Well, there are several reasons: At first it is important to know about the reaction of the buyer to the firm ‘s marketing strategy because this has a great influence on the firm ‘s success. Another thing is that the firm can create an almost perfect marketing mix to satisfy the customer.
The third reason is that it’s much easier for the marketers, if they know about the buying behaviors, to predict the reaction of consumers on marketing strategies. On the following pages I want to give a short overview about “Consumer Buying Behavior” and “Organizational Markets and Buying Behavior”. 1. 2 Types of Consumer Buying Behavior Consumers always want to create an assortment of products which satisfies their needs and wants in the present and also in the future. To realize this aim, the consumer has to make a lot of decisions. These purchasing decisions can be classified into three main categories of decisions:
Routine Response Behavior This behavior happens when the consumer regularly buys cheap products that need very little search and also very little decision effort. In this case the consumer prefers a special brand but he also knows other brands of the same product class to have an alternative to buy if there is something wrong with his favorite brand. Limited Decision Making This is the case if the consumer buys a product occasionally or if there is a new brand, he doses ‘t know about, in a familiar product category. For this type of decision-making, the consumer needs a moderate amount of time for adhering information and deliberation.
Extensive Decision-Making This is the most complex decision-making behavior. It happens when a purchase includes unfamiliar, expensive or infrequently bought products; for example cars, houses etc. Seeking information. A big contrast to the extensive decision-making processes that were mentioned earlier is the behavior of the impulse buyers. These people do not plan conscious to buy, they have a persistent urge to buy something immediately if they like it. But often these people get in emotional conflicts, they often feel guilty because of their emitted finances or something else. 1. The Consumer Buying Decision Process As I mentioned earlier, the decision process is a major part of buying behavior. This decision process can be divided into five stages: Problem Recognition This occurs when the buyer notices that there is a difference between the desired state and the actual conditions. The consumer gets aware that he has to change something to get satisfied. For example, if somebody needs a car to get to work and one day the car stops working. In this situation the person recognizes that there is a difference between he desired state (a working car) and the actual condition (a broken car).
Information Search After recognizing the problem, the buyer searches for information about a new product which can solve his problem and also is able to satisfy his need (this is only the case if the decision process continues). For example, the above-mentioned car owner, after recognizing the need for a new car, he may search for information about different brands and types of cars. Here we distinguish two aspects to an information search: In the internal search, buyers check first if they have any information about the added product in their memory.
If they cannot get enough information from their memory for a decision, they are looking for more information in an external search. In the external search the buyer may focus on communication with friends or relatives, to hear about their experiences with special brands. He also can obtain information from public sources like manufacturers, salesperson or product-test organizations. Evaluation of Alternatives to compare the products. These criteria are for example characteristics or features that the buyer wants (or does not want).
In the example of our car buyer these theatres could be if the car has an airbag, electrical window control or air- conditioning system. The buyer also thinks about how important each criterion is; because some features may carry more weight than others. This evaluation of the consumer can be influenced by the marketer by framing the alternatives – that means the manner how the marketer describes the product and its features. Purchase In this stage the consumer chooses the product or brand which he wants to buy. This selection is based on the result of the previous evaluation stage.
There is also a set of criterion which must be taken into account: One of the most important criterion is the product availability which may influence which brand is purchased. If the favorite brand is not available at the moment the consumer may choose the brand that is ranked second. Other criterion that also could be important for the consumer are for example the price, delivery, guarantees, maintenance agreements, installation and credit arrangements. Post purchase evaluation After the purchase the buyer begins to check the product if the actual performance meets the expected level.
In this stage many of the criteria used in the evaluating alternatives stage are used again. The result is either satisfaction or dissatisfaction. 1. 4 Personal factors influencing the buying decision process The purchasing decision can be influenced by a lot of personal factors, which means factors that are unique to only one person. There are three categories of personal factors: Demographic factors Situational factors Level of involvement These factors are individual characteristics such as age, sex, race, ethnic origin, income, family life-cycle, and occupation.
Demographic factors influence in which extent a person buys or uses products in a specific product category. For example consumers between 15 and 24 years often refer to buy household basics because they have to establish their own household. Whereas people aged between 45 and 54 years often spend more money on luxury and leisure products; the reason for this is that these people have more money, because their children have left home. Situational factors are the external conditions that exist when a consumer is making a purchase decision. Sometimes a consumer decides to buy something as a result of an unexpected situation.
For example, a person may buy hurriedly buy a plane ticket to spend the last days with a dangerously ill relative. But it is also possible that a errors terminates the buying decision process because of situational factors. For example, when the consumer decided to buy something and because of external circumstances he does not need it anymore. The level of involvement means the importance and intensity of interest in a product in a particular situation. The buyer’s level of involvement determines if he or she is interested in seeking information about certain products or brands.
Consumers seem to be more involved in the purchase of high-priced goods and of products that are visible to others, such as clothing, furniture, or cars. So the consumers are more interested to gain more information in this product categories. 1. 5 Psychological factors influencing the buying decision process In addition to the personal factors there are also psychological factors that can influence the buying decisions. The five psychological influences on consumer behavior are: Perception Perception is the process of selecting, organizing and interpreting information inputs to produce meaning.
These information inputs are received through sight, taste, hearing, smell and touch; that means with all of our five senses. Motives goal. If a person buys something this activity is affected by a set of motives; at this moment some of the motives in the set have priority, but the priority of the motives also can vary from one time to another. It is very important for the marketers to know about the motives of their customers; there is only the problem that most people do not know why they buy a particular product.
The solution for this are special kinds of interviews in which the interviewer wants to gain, in an informal atmosphere, information about the consumer ‘s motives. But this topic is very complicated, so I would not like to go into this more nearly Ability and knowledge Every person has got different abilities; one ability that is very important for marketers is the individual’s capacity to learn. Because learning may change a person ‘s buying behavior by gaining new information and experience. For example; when a consumer buys a particular product and he likes it, he is more likely to buy the same product the next time.
But if the consumer is not satisfied by the product he will switch to a different brand. Another aspect of an individual’s ability is knowledge. Knowledge can be divided into two components: familiarity with the product and expertise; together this means he individual’s ability to use the product. For example; if a consumer does not know about a special kind of product he will not buy it and if he knows about the product but does not know how to use it he also will not buy it. Attitude Attitude refers to knowledge and positive or negative feelings about an object or activity.
These objects or acts may be touchable or untouchable, living or non-living. For example people have attitudes towards sex, religion, politics, and music (all untouchable); but also towards cars, football, or pizza. People learn these attitudes through experience and also through relations to other people. Likewise people have attitudes towards companies and their products, so the aim for the companies marketing-strategy should be to give the customer a good feeling about the company an her products. In other words, the company should try to influence the customer’s attitude.
Personality managers suspect that there are communities between people ‘s traits, and so they are searching for them to find relationships among these similar characteristics and the buying behavior. The aim is to find out which kind of consumer prefers which types of brands and products. With this knowledge marketers can try to aim advertising campaigns at general types of personalities. 1. 6 Social factors influencing the buying decision process The last kind of factors that can influence the buying decision process are the social factors. The consumer can be influenced by a various number of social factors.
The family plays a big role for buying decisions, because there are a lot of different interests. The male head of the household is likely involved in the purchase of products such as alcohol or tobacco. Although female roles have changed, also a lot of women are involved in taking buying decisions related to many household items. Another group that can influence the consumer are reference groups. A group becomes a reference group when a person identifies with it so much that he or she puts very great value on the opinions, habits, and behaviors of the group members.
But this could be a very negative reference for an individual, because the values of the group do not have absolutely to be right. Another important factor is the social class in which the individual lives. In every society there are people who belong to higher or lower positions of respect. The different social classes are described as open, because it is possible for everyone can eve into and out of them very easily. For grouping people into classes many factors need to be taken into account, such as occupation, education, income, wealth, race, ethnic group, and possessions.
Though the number of factors chosen for the ranking can be very various; it depends on the person who is doing the ranking. Social class also determines to some extent the type, quality and quantity of products that a person buys or uses. For example people living in the upper-class prefer luxury automobiles such as BMW or Audit while people ranked in a lower class cannot ford such cars. The last one of the social factors that I want to mention is culture. Culture means everything in our surroundings that is made by human beings.
It consists of tangible items, such as food, furniture, buildings, clothing etc, and intangible concepts, such as education, welfare, and laws. But culture also includes the values and different kinds of behaviors of a specific society. Culture influences buying behavior lifestyle, how we dress, what we eat, or where we travel. So it is another important factor for marketers to know. 1. 7 Understanding consumer behavior It is very important for marketers to understand consumer buying behavior because that is the only possibility to offer greater satisfaction for the consumer.
Although there remains a certain amount of consumer dissatisfaction. The reason for this is that some marketers still are not consumer oriented and do not regard customer satisfaction as a primary objective. Another problem is that the tools for analyzing consumer behavior are not very precise, so it is impossible for marketers to determine what is highly satisfying to buyers. Understanding consumer behavior is a very important task for marketers. Even Hough the marketers were not able to gain al the knowledge they need, progress has been made during the last twenty years and is likely to continue in the next twenty.
Look forward to a new, interesting topic. 2. 2 Types of organizational markets The following section describes the four kinds of organizational markets, and the characteristics of the customers that make up these markets. Producer markets Persons and business organizations that buy products with the aim of making profit by using them to produce other products or by using them in their factories are well as purchasers of semi-finished and finished items. Though the prerequisite for his is that the consumer uses these materials or items to create new products.
A good example for this is a car manufacturer which buys steel and component parts to use directly in the production of cars. Reseller markets Reseller markets consist of intermediaries which means people that buy finished products to resell them with the aim of making profit; examples for this are wholesalers and retailers. One thing that is important to know is that resellers do not change anything at the physical characteristics of the products they sell. There is only one exception, producers that sell their products directly to the consumer.
This is the case when the company produces, for example, high-tech products, which need a lot of explanation and service for the customer. But in all other cases all the products sold to a consumer market are first sold to a reseller. In the normal case it is like this; the wholesaler who carries an immense number of products buys the products from the producer and sells them to the retailer. The retailer carries less products in stock than the wholesaler and sells these products to the final consumer.
And the best thing is that every party makes profit (mostly). Government markets Government markets consist of national and local governments. Every year they spend a lot of money for many various products and services to support their internal operations and to provide the public with everything it needs, things like education, water, energy, infrastructure, national defense, etc. It is a little bit difficult for governments to spend the money in the right way because they are accountable for the public money they spend.
This is also a problem for the companies which want to sell their products to the state because there is a relatively complex set of buying procedures which are linked tit the accountability for the public money and it is understandable that most companies do not want to deal with so much red tape. However there are also marketers that have learned to deal with the complex buying procedures and do not find them to be a stumbling block. And they have good reasons for this because deals with governments can be very lucrative.
Institutional markets Institutional markets do not seek to achieve business goals they try to achieve charitable, educational, community or other non-business goals. Members of institutional markets can be organizations, such as churches, some hospitals, braises, museums, universities, and charitable organizations. These institutions members. It is very difficult for marketers to sell their goods to the various kinds of institutions because of their different aims; so some marketers use special marketing activities to serve these markets. . 3 Dimensions of organizational buying After we have looked at the different types of organizational markets I think we should also take a look on the dimensions of organizational buying. Characteristics of organizational transactions In comparison to consumer sales organizational transactions are different in several says: Organizational buyers order much bigger quantities than individual consumers. That is one consequence linked to the behavior of suppliers which prefer to sell their products in large quantities.
This is the only way for them to make any profit. Another point is that organizational purchases are not negotiated as frequently as consumer sales. Some products that are purchased by organizations might be very expensive, such as machines, or office equipment, and they are used for a number of years. There are also products that are purchased frequently, such as raw materials, or impotent items, which are used continuously in production. But how I mentioned before the purchased quantities for these goods are much bigger.
Also the purchase decisions are not as quick as they are for normal consumers. Because of the expensive products the purchasing decisions are often made by a committee which takes more time than only one individual needs to take a decision. One thing that is unique to organizational sales is reciprocity. That is an arrangement between to organizations in which they agree to buy from each other. That seems to be very good for those both companies, but most reciprocal agreements threaten intention and that is why most of them are illegal.
But nevertheless there are still some cases where such agreements take place. Attributes of organizational buyers If we think about organizational buyers we guess that their purchasing behavior is different to the behavior from consumer buyers because they are better informed about the products they want to purchase. However that is not quite right. Organizational buyers also have personal that can be influenced by some of the factors I mentioned earlier, such as psychological, or social factors. Employees are
