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.

This quiz covers the essential concepts of consumer buying behavior. Explore how various factors like culture, social influences, personal attributes, and psychological elements impact buying decisions. Understand the stages of the consumer buying decision process in detail.