STAGES OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
Consumer behavior refers to the process individuals go through when making decisions about purchasing, using, and disposing of goods and services. Understanding the stages of consumer behavior is crucial for businesses seeking to connect with their target audience and tailor their marketing strategies effectively.
The consumer decision-making process typically involves several key stages, from recognizing a need or want to evaluating alternatives and making a final purchase decision. Each stage presents unique challenges and opportunities for businesses to engage and influence consumers. By delving into the intricacies of these stages, companies can gain valuable insights into consumer motivations, preferences, and decision-making factors, ultimately enhancing their ability to create compelling marketing campaigns and build lasting relationships with their customers.
The stages of consumer behavior are as follows:
STAGE 1: PROBLEM/NEED RECOGNITION
Consumer buying decision process starts with need recognition. The marketer must recognize the needs of the consumer as well as how these needs can be satisfied. For example if a person is hungry then food is desired or if it is a matter of thirst than water is desirable. Understanding the decision-making process can help to drive your business goals, your marketing message, and you’re marketing decisions. The buyer recognizes and senses a gap between his actual state and his desired state. The consumer’s actual state is his perception of his feelings and situation at the time. His desired state is the way he wants to feel or be at that time.
A need can be triggered by internal stimuli or external stimuli:
The marketer can have to identify the needs of potential customers. One can’t create an internal need, but you can create awareness by triggering a need with external stimuli, So that the consumers will call and place an order to fulfill their need. If a consumer realizes he has a need or a problem, he must find a solution and that will leads to search for information that will fulfill his need or solve the problem he has identified.
STAGE 2: INFORMATION SEARCH
In consumer buying decision process information search comes at second number. In this stage consumer searches the information about the product either from family, friends, neighborhood, advertisements, whole seller, retailers, dealers, or by examining or using the product. Consumers begin the information search process by conducting an internal search of what they’re looking for and what will fulfill their need and desire on a personal level. Then they follow up with an external search for information from friends, family members, salespeople, and advertisements. This phase provides consumers with criteria for assessing product alternatives. It’s also called as information-gathering phase.
Consumers often use several sources for information, including the following:
Personal sources: Family, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances.
Commercial sources: Advertising, salespeople, dealers, product packaging, retail displays, and the Internet.
Public sources: Editorial media coverage and consumer rating organizations.
Experiential sources: Handling, examining, and using the product perhaps on a trial basis.
As consumers gather more information, they increase their awareness and knowledge of available brands and features. So as a marketer or business Owner, you must identify the information sources that are most important and influential to your potential buyer — and then you must make sure the information is available there.
STAGE THREE: EVALUATION OF ALTERNATIVES
After getting the required knowledge about the product the consumer evaluate the various alternatives on the basis of its wants satisfying power, quality and its features. The evaluation often depends on the individual consumer and the importance attached to the specific buying situation. It varies from consumer to consumer and product to product. These situations can determine how much evaluation is put on the available alternatives. If attractive alternatives are available, a consumer will work to determine which criteria to evaluate and will judge each alternative’ s relative importance when it comes to making the final decision.
Criteria for making that decision can include one or more of the following:
- Color
- After sale services
- Durability
- Safety
- Options
- Status
- Price
- Style
- Quality
- Warranty
- Quantity
In some situations, a consumer will use careful calculations and logical thinking to choose best alternative. In other situations, however, a consumer may do little or no evaluating; he will rely more on impulse and intuition.
Consumers use the following three types of choice processes when deciding between products and services:
- Affective choice: This choice is based on an emotional. A consumer will make a decision based not on the fact. This may mean that the consumer doesn’t go through the research process and purchase a product or service even though it doesn’t contain all the features the customer looking for. The purchase just feels right or: makes the consumer feel good.
- Attitude-based choice: This is a systematic, rules-based process. The consumer will go through the entire process from need to research to evaluation, and will make sure that the product meets each and every need for which he is looking for.
- Attribute choice: This choice is strictly based on benefit and feature-by-feature comparisons across specific brands or products. The choice process that a consumer uses depends on whether the product purchase is extremely relevant and personally important. There are two types of purchases consumers:
High-involvement purchases- High involvement purchases are those which are important to consumers such as complex, expensive, risky or ego-intensive products & require extensive information processing.
Example:
- Buying a car
- Buying a home
Some involvement-Some involvement purchases are of little bit importance customers. It includes some evaluation of alternatives.
Low-involvement purchases- Low involvement purchases are not really important to consumers, have little relevance and need very limited information processing.
Examples
- buying a soda,
- choosing a hair shampoo, or
- Deciding whether it’s beef or chicken for dinner
If one know and understand the evaluation process that the consumers go through, he (marketer) can take steps to influence the buyer’s decision. For instance, when it comes to high-involvement purchases, it’s important to provide your consumer with information that gives the positive consequences of buying. On the other hand, when it comes to low- involvement purchases, you can generally provide less information. He spends less time and attention on research because he’s making a decision that’s more than likely based on impulse.
In situations where the consumer can’t find acceptable alternatives, a decision to delay or not make a purchase is often made. The best way to avoid this situation is by providing the consumer with all the information he needs, including a list of features that compare your product or service with that of your competitors. This information can make the consumer feel more at ease about the purchase decision, and it often helps him to move forward in the purchase.
STAGE FOUR: PURCHASE DECISION
This phase deals with choosing a product. After evaluating the alternatives, the buyer buys suitable product. But there are also the chances to postpone the purchase decision due to some reasons. In that case the marketer must try to find out the reasons and try to remove them either by providing sufficient information to the consumers or by giving them a guarantee regarding the product to the consumer.
The consumer now determine whether she feels that she’s buying a product or service that has value. Buying value is the perception of the worth the customer is getting by purchasing the product. Buying value isn’t just about price; it’s also about service, quality, and experience and more.
The two factors that come into play when determining buying value is the quality and the customer service the consumer receives.
“Who will I buy from?” and
“When will I buy?”
These questions help the consumer determine what your actual buying value is.
Who will I buy from?
The consumer considers the following three things when determining it who to buy from:
Terms of the sale: The consumer will evaluate not only the purchase price, but the terms of the sale. For instance, if payments are involved, he has to determine whether he can afford those payments. He also has to decide whether he agrees with the length of those payments. Terms of the sale include delivery and warranties as well. All these terms can affect whether the consumer purchases a product or service from you.
Past experience from the seller: If the consumer has purchased from you before, he will evaluate the service you provided in the past. If the consumer was satisfied with the past experience, your chances are high that he will be a repeat buyer because that experience built trust.
When will I buy?
The following factors help a consumer determine when to buy a product or service from you:
✓ Store atmosphere: Does your store provide the consumer with a “feel good atmosphere? It consist the design of your building, interior space, layout of aisles, texture of carpet and walls, scents, colors, and the shapes and sounds experienced by the consumer.
✓ Presence of time pressure: Is the consumer being pressured regarding the timing of the purchase? The consumer is either time-rich, means he isn’t in a time crunch; or he’s time-poor, meaning she needed your product yesterday.
✓ Specials or sales on products or services: Are you running a special ora sale on the item the consumer wants to purchase? Specials and sales create a strong consumer demand and increase the consumer’s urgency to purchase (so they get the item before the sale is over).
✓ Pleasantness of the overall shopping experience: How does the consumer rate the overall shopping experience?
The more you can help the consumer, the better off you will be. If the consumer is satisfied with your service, experience, and shopping atmosphere, the purchase is made. If he’s dissatisfied, however, he may delay the purchase or end up not buying from you at all.
✓ Save the customer time: If the customer is feeling time pressure, he needs to save time. You can help with this by being clear upfront with your terms of sale and return policy. Saving your customer time can increase the chances of him purchasing your product or service.
✓ Have a sale: Sales promotions and specials are effective when trying to keep existing consumers or gain new consumers. Having a sale or a special can often increase sales more than any other type of marketing.
✓ Pay attention to your customer service: Experience can be created by providing incredible customer service and competitive prices and by making the shopping process easier with consistency in service. Also, be sure to ask the consumer questions throughout the sales process to ensure that anything that may delay or stall the sale is addressed. If you can equip yourself to ensure that the preceding items are clear to the customer and that he’s in agreement with them. you’ll save yourself from delaying or losing the sale.
STAGE FIVE: POST-PURCHASE BEHAVIOUR
After buying the product, consumer will either be satisfied or dissatisfied. In the case of satisfied-Consumer will feel delighted. In the case of dissatisfaction-Customer will feel disappointed. Both situation ultimate impact the organization/seller, one is positive and another in negative.
The post-purchase outcomes are categories in one of the following three:
- Outcome 1: Purchase is below expectation. The chances of this customer returning and asking for a refund or exchange are high. He has evaluated his purchase and he isn’t happy. The purchase didn’t meet his expectations. This unhappy consumer will return and expect you to make the situation right. The chances of him recommending your product to any of his friends, family, or associates are slim to none. When a consumer doesn’t return to his seller even, he’s unsatisfied, this can spur negative word-of-mouth advertising.
- Outcome 2: Purchase matches expectation. The purchase the customer has made matches the expectation that he had. In the post-purchase phase, seller probably won’t hear back from this customer. seller only hear from him if customer begins to doubt the ability to afford the purchase or if he feels that he didn’t gain value through pricing or the terms of sale.
- Outcome 3: Purchase exceeds expectation. If seller/marketer achieves this outcome hen actually he/she reached at what all businesses hope to reach. With this outcome seller have exceeded the expectations of their customer. The chances that seller will hear from the customer (except for repeat business) are slim to none. Customer feels that he has received value from the purchase and provided with top-class service, This customer will likely be a repeat customer and will send new buyers with word. of-mouth marketing.
It is to be concluded that the understanding of consumer Behaviour solves the various problems and also helps the marketer to develop the strategies. It is important for the marketer to understand the customers, its roles, factors that will affect the consumer behaviour etc. Consumer behaviour involve he five stages that how the consumer behaviour will influenced. By knowing the each stage, marketer can create the need of its own product by molding the behaviour of consumer.