Consumer Buying Behavior Consumers are the individuals who purchase goods or services for own consumption.

Consumer buying decision can be alone or influence by the members of buying center such household. Individual that involve in the buying decision has each role to play as initiator, influencer, decider, buyer and user. For example, a toy for a little girl. The buying decision making may involve 3 persons, which is the girl and the parent. The girl act as an initiator when she sees a toy that gives her the interest to own one. This then trigger her to be an influencer to influence her parent of her need. The parent can be the decider and the buyer. The decider usually has the power and financial authority to make purchase and the buyer will be the person who making the payment or transaction. Eventually, the user will be referring back to the little girl who plays with the toy. Consumers buying behavior are influenced by the internal and external sources. The internal sources of influence such personality, beliefs, knowledge and attitude shape the point of view or perception of the consumer to the products. The external source of influence such as culture, social class, lifestyle, reference group, family member will also affect the consumer buying decision. Research shown, consumers tend to spend more time on information search and close examination of alternative choice or solutions when they involve in high purchases, such as car, house and expensive jewellery. Inversely, habitual products received less effort in consumers buying decision making process compare with high involvement purchase. The desires of a consumer to involve in high purchases are usually derived from the problem solving thought. For example, a person may perceived to buy a car that can use for work and leisure will be benefits him from cost and time saving. Thus, this problem solving may considered as a thoughtful reasoned and an undertaking to bring about need satisfaction. In additional, factors such as self image, perceived risks, influence of others and hedonistic influence may play a part in high involvement purchase decision making process. Take car as an example, let us examine this high involvement purchases that required which are the steps in making the buying decision process for consumers. There are 5 steps to make up the buying decision making process. 1. Need recognition
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2. 3. 4. 5.

Information search Evaluation alternative Purchase decision Post purchase evaluation

Need recognition For car purchases, need recognition is essentially functional and recognition may take place over a period of time. Buyer may recognize the needs for quite sometimes but did not take any action was due to the degree to which the consumer intends to resolve the problem depends on 2 issues: the awareness of a difference between a desired state and an actual condition. For instance, the need for a car may be perceived but the different between the current and desired situation is small (consumer may find his house is close to train station and its convenient for him to travel to work and for leisure activities). Thus, the consumer is not motivated to move to the next step in the decision making process. Conversely, a large discrepancy may be perceived but the person may not proceed to information search because the relative importance of the problem is small. A person may perceived to own a car has significant advantages but the relative importance of these advantages compared with the other purchase needs such as to pay mortgage or saving for child education funds are small. The existence of need inhibitor may cease the existence of needs. For example, fear of not afford to pay the bank loan, instability in the economic or employment status. Thus, the need remains passive. In this situation, there are numbers of implication of the need recognition suggested for marketers use. First, marketers must aware of the need of consumers and the problem they face and provide what customers need that help in competitive advantage creation. Second, marketers should be aware of need inhibitors. Marketers can use direct marketing to provide more information on the financing details such as low interest rate, low down payment, and low installment to help consumers overcome this need inhibitor. Marketers should be aware that needs may arise because of stimulation. Direct marketing strategy, advertising campaign and training sales people to sell products benefits may act as sign to need encouragement. For example, a person may walk in the showroom with less intention to buy that model of car but the sales person
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with good selling and communication skills can stimulate the needs of the consumer to buy their products at the end of the day.

Information search When the problem recognition is strong, consumer will now proceed to second stage of the consumer decision making process. Information search involve in the identification of alternative ways of problem solution or satisfy the need. Information search can be internal or external. Internal search involves a review of relevant information from memory which included potential solutions, methods of company solutions, reference to personal experiences and marketing communications. If satisfactory not found, external search begins. External search involves personal sources such as friends, the family work colleagues and neighbours and commercial sources such as advertisement and salespeople. Third party report such as blogs, a product testing reports in newspapers, magazines or on internet may provide unbiased information and personal experience can be sought for experience a testing the products. The objective of information search is to build up the awareness set. That is, the number of brands that may provide a solution to the problem for the consumers. Using car example, an advertisement can stimulate a search for more unbiased information regarding the advertised car and meantime it also stimulate an external search for information about other car model and brand. With technology of internet, consumers now can search information from Google or Yahoo to gain more knowledge for the product they sought or interested. Therefore, marketers should use the advancement of the internet by applying the digital marketing in its marketing planning to promote its products because the consumers are increasingly using the internet to gather information before buying a product. Evaluation of alternatives When come to evaluation step, the awareness set will be filtered and the brands that remain in a group are called evoked set. The evoked set is a shortlist of brands for careful evaluation. The screening process can use different choice criteria such as price, reliability to deliver a final choice. Choice criteria are the various attributes a consumer uses when evaluating product and services. They provide the ground for deciding to purchase one brand or other.
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Different consumers may use different choice criteria and marketers can segments its consumers range and understand which choice criteria for its targeted consumers will used. There are four (4) type of choice criteria. Technical, economical, personal and emotional. Technical criteria are related to the performance of the product or services and include reliability, durability, comfort and convenience. Economic criteria concern the cost aspects of purchase and include price, running cost and residual values (eg. The trade in value of a car). Personal criteria concern how the product or services relates to the individual psychologically (eg. Self image). Emotional criteria concern about the brand loyalty, preference by personal experiences and feelings. For car purchases, consumers commonly use technical and economic criteria to evaluate the alternative choices to finalize a choice of brand that the consumers think is best suitable for their needs and wants. Choices like emotional and personal criteria may use to filtered in car purchases where consumers perceived to own a car can enhance his social status. Thus marketers must look into the criteria choice the consumer may consider and set the criteria for its the earlier stages. Purchase decision Evaluation may come out with few brands for choice that result in purchase decision. Brands may be perceived as similar but this does not mean they will be equally preferred by the consumer. For example, there are 2 choice of MPV car with different brand, one is Toyota and another is Honda, both carry similar function and benefits, but consumers may prefer Toyota then Honda because of distinctive imagery. A key determinant of the extent to which consumers evaluate a brand is their level of involvement. Involvement is the degree of perceived relevance and personal importance accompanying the brand choice. High involvement is usually trigger consumers to carry out extensive evaluation. In the theory of reasoned from the expert who examined the behavior of consumer who involve in high purchases, they suggests that an attitude towards a brand is based upon a set of beliefs about the brands attributes (e.g. value for money, durability) and consumers attitude towards like or dislike of the brand overall. Consumers decision on the choice of brand will also affected by the normative beliefs where consumers will evaluate the consequences of the purchase and what others will think about it. Only after the above considerations taken place does purchase intention and the ultimate purchase result.
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Now consumers have come to the stage to make purchase decision. The marketers need to provide a good deal of information about the positive consequences of buying. Message with high information content would enhance knowledge about the brand by using print media and websites may be appropriate as they allowed detailed information to be examined repeatedly. The sales force also has an important role to play in the high involvement situation by ensuring that the customer is aware of the important attributes of the product and correctly evaluates their consequences. For example, If the differential advantage of a particular model of a car is fuel economy, the salesperson would raise fuel economy as a salient product attribute and explain the cost benefits of buying that model vis--vis the competition. Marketers must be aware of the role of emotion in consumer evaluation of alternatives. Studies have shown the effects of emotion on judgement to be less thought, less information seeking, less analytical reasoning and less attention to negative factors that might contradict the decision. Impulse buying is another area that can be associated with emotions.

Post Purchase evaluation of the decision Now, assume that consumers have purchased the car and begins to drive it. With high involvement purchase, consumers are commonly experience some postpurchase concerns, this is called cognitive dissonance. These concerns arise because of uncertainty about making the right decision and the rejection of attractive features of the alternatives. Dissonance is likely to increase in four ways: with the expense of purchase; when the decision is difficult; when the decision is irrevocable; and when the purchaser has a tendency to experience anxiety. The marketers can reduce these cognitive dissonance by giving reassurance such as send a letter to the consumers to reinforce the wisdom of their decision and to confirm the quality of their after sales service. Nonetheless, the quality of products and services is still the key determinant and the helpfulness of salesperson in acting as problem solver creates customer satisfaction.