Consumer Buying Behavior Overview

Customer Buying Behavior

• Consumer buyer behavior refers to how final consumers (individuals and households) buy goods and services for personal use.
• The consumer market consists of these individuals and households.
• Marketers must understand how consumers respond to various marketing efforts.

Factors Influencing Consumer Buying Behavior

• Cultural: Culture is the set of values, perceptions, wants, and behaviors learned by a member of society through family and important institutions.
• Social: Our social groups, such as family, friends, and reference groups, influence our buying behavior.
• Personal: Age, occupation, economic situation, lifestyle, and personality all influence individual buying decisions.
• Psychological: Motivation, perception, learning, beliefs, and attitudes all play a role in consumer purchasing decisions.

Stages of the Consumer Buying Decision Process

• Need Recognition: This is where the consumer realizes they have a need or want.
• Information Search: Next, they seek out information about potential solutions to meet their needs.
• Evaluation of Alternatives: Consumers evaluate different options and weigh their pros and cons.
• Purchase Decision: The consumer decides to buy a product or service.
• Post-Purchase Behavior: After the purchase, the consumer assesses their satisfaction with the product or service.

Four Types of Buying Behavior

• Complex Buying Behavior: Occurs when consumers are highly involved in a purchase and perceive significant differences among brands.
• Dissonance-Reducing Buying Behavior: Occurs when consumers are highly involved with an expensive, infrequent, or risky purchase but see little difference among brands.
• Habitual Buying Behavior: Occurs when consumers have low involvement and perceive little significant difference between brands.
• Variety-Seeking Buying Behavior: Occurs when consumers have low involvement but perceive significant brand differences.

Business Buying Behavior

• Business buyer behavior focuses on organizations purchasing goods and services for use in production or resale.
• The business market includes organizations buying goods and services to produce other products and services.
• Business markets often involve larger dollar amounts and transactions compared to consumer markets.

Factors Influencing Business Buyer Behavior

• Environmental: These factors include economic conditions, technological advancements, political and legal changes, and competitive pressures that influence business buying behavior.
• Organizational: The company’s structure, policies, procedures, and objectives influence the purchase decisions.
• Interpersonal: Personal relationships, such as influence and trust, can play a significant role in the buying process.
• Individual: The individual buyer’s personal characteristics, such as age, education, personality, and risk tolerance, can affect purchasing decisions.

Major Types of Buying Situations

• Straight Rebuy: A routine purchasing decision where the buyer reorders the same product without modifications.
• Modified Rebuy: The buyer wants to modify product specifications, price, terms, or suppliers, requiring some research.
• New Task: A purchase decision requiring thorough research, often for new products.

Participants in Business Buyer Behavior

• Users: The individuals who utilize the product or service.
• Influencers: Individuals who provide information and influence the decision-making process.
• Buyers: Those with formal authority for selecting suppliers and negotiating terms.
• Deciders: Individuals with formal or informal authority to approve final suppliers or solutions.
• Gatekeepers: Individuals controlling the flow of information.

Questionnaire Design

• Functions:
  • Translate research objectives into specific questions.
  • Standardize questions and response categories for consistency.
  • Foster cooperation and motivation during data collection.
  • Serve as permanent records of the research.
  • Speed up the process of data analysis.
  • Provide a basis for reliability and validity measures.

Best Practices for Questionnaire Wording

• Do: Keep questions focused on a single topic, brief, grammatically simple, and crystal clear.
• Don't: Avoid leading questions that suggest a desired answer, loaded questions that contain emotional bias, and double-barreled questions that ask two things at once.