• is prepared. The evaluation process starts at this stage. Depending upon the involvement level of the customer and the significance of differences between brands, a particular type of a buying be heavier is adopted. Have a re-look at Fig. ‘3.
(a) High Involvement. A customer is highly involved in the product if it expensive, involves some risk, bought infrequently, is highly self-expressive, or in specialised/technical/mechanical product. For example, computer, television, car, wall paper, camera, saris, aluminum sliding or carpet. The consumed buying behaviors can be of two types:
(i) Complex Buying Behavior. The consumer would inhibit such a Saviour if the product is not only of high involvement, there are significant fervencies between brands. For example, camera can be bought
A perusal of the table suggests that main consideration is shutter spee4 and price. But how to decide on shutter speed? Customer needs specialist advise to buy. Before the specialist is consulted, the data would be compiled. Other considerations include the brand name, the after-sales service, etc.
(ii) Distance Reducing Buying Behaviour. A high involvement product with few differences iii the brands would make the consumer to seek maximum reduction of post-purchase dissonance by comparing prices, convenience, speed, durability, etc. For example, buying of carpet, wall paper, or aluminium sliding hardly matters whether bought from Rodi, Hindustan Carpets, Novel, etc. So long as finish is acceptable and the desirable impact will be made, the product would be acceptable.
(b) Low Involvement. A product is not considered to be highly involved if it is having low cost and frequently purchased. For example, toothpaste, stationery, salt, etc. Here also, two extreme types of consumer buying behaviors are visible.
(i) Variety-seeking Behavior. The product would be highly searched and compare on account of price, feature quantity, package, incentives, etc. For examples toothpaste, tooth brush, powder, soaps, detergents, toiletries, etc. Here a lot of brand switching is possible. Customer can try new products without much risk of money. Thus, it is easy to change customer beliefs in these categories foods. The market leader would try to convert the variety seekers into brand loyalty, i.e., habitual behaviour, discussed next.
(ii) Habitual Buying Behavior. A low involvement product with insignificant brand difference would lead to a passive habitual buying behaviour. For example, salt until recently was offered by Tata. Then it was joined by Captain Cook. However, even if the Captain Cook has positioned itself as free flowing salt, customer has not found much of difference for kitchen uses because no extra benefit is perceived to have been accrued to the consumer. However, as an itenr that offers choice in salts, the ales of Captain Cook have picked-up. As pointed out earlier, the marketers tend to convert variety seeking behaviour into habitual buying behaviour i.e., buying Promise toothpaste on a regular basis. Similarly, when no specific brand differences exist, (habitual buying behaviours, the marketers use price, sales promotion, and advertising to bring about brand differences and hence change consumer behaviour into variety behaviour.
4. Purchase Intention. Once the question of consumer level of involvement and consumer perception of differences in brands is sorted out, the marketers turn top study the stage of reaching at a purchase intention. This can be achieved by looking at the consumer behaviour. A consumer who wishes to buy a product to satis1’ his need may not be aware of the total number of product varieties that are available at that moment. Even out of the awareness set, the consumer might not consider certain product varieties because of the limitation of time, budget, past experience, availability, etc. Out of the consideration set, a list of products is made out based on certain criteria (features, quality, quickness of delivery, after-sales service, brand image, etc.). The application of criteria might lead to decision to go for a particular product
