Consumer Buying Behavior A Literature Review

Prepared By:

Roll no 15007 Shaista Raza

4th M.B.A(3.5)

Consumer Behavior

Consumer behavior is the study of individuals, groups, or organizations and the processes they use to select, secure, use, and dispose of products, services, experiences, or ideas to satisfy needs and the impacts that these processes have on the consumer and society.

Customers vs. Consumers

Customer: customer means who purchases the product from the marketer or from the retailer or from the wholesaler. Here we don’t bother about who uses the product.

Consumer: Consumer means who uses the product of course purchased by the customer. Here we consider finally who is going to use the product we call them as consumer.

Introduction to Consumer Behavior

Consumer behavior has been always of great interest to marketers. The knowledge of consumer behavior helps the marketer to understand how consumers think, feel and select from alternatives like products, brands and the like and how the consumers are influenced by their environment, the reference groups, family, and salespersons and so on.

Consumer Behavior Model

Consumer personality factorPersonality:-The combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual's distinctive character.Risk aversion: Risk aversion is a measure of how much consumers need to be certain and sure of what they are purchasing .Innovativeness: innovativeness, is a global measure which captures the degree to which consumers are willing to take chances and experiment with new ways of doing things.

Consumer perception factorsPerception is a mental process through which we select data or information from environment ,organized and then draw significant and meaning from it.Quality A distinctive attribute or characteristic possessed by someone or something.

Packing

Material that is used to hold or protect things so that they

can be moved or sent

somewhere is also known as packing.

ll.PROMOTION Promotions refer to the entire set of activities, which communicate the product, brand or service to the user. The idea is to make people aware, attract and induce to buy the product, in preference over others. 

lll.The Traditional perspective on consumer research

This section outlines the perspectives that emerged during the traditional-positivist era in consumer research. These are the behavioral, cognitive, trait, motivational, attitudinal, and situational viewpoints. That is, they are built on the common foundations of “rationalism” and share allegiance to the principles of a single traditional, positivist-based approach to consumer research.

IV. The Rational perspective Economic theory holds that purchasing decisions are the result of largely “rational” and conscious economic calculations. Thus, the individual buyer seeks to spend his income on those goods that will deliver the most utility (satisfaction) according to his tastes and relative prices.

V. The Behavioral perspective In contrast to the economic view which underscore the importance of internal mental processes in consumer decision making as; behavioral perspective emphasizes the role of external environmental factors in the process of learning, which it is argued causes behavior. The behavioral perspective focuses on external environmental cues (such as advertising) that stimulate consumer response.

VI. The Cognitive perspectiveThe cognitive perspective stresses the role of information processing in consumer decision making. This perspective views people as problem solvers who actively use information from the world around them to master their environment. However, much debate surrounds the issue of whether or when people are actually aware of these learning processes.

VII. Consumer Decision making process

Decision making?Decision making is the mental process of selecting a course of action from a set of alternatives.

Consumer Decision making process

VIII. The personality perspectivePersonality:-The combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual's distinctive character.Personality perspective:-Psychoanalytic: importance of unconscious and childhood experiences.Humanistic: importance of self and fulfillment of potential.Social cognitive: importance of beliefs about self.Trait: description and measurement of personality differences.

X. The Attitude perspectiveAttitude: way of thinking or feeling about something.

XI. The positivist perspectiveThe traditional positivist approach is established on the premise that consumers are largely rational, stable, and knowable entities. The positivist philosophical stance is characterized by an emphasis on scientific observation and testing. The objective of this type of research is therefore, to observe empirical facts and to establish generalizable laws that can used to predict and control behavior.

XII. The Non-positivist perspectives

It is the contrast of traditional perspectives in which interpretive perspectives of consumer behavior relates consumers with the capacity to proactively assign to represent their environments. The non-positivist perspective criticizes modernism on philosophical, cultural and empirical grounds and acknowledges social, complex and irrational nature of consumer behavior.

ConclusionConditions of competition are changing rapidly today and companies that strategize and react to these changes promptly and quickly are the most successful. Due to technological developments, physical differences of products have decreased. Differentiation should be made on the meanings products bear instead of on their physical features. A successful brand differentiation can be possible by building personality. Thanks to brand personality, consumer sees brand as friend since it provides him with emotional benefits. Overall, it is argued that the study of consumer behavior is rapidly evolving as researchers recognize and implement new techniques and trans disciplinary perspectives to understand the nature of purchase and consumption behavior.