Buyer Behaviour

Buyer Behaviour: The Consumer Decision-Making Process & Purchasing a Car

Table of Contents Buyer Behaviour: The Consumer Decision-Making Process & Purchasing a Car 1 Introduction 2 The Characteristics that Affect Consumer Behaviour 2 The Types of Consumer Buying Decisions 3 The Components of the Decision-Making Process 3 Marketing Recommendations 4 Conclusion 4 References 5 The End 6

Name: Shahmeer Haq
Student ID: HASHC2B
Module Code: BUS210
Lecturer Name: David Ogle
Word Count: 1,973

Introduction
What is consumers and seller? Consumers the person who consumes the product and the seller or maker who makes that particular product to meet the demand of the buyer marketers try to make sure they deliver the exact product what the consumers demand so the marketers or the sellers target the market in various types. Marketers need the carry out the research for the particular market so they can allocate the market and can easily sell their product to the consumer. The consumer’s mind processes the product many times before they buy that product. The consumer can be from any age or from any group and marketers should know the behaviour of the consumer before the sell out or portray the product or service to the consumers. The consumer’s behaviour can be against their loyal product or their new product is important for e.g. the brand image, the price, and other big factors that affect the consumer buying power. A well-established man who’s in his 40’s and have good salary and wants to buy the bigger, luxurious and safe car for his family because he got bigger family now. So he can drive his new car safely with his family.
The Characteristics that Affect Consumer Behaviour
The consumer behaviour affects by social, cultural, personal and psychological and various small other factors. If we look into it the consumer whose buying the car for his family will process these things in his minds through these different characteristics and he will take into consideration everything. If he buys the fast sports car for his family then he might think it will be fast, stylish and an eye catcher for everyone but he will neglect this because he wants his car to be big and more importantly safe for his family instead of that he might look for others things in the car like child lock system, air bags, reverser parking sensor, seats belts and different safety components. (Prescott, 1998) European gets tougher in last 10 to 15 years regarding car safety the new law stated that every car should pass the new test or otherwise it won’t get to enter the EU market and many big companies already started to run these test and improving it so it can minimize the risk of loss of life or severe injuries. (MARU, 2011) The consumer will look into personal choices as well like the size of the car will it going to be the jeep or the saloon car. The colour of the car is also comes in the personal label the consumer might want the colour to be silver of his car, tinted glasses or no tinted glasses. Some car manufacturers offers service like personal modification because some customers prefers modification in their cars like adding the hot seat feature or some screens in the car and quality and durability it also come under the personal section some consumer demands driving the branded cars because the brand holds the name in the market and it also refers sometimes the higher the quality the higher the price. Some customers prefers the service centre to be near there residents area so they can easily fix up there if there is a problem so the marketers might want to make sure before they target the market that what are the demands of the customer and how many service centres available in that whole area so they can easily get more sales. (Queensland Government, 2012) Before customer buy the car from the dealer buyers also might want to make sure that dealer is approved to sell the vehicle and must have all the registration papers required for the car. Sometimes people’s desires to have 4 wheel drive car instead of saloon car it’s also symbolise as the social status but it also come under the personal desires of the consumers.

The Types of Consumer Buying Decisions
(MBA Lectures, 2010) Variety seeking buying behaviour occurs when the customer involvement is low and the consumer is looking for others product it usually happens in the small priced products like detergents or soap. When the consumers look for the other detergents in the cheaper price then the customer will get attracted to that brand but to keep the customer loyal the makers or seller should adopt new ideas to attract the existing and new customers. (MBA Lectures, 2010) Complex buying behaviour comes in when the involvement of the consumers is very high and it occurs when the consumer is buying the car, house, computer and etc. The involvement of the customer is so high that the customer will only buy that product when he is fully satisfied. Consumer will look into the reports, companies’ site for the perfect car, approved dealers, durability of the car, features with the car and customer will also look into print media, electronic media and will make the particular beliefs and attitude towards the particular product. So the market strategist of the high involvement products companies should be very careful and must give out the complete information about the product and should also help the customers to differentiate their products from the competitors. (Augment Systems, 2012) Dissonance-reducing buyer behaviour it means that a consumer is highly involves in the expensive and risky purchase of that product and finds the significance difference between the product he owned and the other brands (HubPages, 2012) for e.g. the customers buys a smartphone for high price and it turns out the others brand offers the better, faster smartphone in similar price so then customer will feel that he should’ve buy the other smartphone. To overcome this behaviour the seller can offer after-sale communication service to make sure the customer is happy about their product and won’t feel negative about their product so they won’t lost customers with the after sales communication service they can also give their customers warranty or pay back service which satisfy they consumers mind of buying that product. (HubPages, 2012) Habitual buying behaviour is that the customer is using the same brand for quite long time and if a consumer finds the substitute product of that other brand then consumer will buy his old brand because of the familiarity and loyalty towards his brands and to keep this loyalty the marketers should keep the product familiar with the attractive prices and must give the loyal customer discounted prices on others product.
The Components of the Decision-Making Process
(KnowThis.com, 2012) Consumer now makes the search of that product in the market that he wants to buy. The major purchases like cars, houses and others high priced products take a lot of time of the buyer because these products are difficult of all and the product is being purchased is important to consumer but the consumer has little or no expertise in this area so usually this type of purchases make the consumer to engage in extensive making decision. (Brookins, 2012) The consumer will now do the information searches internally the consumer will recall his memory and experiences with the previous brands and products that he bought or being loyal customer because the loyal consumer will get discount on different products so this also helps making the buying decisions. The risk is high of buying the wrong product which always keep on rolling in consumer mind which clouds the judgement because the consumer don’t want to buy the wrong car for his family. The consumer will now look into external research and he will discuss with his family and friends and he will take their opinions into consideration. The consumer will also look at the various product-rating organization reports such as consumers’ reports, reviews of the consumers about that product he wants to buy. External search includes company’s sites, advertising which creates the impact into the consumers’ mind of wanting that product. Consumers also examines how many brands available in the market is there too many or few brands in the market. If there are many brands then consumer will take more time to process his decision and if there are fewer brands then the process time will be less. The buyer will now consider different aspect of buying from whom to buy will there is return policy, what will be the terms of sale, what are the service provided by the manufacturer and the time is also important when to buy the product is the product on sale or some scheme going on because if it is then consumers will buy in that period so consumers can save some money on buying that product by spending less money for that product whether to delay or postpone the decision for new model or version after buying the product then consumer will compares it with the expectations and is either satisfied or dissatisfied.
Marketing Recommendations
The manufacturers of the cars want to make sure that they deliver the perfect product to its customer so for that they have to target the market in different ways. For the family cars buyers they can have the safest, bigger cars and for the sports car lovers they can have the fast, stylish cars in the showroom and they might want to make sure they open their showroom of their cars near the residential area where they can target the customer at maximum. The price will vary for each of the group the price for the family cars it will be different from the price of the sports car. The cars companies must allocate the budget for marketing to because that can bring lots of customers they can make the advertising in a smart way which can directly triggers the customers emotions to buy that product (BCA, 2012) Some customers also prefers used cars so the car manufacturers can negotiate with different dealers to give them some percentage of commissions to resale there used cars and for that they can have the different area for those customer to buy those used cars because report suggested the used cars in UK is increasing year by year reports stated that out of 100 per cent 20 – 25 per cent were saloons cars, 40 – 50 per cent were hatchbacks and 2 – 4 per cent were sports / coupe cars and 20 per cent were others. So by selling good condition used cars to consumers in cheap prices can bring profits to manufacturers. The manufacturers also used some promotion method to boost up the sales of their product. Using of different celebrities in their special ads can be very useful for the companies. Use of different selling method likes giving out free brochures to customers in it contains the companies’ detailed information and info about their products.
Conclusion
The buyers and sellers come together in the market it could be e-market or anywhere. The sellers research the whole market by geographically, socially, culturally and others types and then sellers target those market with their product. The price should be in the reach for the customer of that target group. If the sellers targeting the middle-class group then the sellers will not charge them more them out of their reach same case with the our man whose buying the family car for their family who’s in his 40s with good job and looking for affordable car can’t afford that car which is out of its reach. The buyer will research the whole market before he makes the final decisions of buying that particular product. The use of full complete research about the product is very important for the consumer because the risk of buying new product and high involvement is there for the consumers. The decision process for the high priced product is extensive instead of low priced product. The low priced product demands less time in decision making and high priced demands more time before making final decision.
References
Augment Systems, 2012. Consumer Buying Behavior. [Online]
Available at: http://www.assignmenthelp.net/assignment_help/consumer-buying-behavior.php
[Accessed Saturday November 2012].
BCA, 2012. BCA Used Car Market Report 2012. [Online]
Available at: http://www.british-car-auctions.co.uk/About-Us/Latest-News/BCA-Used-Car-Market-Report-2012/
[Accessed Sunday November 2012].
Brookins, M., 2012. Types of Consumer Buying Behaviors & Product Decisions. [Online]
Available at: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/types-consumer-buying-behaviors-product-decisions-10273.html
[Accessed Saturday November 2012].
HubPages, 2012. What Is Consumer Buying Behavior. [Online]
Available at: http://kenyaentrepreneur.hubpages.com/hub/Types-Of-Consumer-Buying-Behaviour
[Accessed Saturday November 2012].
KnowThis.com, 2012. Consumer Buying Behavior. [Online]
Available at: http://www.knowthis.com/principles-of-marketing-tutorials/consumer-buying-behavior/types-of-consumer-purchase-decisions/
[Accessed Saturday November 2012].
MARU, H., 2011. freepressbox. [Online]
Available at: http://www.freepressbox.com/news-the-characteristics-that-establishes-the-family-car-3652.html
[Accessed Friday November 2012].
MBA Lectures, 2010. Types of buying decision behavior. [Online]
Available at: http://mba-lectures.com/marketing/principles-of-marketing/650/types-of-buying-decision-behavior.html
[Accessed Saturday November 2012].
Prescott, J., 1998. BBC News. [Online]
Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/184147.stm
[Accessed Friday November 2012].
Queensland Government, 2012. Department of Transport and Main Roads. [Online]
Available at: http://www.tmr.qld.gov.au/Registration/Buying-or-selling-a-used-vehicle/Buyers-and-sellers-checklist.aspx
[Accessed Friday November 2012].

The End

References: Augment Systems, 2012. Consumer Buying Behavior. [Online] Available at: http://www.assignmenthelp.net/assignment_help/consumer-buying-behavior.php BCA, 2012. BCA Used Car Market Report 2012. [Online] Available at: http://www.british-car-auctions.co.uk/About-Us/Latest-News/BCA-Used-Car-Market-Report-2012/ Brookins, M., 2012. Types of Consumer Buying Behaviors & Product Decisions. [Online] Available at: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/types-consumer-buying-behaviors-product-decisions-10273.html HubPages, 2012. What Is Consumer Buying Behavior. [Online] Available at: http://kenyaentrepreneur.hubpages.com/hub/Types-Of-Consumer-Buying-Behaviour KnowThis.com, 2012. Consumer Buying Behavior. [Online] Available at: http://www.knowthis.com/principles-of-marketing-tutorials/consumer-buying-behavior/types-of-consumer-purchase-decisions/ MARU, H., 2011. freepressbox. [Online] Available at: http://www.freepressbox.com/news-the-characteristics-that-establishes-the-family-car-3652.html MBA Lectures, 2010. Types of buying decision behavior. [Online] Available at: http://mba-lectures.com/marketing/principles-of-marketing/650/types-of-buying-decision-behavior.html Prescott, J., 1998. BBC News. [Online] Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/184147.stm Queensland Government, 2012. Department of Transport and Main Roads. [Online] Available at: http://www.tmr.qld.gov.au/Registration/Buying-or-selling-a-used-vehicle/Buyers-and-sellers-checklist.aspx