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Article 1
Consumer Buying Decision ProcessBy Paul Tunde Raji
Research has shown that when making a decision to buy a product from many competing products, a consumer unknowingly passes through a few stages of the decision process.
There are five stages of the decision proces which consumer or prospective customer undergoes and each stage motivates the buyer to purchase. Only one stage is concerned with actual purchasing.
Sometimes, the consumer does not pass through all the five stages before purchasing a product. Need Arousal is the first stage of a buying decision process. The need for a given product is activated by internal and external stimuli.
The marketer creates awareness for his product through sales promotion and advertising. The external stimuli helps to arouse the consumer’s need for the product while internally, physiological imbalance such as hunger, thirst, warmth, etc. which are primarily unlearned makes a person recognize a need. The consumer recognizes a significant difference in his perceived desire and actual position.
He thereafter responds by searching for a product that can satisfy the identified need.The consumer having sufficiently been motivated to satisfy a need searches for information about every product brand that can perfectly match the need.
If a suitable product is available for an urgently felt need, the consumer quickly purchases the product. However, in most cases, consumers do not purchase products immediately the products are brought to their awareness.
At this stage, consumers look for further information, and the intensity and duration of this depends on their past experience together with the importance of the product.
Needs as it were, could be defined as a "lack of something requisite, desirable, or useful" Merriam-webster 10th Ed.
In relating this to Consumer or Customer Needs in the markting environment; understanding Consumer Needs is a very important and sensitive bedrock for success in marketing of any product or service.
Aside the fact that Consumer or Customer needs a particular product or service, scientific evidence has shown and proven that understanding of Consumer needs start with realization that when people buy something, they buy or purchase 'Satisfaction' with the product or service as well. This could be represented as:
Needs = Product or Service + Satisfaction
Keeping Customers or Consumers satisfied is more difficult than it seems because it involves all aspect of the business. Some companies and other profit-oriented organizations toys with the success of their business by placing low-cadre staffs or ill-mannered, incompetent staffs in the Customer Care Unit to receive the clients and outsiders/prospects.
In some cases, this could be as a result of favoritism and nepotism during recruitment of staffs. Such management fails to realize that a negative attitude or unruly behavior emanating from the customer care officer towards the outsider/prospect has a negative multiplier effect on the credibilty and Goodwill of the company.
The reason is that suchaggrieved outsider or prospect would spread negative information about the company or organization to whoever he or she is opportuned to meet in relation to the service provided by the organization.
The aggrieved outsider or prospect will assess and qualify the company or the organization based on the company's representatives who happens to be the Customer Care Officers. The general believe and assumption of the public is that the company has chosen the best personnel available within, to represent the management.
Understanding Consumer or Customer Needs also mean being aware of the timing of the purchase.
Consumers’ experience has been widened by their exposure to competing products,
rapid changes in technology, which result in regular availability of innovative
products.
The information-age consumers are ardent information processors that undergo a lot of internal and external considerations before and after purchasing a product or service. They set high expectations for any product or
service to meet their present and future needs.
Marketers’ success now anchors on the extent to which they understand and respond perfectly to the behavior of consumers.
Marketers are compelled to search for new ideas, theories and principles from behavioral sciences like anthropology, sociology, psychology, and economics. It has been found that a consumer involves consideration from these perspectives when making their purchase decisions.
However, only a few part of these fields have so far been incorporated into consumer behavior. This
relevant part includes topics on which practical researches have been conducted and validated.
For a marketer to penetrate the hearts of numerous prospects and consumers, to let them react positively to his products or service; understanding the behavior of consumers is unavoidable because the knowledge acquired about the consumers has an important role to play for the marketer ‘success.
Professional marketers uses an understanding of consumer behavior to anticipate future behavior based on the implementation of specific marketing strategies.
A knowledge of consumer behavior serves as a strong basis for the development of effective and efficient marketing strategy. A careful monitoring of Consumer Behavior in the competitive market enables the marketer to measure the success or failure of a specific marketing strategy. Marketer’s job is to understand the buyer’s behavior at
each stage and what influences the prospects and consumers.
Limited problem solving exists when the need is known, every information on the alternative means of solving the problem is also known and the decision
maker has to make his decision within the given spectrum.
Extensive problem solving embraces greater uncertainty and there is risk that the final decision is wrongly made. Often the decision maker on his own has very little information on the items and may seek to update this from his friends or professionals
A model is a simplified representation of a real phenomenon. Model of Consumer Behavior can
be expressed verbally or algebraically, but in some cases they take the form of elaborate mathematical form or flow chart. For example, consumption C is a
function of income Y, or
Consumer Behavior models are concerned with the relationships between inputs into the buying decision, and resultant outcome. This outcome may be positive or
negative, a decision to make purchase, or decision to reject a product or service. In dealing with consumers, Marketers are confronted with a variety of response possibilities and countless environmental variables.
They include the so-called "grand models" such as those put forward by Howard and Sheath, Engel, Kollat and Blackwell, Nicosia.
1. When you make your first sale, follow-up with the customer. You could follow-up with a "thank you" email and include an advertisement for other products you sell. You could follow-up every few months.
Email messaging is an important way for marketers and business people to build relationship with consumer of their products or service.
According to a scholar named Marcel Mauss, he emphasized that a gift is never free, there is always a reciprocal expectation of what is given. This reciprocal exchange could be in kind or material form. Likewise in marketing, a free gift is not really free indeed. There is always a short term or a long tern reciprocal expectation of any freebie or gifts given to prospects or customers.
This reciprocal expection could be in form of collecting email addresses which is for short term objective. Moreover, every business person or marketer desire his or her prospects to buy, but this should not be made to happen within one or two encounter with the clients or prospects. It is always good to build a committed long term relationship because it is in the long term relationship that the real money lies.
I personally suggest presenting yourself as a person first, and later as a salesperson in order to maximize your objective. In the course of your established relationship, do not be overwhelmed or carried away to forget your mission.
Your first impression counts,therefore your first few emails must be polished and effectively written to create a lasting impression. Lasting relationship doesn't happen overnight, they are built over time.
In essence, your sales copy should be written and presented in a way that convinces your prospects that you are someone with whom they would like to do business with.
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