- This belief may be based on real knowledge, opinion, or faith and may or
may not carry an emotional charge.
- Attitudes: A person?s consistently favourable or unfavourable
evaluations, feeling, and tendencies towards an object or idea.
- Attitudes put people into a frame of mind of liking or disliking things, of
moving towards or away from them. Attitudes are difficult to change. A person?s
attitudes fit into a pattern, and to change one attitude may require difficult
adjustments in many others. Thus, company should usually try to fit its products
into an existing attitudes rather than attempt to change attitudes.
Consumer Buying Roles
- People might play any of several roles in buying decision:
- Initiator ? The person who first suggests or thinks of the idea of buying
a particular product or service.
- Influencer ? A person whose views or advice influences the buying decision
- Decider ? The person who ultimately makes a buying decision or any part of
it- whether to buy, what to buy, how to buy, and where to buy
- Buyer ? The person who makes the actual purchase.
- User ? The person who consumes or uses a product or service.
Complex Buying Behaviour
- Complex Buying Behaviour: Consumers buying behaviour in situations
characterized by high consumer involvement in a purchase and significant
perceived difference among brands.
- Marketers need to differentiate their brand?s feature, perhaps by
describing the brand?s benefits using print media with long copy. They must
motivate store salespeople and the buyer?s acquaintances to influence the
final brand choice.
Dissonance- Reducing Buying Behaviour
- Dissonance- reducing buying behaviour: Consumer buying behaviour in
situations characterized by high involvement but few perceived differences among
brands.
- Dissonance-reducing buying behaviour occurs when consumers are highly
involved with an expensive, infrequent, or risky purchase, but see little
difference among brands.
- After the purchase, consumers might experience post-purchase dissonance
(after sales discomfort) when they notice certain disadvantages of the purchase
carpet brand or hear favourable things about brands not purchased.
Habitual Buying Behaviour
- Habitual Buying Behaviour: Consumer buying behaviour in characterized by
low consumer involvement and few significant perceived brand differences.
- Consumers have little involvement in this product category-they simply go
to the store and reach for a brand. Example; salt. If they keep reaching for the
same brand, it is out of habit rather than strong brand loyalty.
- Consumers do not form strong attitudes towards a brand; they select the
brand because it is familiar.
Variety-Seeking Buying Behaviour
- Variety-seeking buying behaviour: Consumer buying behaviour in situations
characterized by low consumer involvement but significant perceived brand
differences. Brand switching occurs for the sake of variety rather than due to
dissatisfaction.
The Buyer Decision Process
- The stages that buyer pass through to reach a buying decision. There are 5
stages
Need recognition ? Information Search ? Evaluation of alternatives ?
Purchase decision ? Post-purchase behaviour
- Consumers often skip or reverse some of these stages.
Stage (1) Need Recognition
- Need Recognition: The first stage of the buyer decision process in which
the consumer recognizes a problem or need.
- When the buyer recognizing a problem or need. The buyer actual senses a
difference between his or her actual state and some desired stat. The need can
be triggered by internal stimuli.
Stage (2) Information Search
- Information Search: The stage of the buyer decision process in which the
consumer is aroused to search for more information; the consumer may simply have
heightened attention or may go into active information search.
- An aroused customer may or may not search or more information. If the
consumer?s drive is strong and a satisfying product is near at hand, the
consumer is likely to buy it. If not, the consumer may store the need in memory
or undertake an information search related to the need.
- Heightened attention ? Consumer becomes more receptive to information
about the product. Consumer pays attention to ads.
- Active information search ? in which consumer looks for reading materials,
surfs the net, phone friends, and gather information in other ways.
- Consumers can obtain information from any of these sources:
(-) Personal Sources: family, friends, neighbours, acquaintances
(-) Commercial sources: advertising, salespeople, dealers, packaging, and
displays
(-) Public source: mass media, consumer-rating organizations
(-) Experiential sources: handling, examining, using the product.
Stage (3) Evaluation of alternatives
- Alternative evaluation: The stage of the buyer decision process in which
the consumer uses information to evaluate alternative brands in the choice set.
Alternative evaluation-that is, how the consumer processes information to arrive
at brand choice.
- Brand image: The set of beliefs that consumers hold about a particular
brand.
- In some cases, the consumer use careful calculations and logical thinking.
At other times, the same consumers do little or no evaluating; instead they buy
on impulse and relay on intuition.
Stage (4) Purchase Decision
- Purchase decision: The stage of the buyer decision process in which the
consumer actually buys the product.
- Consumer?s purchase decision will be to buy the most preferred brand, but
two factors can come between the purchase intention and the purchase decision.
1. Attitudes of others ? Jennifer?s friends ride Honda motorcycles, chances
of her buying a Harley will be reduced. 2. Unexpected situation factors ? The
consumer may form a purchase intention based on factors such as expected income,
expected price, and expected product benefits. However, unexpected events may
change the purchase intention.
Stage (5) Post-purchase behaviour
- Post-purchase behaviour : The stage of the buyer decision process in which
consumers take further action after purchase based on their satisfaction
dissatisfaction.
- What determines whether the buyer is satisfied or dissatisfied with
purchase? The answer lies in the relationship between the consumer?s
expectation and the product perceived performance. If the product falls short of
expectation, the consumer is satisfied; if it exceeds expectations, the consumer
is delighted.
- Cognitive dissonance: Buyer discomfort caused by post-purchase conflict.
(181) However every purchase involves compromise. Thus consumers feel at least
some post-purchase dissonance for every purchase.
- Why is it important to satisfy the customer? Companies? sales come from
two places new customers and retained customers. It usually costs more to
attract new customers than to retain current ones, and the best way to retain
current customers is to keep them satisfied.
The buyer decision process for new products
- New Product: A good, service, or idea that a perceived by some potential
customer as new.
- How consumers learn about products for the first time and make decisions on
whether to adapt them.
- Adoption Process: The mental process through which an individual passes
from first hearing about an innovation to final adoption.
Stages in the adoption process
- Awareness ? The customer becomes aware of the new product, but lacks
information about it.
- Interest ? The customer seeks information about the new product.
- Evaluation ? The customer considers whether trying the new product makes
sense.
- Trial ? The customer tries the new product on a small scale to improve his
or her estimate of its value.
Individual differences in innovations
(The 5-adopter groups)? Innovators are venturesome they try new ideas at
some risk. Early adopters are guided by respect-they are opinion leaders in
their communities and adopt new ideas early but carefully. The early
deliberate-although they rarely are leaders, they adopt new ideas before the
average person. The late majority are sceptical-they adapt an innovation only
after most people have tried it. Finally laggards are tradition bound-they re
suspicious of changes and adopt the innovation only when it has become something
of a tradition itself.
Influence of product characteristics on rate of adoption
- Five characteristics are especially important in influencing an innovation?s
rate of adoption
1. Relative advantage ? the degree to which innovation appears superior to
existing products.
2. Compatibility ? The degree to which the innovation fits the value and
experience of potential consumers.
3. Complexity ? The degree to which the innovation is difficult to
understand or use.
4. Divisibility ? The degree to which the innovation may be tried on a
limited basis.
5. Communicability? The degree to which the results of using the innovation
can be observed or described to others.
Chapter 6 ? Business Markets and Business Buyer Behaviour
- Business Markets: All the organizations that buy goods and services to use
in the production of other products and services that are sold, rented, or
supplied to others. It also includes retailing and wholesaling firms that
acquire goods for the purpose of reselling or renting them to others at a
profit.
- Business Buying Behaviour: The decision-making process by which business
buyers establish the need for purchase products and services and identify,
evaluate, and choose among alternative brands and suppliers.
Business Market
Characteristics of Business Markets
- Table 6-1 Characteristics of Business Market (200)
Market Structure and Demand
- The business market typically deals with far fewer but larger buyers than
he consumer marketer does.
- Business markets are also more geographically concentrated.
- Derived demand: Business demand that ultimately comes from (derives from)
the demand for consumer goods.
- Many business markets have inelastic demand; that is, total demand for many
business products is not affected much by price changes, especially in the short
run.
- Business markets have more fluctuating demand. The demand for many business
goods and services tend to change more-and more quickly then the demand for
consumer goods and services does.
Nature of buying Unit
- Compared with consumer purchases, a business purchase usually involves more
buyers and a more professional purchasing effort.
Types of Decision and Decision Process
A model of Business Buyer behaviour
Business Buyer Behaviour
Major types of Buying Situations
- Straight rebuy: A business buying situation in which the buyer routinely
reorders something without any modification.
- They already did business and rebuying the same product.
- Modified rebuy: A business buying situation in which the buyer wants to
modify product specification, price, terms, or suppliers.
- New Task: A business buying situation in which the buyer purchases a
product or service for the first time.
- The greater the cost of risk, the larger the number of decision
participants and the greater their efforts to collect information will be.
- The buyer makes the fewest decision in the straight rebuy and the most in
the new task decision. In the new task situation, the buyer must decide on
product specifications, suppliers, price limit, payment terms, order quantities,
delivery times, and service suppliers.
- System buying: Buying a package solution to a problem and without all the
separate decision involved.
- System selling is a two-step process. First the supplier sells a group of
interlocking products. Second, the supplier sells system of production,
inventory control, distribution, and other services to meet the buyer?s need
for a smooth-running operation.
Participants in the Business Buying Process
- The decision-making unit of a buying organization is called ? buying
centre
- Buying centre: All the individuals and units that participate in the
business buying decision process.
- Users: Members of all the organization who will use the product or service:
users often initiate the buying proposal and help define product specification.
- Influencers: People in an organization?s buying centre who affect the
buying decision, they often help define specifications and also provide
information for evaluating alternatives.
- Buyers: People who make the actual purchase.
- Deciders: People in the organization?s buying centre who have formal or
informal power to select or approve the final supplier.
- Gatekeepers: People in an organization?s buying centre who control the
flow of information to others.
Major Influence on business Buyers
- Some marketers assume that the major influe