Consumer Behavior: Purchase Decision Process

Consumer Behavior

• Consumer purchasing behavior includes all actions directly related to deciding to purchase products or services
• This behavior considers the factors that influence and trigger the purchase decision
• Consumers vary in age, tastes, gender, and social class
• Decisions are made based on the immediate environment, influenced by personal, psychological, and sociological factors
• Managers use behavior models to streamline the decision-making process and identify consumer needs

Stages of the Purchase Decision Process

• Awareness of a need: recognizing the need to buy a new laptop
• Information search: involves visiting stores, consulting friends, and looking at advertisements
• Option evaluation: includes comparing options and considering the pros and cons
• Purchase decision: the process of choosing and acquiring the product
• Post-purchase attitude: leads to satisfaction or deception which influences fidelity and information search

Participants in the Purchasing Process

• Direct participants include consumers/users make direct recommendations before purchase
• Prescribers are those who make decisions on behalf of the buyer or strongly recommend the product
• Influencers offer direct advice or create an imitation effect

Marketing Stimuli

• Marketing stimuli includes advertising and sales promotions, and can have cognitive, affective, and conative impacts
• The cognitive level (what I know) involves marketing actions to inform the consumer and integrate the brand into their purchase considerations
• The affective level (what I think) aims to provoke a positive attitude toward the brand
• The conative level (what I am willing to do) encourages consumer behavior like purchases and repeat purchases, fostering loyalty

Factors Influencing Purchase Decisions

• Purchasing behavior is marked by complexity, variability, and diversity, stemming from various influencing factors

Endogenous Factors Include

• Needs: Basic requirements such as food, safety, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.
• Motivations: Psychological forces that drive individuals to act, including rational motivations (satisfying a clear objective) and psychological motivations (hedonistic, oblative, self-expression)
• Attitude: A learned predisposition to respond favorably or unfavorably to an object, influencing how one evaluates a product or service
• Perception: Process through which individuals chose, organize and interpret information to create a coherent picture of the world
• Selective attention: Focus on stimuli related to recognized needs or expectations
• Distortion: The alteration of information to align with existing beliefs and selective rentention, remembering information that supports one’s convictions

Exogenous factors

• Environmental Factors: External elements that may trigger needs and influence behavior and includes cultural, economic, and political
• Group Influence: Conforming to group norms (family, social and culture) and social class
• Personal Factors: Socio-economic status (sex, age, education) personality, experiences and style of life
• Style of Life: grouping individuals based on similar consumption patterns

Inhibitors to purchasing

• Psychological Impediments: Forces that prevent an individual to act
• Risks: Concerns about product quality
• Fears: Imaginary or real difficulties
• Inhibitions: Attitudes rejected by the consumer

Client Satisfaction Measurement

• Client satisfaction measurement helps better respond to expectations and define satisfaction
• Client satisfaction is a feeling that results from comparing expectations with perceptions

Measuring Client Satisfaction

• Measuring client satisfaction should be based on expectations, not desires
• Satisfaction depends on perceptions, not the service reality

Realizing Satisfaction Measurement

• Include enumerating services and clients, services, identifying priorities, developing measures, and implementing the plan

Enumerating Services and Clients

• Distinguish between external and internal clients, as well as clarifying the range of possible feedback targets

Developing measures involves these steps

• Identifying service components to measure
• Determine which aspects affect client satisfaction from complaints and qualitative research

Validate the list

• Verify the list with a sample from the prospective client.
• Second stage: Developing data collection method and document customer satisfaction
• Ensure result representativity and reproducibility

Identify areas

• Methods include complaints, passive and proactive comments

Sondation

• Sondation is a punctual study carried out based on a sample of the population
• Third stage involves determining the measurements to use, by labeling answers without numbers
• Use 5 position ratings

Determine metrics

• The fourth stage is to determine the audience by going back to client definition to find the customers with a strong opinion
• Avoid confusing occasional and frequent customers
• It might be necessary to segment clientele
• A good start would be to ponder contact results
• Echantillonage

The implementation stage

• Implementation includes naming a person in charge and regrouping tasks
• Mobilize the team communication and identifying, acquiring, and following up external services

Data Analysis and Reporting

• Adopt a structed type, describing the satisfaction using importance-satisfaction
• Then document and compare and make reports which involve the hierarchy

Action and Improvement

• Use satisfaction measure to improve

Translate expectations

• Translate expectations into realistic communications, giving the staff experiementation latitude

Evaluation and Recommendations

• Correction, adjustment for content and coherence should all be observed

Interpretation of Results

• Interpretation is achieved with graphic presentations using matrices and diagrams

Common Presentation includes

• Importance with satisfaction
• Matrix with modelling

Matrice Importance/Satisfaction

• Plotting the average scores for satisfaction and importance for each component of service

Diagramme Satisfaction /Importance

• Both indices are calculate relatively to prices the satisfaction

Three main takeaways

• Client satisfaction needs to be the goal, the measurement needs to be good and that satisfaction needs to be multi-dimensional