Principles of Marketing . Chapter 5 : Consumer buying behavior and Markets

This chapter illustrates the buying behavior of consumers who buy or consume good for their personal use. The Question rise over here is what is the basic difference between customers and consumers. Since customers are those entities which buy good for themselves or for someone else. They might be the end consumer or not. But consumers are those people which buy good for themselves and they are the end consumers. The model of consumer behavior consists of three parts. The first one is the “environment” it can be a micro or a macro environment in it. Second is the black box and the third one is buyers response. The most important part of this model is the black box. Since the concept was taken from an airplane which has a black box and it records every piece of information. Every consumer has this system installed in their brain. That is why the advertisement or IMC promotions are same for everyone but not everyone buys that product because every person is different from another.

The buying behavior is different because there are some factors which influence or change the consumer behavior. The first factor is the Cultural part which talks about the learned believe, wants, perceptions of an individual. Furthermore, it elaborates the concept of sub-culture where it talks about people within a specific culture. Like in Pakistan we have Pathans, Punjabis, Urdu speaking, since sub-culture is different from one and another and for sure their buying behavior is also different. The second factor is the social class which talks about different groups. Since we have this generic definition that people standard of living is social class. But In marketing, we put a bit of a microscope in it. Basically, we talk about membership group ( where a person belongs to a specific group, family, culture) and aspirational group ( where a person wants to be, where he gets inspiration from, his role model or a celebrity. Like Imran Khan (PTI) majority of the youth in Pakistan gets inspired by him and follow his footsteps for getting Insaaf (justice). Opinion leaders are one which has advanced knowledge about something and has huge following regarding it. For example in mobile industry, GSM arena is an opinion leader’s website where people get reviews about mobile phones. The third one is the personal factor, where three factors affect them: personal income, savings, and interest rate. Since the most important one is interest rate as it is given by the government through which taxes are implemented and it affects your saving and your personal income.

Maslow hierarchy is a basic concept where we discuss five stages of needs. First one is Physiological need ( your basic need, house, clothes, and food) safely need ( where you need protection for yourself and for your family) Social need ( As human is a social animal and he need people to talk and survive), Esteem needs (Where you want people to know your name, your speciality and recognize you as a distinct factor in a society) lastly self-actualization ( where you forget yourself and thinks about the society and do something for people, best example is Sattar Ehdi).
Perception is basically a process where people decode a piece of information through the lens of their eye, for example, people screen information which is not beneficial for themselves (selective attention). People won't listen to bad things about what they already bought, for example telling a friend regarding how hideous or expensive iPhone-X is, he/she will never believe your information and probably gives you a shut up call (selective distortion) and lastly selective retention (where customer recalls good points about the brand).

Learning is a concept where you learn a behavior through repetitive experience. It is made up 5 components 1). Drives (identification of a need), 2) Stimulus (the motivation to fulfil that need), Cues (the process of getting the product to fulfil the need, it can be sale, discounts), 4) Response (the process of purchasing that product), 5) Reward (reinforcement, appreciation).

The Buying decision making process is a process starts from need recognition, it can be internal motivation(need satisfaction) or it can external (trigged through advertisement or IMC tools). 2) Information search, you search for information from family or friend or through experiential marketing. 3) Evaluating the alternatives, where you choose a brand on the basis of perceived benefits and values. 4) Buying decision, where you acquire that product and lastly 5) Post-purchase behavior where the utmost value and loyalty is created. It is not the responsibility of the company to give it but yet they give you for the future revenues.

Last part is TALC (technological adoption life-cycle) since the adoption of a new technology is not that common and only few of the customer adopt the new technology (Innovators), and with the passage of time technology become common for everyone can use it.

#customersconsumers#black box#Cultural part#sub-culture#Opinion leaders#Maslow hierarchy#Perception#Learning#Buying decision making process #TALC (technological adoption life-cycle)