Buyer Behaviour Related to Motivation - Essay Example

Buyer Behaviour Related to Motivation Introduction The consumer behaviour is directly proportional to the motivation of the consumers. Consumer behavior refers to the study of why, when, where and how people do purchase or do not purchase a product (Hausman, 2000). The elements that affect the behaviour of consumers are in the form of social anthropology, sociology, economics and psychology. This also enables the sellers to understand the process of consumer’s decision making in groups or individually. Characteristics of an individual buyer are very important in understanding their behaviour in buying. Factors like behavioral variable and demographics helps in understanding the ants of human beings. Influences of an individual could originate from groups like friends, family, society and reference group. The consumer plays three roles as far as the product is concerned which include paying, using and buying. According to the researcher (Hausman) 2000, it is evident that it is not easy to predict the behaviour of consumers. There are other factors which affect the customer purchase behaviour like the personalization, one to one marketing, and customization, management of customer relationship and consumer retention. Concepts which facilitate understanding of buyer behaviour in practical situations Marketing is a concept that ensures that the services provided to the customers are satisfactory. For the marketers to fully understand the buyer’s behavior and especially with reference to practical situation, it is important for them to understand the various factors which influence the consumers buying behaviour. Understanding the buying behaviour of the customers whether they are the consumers or the other businesses is very important for the success of any marketing business (Bettman et el, 2001). This is because most of the buyers bass their decisions of buying both on the emotional reasons as well as rational reasons. An example of the rational category of customer buying decision making include a customer who want to buy cereals for her breakfast but then goes ahead to check on the brand and especially if the customer is a repeat consumer her decision may be based on her emotions. One of the keys to ensure a business owner keeps the customers and retains their loyalty is through ensuring the customers are emotionally attached to the brand so that they are not influenced the competitors and especially through their lower price offers as well as other incentives (Hausman, 2000). The more a seller understand the factors that influences the behaviors of consumers in buying the easier it is for him create a strong relationship with the buyer and is also able to focus the marketing strategies as well as the tactics for the purpose of improving growth of the business. The following are the main ways of gaining understanding of the customer’s buying behaviors: Reasons for purchasing: one must be are of the rational reasons for the consumer purchase decision. This is in terms of their convenience as well as emotional reasons and especially with reference to their satisfaction and happiness. Awareness: The seller must ensure he or she is aware of how much the customer know about his or her brands as compared to what the competitors are offering Current usage: the seller must be aware of the fact that the buyer could not be the user of the products so as to ensure the product the buyer purchase will satisfy the needs and expectations of the user. An example is a parent buying a dress for a teenage girl. He or she may not be aware of the needs of the teenage therefore it is the responsibility of the seller to guide the parent in getting the best for the teenage girl The frequency of purchase: Some of the buyers, purchases weekly while others daily and also some are monthly purchasers. This kind of information for the seller will help him or her in improving the marketing tactics to target the consumers so as to influence their purchasing behavior. Reasons for the usage: the seller must be aware of the reasons as to why the customers choose his or her products. This is whereby the emotional and rational factors apply. What is purchased: even when the seller has a wide variety of services and products on sale, it is important for him or her to have a clear understanding of the consumers preferences depending on how regular they purchase it. Where the customers like purchasing: The seller must be aware of the distribution channels that the consumer prefers like the website. This will be very helpful to the seller in the sense that he or she will be able to decide on which channel to focus all his or her attention. Is the customer an exclusive customer: sellers must be aware of the preference of the consumers with reference to the brand. This is because some customer may have a range of four or three brands from where they choose from. This will help the seller to compete with the competitor as well as gain customer loyalty. Where the customers gather their information about buying: in this modern world where technology is greatly advanced, there are so many sources where the consumers get information, it is the responsibility of the seller to know where his or her customers get the information they need about a particular product. It is important to understand why a buyer makes the purchase because without such an understanding it is very hard for any particular business to respond appropriately to the needs of the consumers (Bettman et el, 2001). The marketing theories have divided the customers or the buyers into two main groups namely; industrial buyers and the consumer buyers. The consumers are those buyers who will purchase a product specifically for their own use or even persona consumption while the industrial buyers purchase the products simply on behalf of the organization or business they own or represent. In order for the business to understand why the consumer will put a tick on a specific product the seller must be able to answer the following questions; Who buys When do they make the purchase How the purchase is made Where the purchase id made Why the purchase is made The marketing manager should also be able to understand the ways in which the consumers are likely to respond to different available elements of the marketing mix present. This will also act as a great competitive advantage of the business (Bettman et el, 2001). Also, the marketer will be able to avail the target services and products to the customers. The believability, reasonableness and practical utility of established models and theories of buyer behaviour, especially in the light of neuroscience It is very important for every marketer to understand the main. relevance of the human needs to their purchasing behaviour because marketing is basically about satisfying the needs of the customers (Bettman et el, 2001). The human motivation presented by Abraham Maslow hierarchy of needs is important because as one goes up the hierarchy it is evident that very few people are able to satisfy the higher level of needs. The physiological needs like air, food, heat, water as well as all other basic needs are mandatory to be satisfied. In the safety level, a human being will do anything to ensure he is safe from all predators and harmful elements. It is at the third level of need that man will try to satisfy his social needs through marriage and joining some specific social groups (Bettman et el, 2001). The last two levels which are the esteem and self actualization are hardly reached by many human beings. This is because for the esteem, one needs to achieve something that will make him or her get recognized like writing of books while self actualization is the level whereby only one person out of a crowd is able to achieve something. An example is Neil Armstrong whose self actualization as the fact that he was the very first man to reach to the moon. As per the figure above, it is important to understand that the consumer’s behaviour is influenced by the way he or she interacts with factors of the marketing mix like the place, price, product and promotion which are cut and then focused to the consumer (Herbig & Kramer, 2004). The consumer will also consider a service or product with reference to their culture, previous learning, personal attitude as well as personal perceptions. It is after all that the customer will determine if to go ahead and purchase the product or not making his choices on the brands. Black Box model This is a model that shows the customer interaction based on the consumer responses, decision process, consumer characteristics and stimuli interaction. This can be well differentiated between the intrapersonal stimuli (within people) and interpersonal stimuli (between many people). This model is directly related to the black box theory of the behaviorism (Dawn, 2009). This is whereby the focus is not mainly on the processes that are inside the consumer but the relationship existing between the response of the customer and the stimuli. It should be noted that the company is responsible for the marketing stimuli, while the social factors gives the environmental stimulus based on issues like cultural, economic and political circumstances within a specific society. The buyers black box model therefore entails the characteristics of the buyers as well as their decision making process which are the determinant of the buyers response (Han et el, 2001). It also considers the response of the buyer to be due to the rational decision making process or conscious whereby the buyer is assumed to have realized the problem but realistically most of the decisions made are not determined by due to one’s awareness of the problem determined by that consumer. In the black box model, the environmental factors determine the buyer’s black box and then eventually the response of the buyer. Environmental factors are divided into two. Marketing stimuli like price, product, place, promotion and the environmental stimuli factors like natural, demographic, cultural, political, economic and technological. The buyers black box are also divided into two: the buyers characteristics like motivation, attitudes, knowledge, lifestyle, personality, perception and the decision process like purchase decision, pest-purchase behavior, information search, alternative evaluation and problem recognition. Finally, the buyer’s response after marketing stimuli, environmental stimuli, buyers characteristics and decision process include outcomes in terms of purchase amount, brand choice, product choice, purchase timing and dealer choice (Dawn, 2009). There are also a number of internal influences as far as the consumer purchase behaviour is concerned namely; personality, motivation, psychographics like lifestyle and demographics. The external influence on the other hand includes locality, sub-culture, culture, family, ethnicity, royalty, motivation, attitudes, beliefs, knowledge and feelings. Most of the people hate ales people. A research was done and the flowing were the reasons as to why most of the people do not like the sales people. They do not have time to listen They are usually very pushy They seem not to care about the feeling of the buyer Their interest is in selling the product They turn to be aggressive whenever the customer declared she is not interested. The answers above describes that the emotions of a buyer are very important as far as their purchase behaviour is concerned (Hausman, 2000). This means that it is very important to understand different preferences of different people buying behaviors because people will always buy differently. Some people will make purchase very quickly while other will take time; some will need a lot of information in order to attempt purchasing while others only need a few details. There are buyers who will make impulse buying while others take a lot of time so that they can avoid any risk that may occur as a result. Some of the buyers are loyal while other will always make their choices depending on the product that is cheap. Some of the buyers are also intimidating and very rude while others are passive and can be easily manipulated. The challenge for the seller is in understanding different types of buyers so that they can adapt their selling strategies to suit their buyers. Conclusion There are two aspects of buyer behaviour namely responsiveness and assertiveness. The buyers who are assertive are mostly the ones that know what exactly they want and they are usually very confident. They put forward their opinion boldly and also listen to other people’s opinions. The responsive buyers are the ones that are willing to response to any question asked. They describe their needs and the problem. There are also four main behaviour styles in which the people will relate to each others as far as marketing is concerned: analytical, drives, amiable and expressive. The analytical buyers lack responsiveness and assertiveness. He usually distrusts the sales person because of the fact that they don’t have precision. They love comparing and analyzing things hence take time to make decisions. The amiable buyer is not very assertive but is highly responsive (Han et el, 2001). They are friendly, social and like friendly relationship rather than conflict. The expressive buyer is highly responsive and assertive. They are mainly impulse buyers, low attention span and low threshold for boredom. They hate a lot of details and rarely negotiate. Finally the drives are not responsive but are highly assertive. They are the real negotiator. Very uncompromising, tough and are usually in charge. This means that it is important for the sellers to understand the different types of buyers to be able to meet their needs as well as understand their buying behaviour. Reference Bettman, J.R. Johnson E. J. and Payne, J. W. 2001. Consumer Decision Making. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Dawn, B. 2009. Cross-cultural Marketing: Theory, Practice and Relevance. New York: Taylor & Francis. Han, Y. K., Morgan, G. A., Kotsiopulos, A. And Kang-Park, J. 2001. Impulse Buying Behaviour of Apparel Purchasers. Clothing and Textile Research Journal, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 15-21. Hausman, A. 2000. A Multi-method Investigation of Consumer Motivations in Impulse Buying Behaviour. Journal of Consumer Marketing, vol. 17, no. 5, pp. 403-419. Herbig, P. and Kramer, H. 2004. The Effect of Information Overload on the Innovation Choice. Journal of Consumer Marketing, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 45-55. Conclusion Read More