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CHAPTER FOUR
Customer Buyer Behavior
4.1. Consumer Markets and Consumer Buyer Behavior
Managers want to know who their customers are, what they think and how they feel, and why
customers buy their product rather than competitors' owners themselves do not know exactly
what motivates their buying. But management needs to put top priority on understanding
customers and what makes them tick.
Buyer behavior springs from deeply held values and attitudes, from what they think of
themselves and what they want others to think of them, from rationality and common sense,
and from whimsy and impulse.
Consumer buyer behavior refers to
 The buying behavior of final consumer- individuals and households who buy goods and
services for personal consumption. All of these final consumers make up the consumer
market.
 Consumers or buyers behaviors involves the activities of people engaged when
selecting, purchasing, using and disposing products, so as to satisfy the need and
desire.
Consumers around the world vary tremendously in age, income, educational level, and tastes.
They also buy an incredible variety of goods and services. How these diverse consumers
connect with each other and other elements of the world around them impacts their choice
among various products, services, and companies.
If consumers are satisfied:
- They will buy more
- They advocate or talk favorably
- They may advice the company for improvement
- They give little attention to other companies and their goods
- They may buy new products of the company.

4.1.1 Model of Consumer Behavior

Most large companies’ research consumer buying decisions in great detail to answer the
questions about what consumers buy, where they buy, how and how much they buy, when
they buy, and why they buy.
Often, consumers themselves don’t know exactly what influences their purchases. “Ninety-five
percent of the thought, emotion, and learning [that drive our purchases] occur in the
unconscious mind – that is without our awareness,” notes one consumer behavior expert.
The central question in marketing is: how do consumers respond to various marketing
efforts the company might use? The starting point is -
The stimulus response model of buyer behavior - Marketing and Other stimuli
enter the consumer’s “black box” and produce certain responses. Marketers must
figure out what is in the buyer’s black box.
 Marketing stimuli consist of the four P’s: Product, price, place and
promotion.
 Other stimuli include major forces and events in the buyer’s environment:
economic, technological’ political and cultural.

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All these inputs enter the buyer’s black box, where they are turned in to a set of
observable buyer responses: product choice, brand choice, dealer choice, purchase
timing, and purchase amount.
How stimuli are changed in to responses inside the consumer’s black box?
1) First, the buyer’s characteristics influences how he or she perceives and reacts to the
stimuli.
2) Second, the buyer’s decision process itself affects the buyer’s behavior.

Buyer's
Marketing & other stimuli responses
Buyer's Black Box
Product choice
Product P o litic a l Buyer Buying Brand choice
P r ic e Economic Decision Dealer choice
characteristics
P la c e Socio-cultural Process Purchase timing
Promotion Technological Purchase amount

Fig. 4.1 Model of buyer behavior

4.1.2. CHARACTETISTICS AFFECTING CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

Consumer purchases are influenced strongly by culture, social groups, personal and
psychological characteristics. For the most part marketers cannot control such factors, but they
must take them into account.
A. Cultural Factors
Cultural factors exert the broadest and deepest influence on consumer behavior. The
marketer needs to understand the role played by the buyer's culture, sub-culture and social
class.
I. Culture
It is the most basic cause of a person's wants and behavior. Human behavior is largely
learned. Growing up in a society, a child learns basic values, perceptions wants and
behaviors from the family and other important institutions. Every group or society has
a culture, and cultural influences on buying behavior may vary greatly from country
to country. Failure to adjust to these differences can result in ineffective marketing or
embarrassing mistakes. Hence marketers are always trying to spot cultural shifts in
order to imagine new products that might be wanted.
II. Subculture
Each culture contains smaller sub-cultures, or groups of people with shared value
systems based on common life experiences and situations. Subcultures include
nationalities religions, racial groups, and geographic regions. Many subcultures make
up important market segments, and marketers often design products and marketing
programs tailored to their needs.
III. Social Class

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Almost every society has some form of social class structure. Social classes are
society's relatively permanent and ordered divisions whose members share similar
values, interests, and behaviors.
Social class is not determined by a single factor, such as income, but is measured as a
combination of occupation income, education, wealth and other variables. Marketers
are interested in social class because people with in a given social class tend to exhibit
similar buying behavior.
Social classes should distinct product and brand preferences in areas such as clothing,
home furnishings, leisure activity and automobiles.

B. Social Factors
Such as consumer's small groups, family and social roles and status.
I. Groups
Groups which have a direct influence and to which a person belongs are called
membership groups.
 Primary group’s regular but informal interaction such as family, friends,
neighbors and co-workers.
 Secondary groups less regular and have formal interaction. These include
organizations like religious groups, professional associations and trade unions.
 Reference groups are groups that serve as direct (face to face) or indirect points
of comparison or reference in forming a person’s attitudes or behavior.
 Reference groups to which they don’t belong often influence people. For
example, an aspiration group is one to which the individual wishes to be a
member of or whishes to be identified with such as a professional society.
Marketers try to identify the reference groups of their target market. Reference groups
influence a person in at least three ways.
a) They expose a person to new behaviors and lifestyles.
b) They influence the person's attitudes and self-concept because he/she wants to
"fit in".
c) They also create pressures to conform that may affect the person's product
and brand choices.
The Importance of group influence varies across products and brands, but it tends to
be strongest for conspicuous purchases. A product or brand can be conspicuous for one
of two reasons.
1) First, it may be noticeable because the buyer is one of few people who own it.
2) Second, a product can be conspicuous because the buyer consumes it in public
where others can see it.
Manufacturers of products and brands subject to strong group influence must figure
out how to reach the opinion leaders in the relevant reference groups. Opinion leaders
are people with in a reference group who, because of special skills knowledge,
personality or other characteristics, exert influence on others. Opinion leaders are
found in all strata of society and one person may be an opinion leader in certain
product areas and an opinion follower in others. Marketers try to identify the personal
characteristics of opinion leaders for their products, determine what media they use,
and direct messages at them.

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II. Family
Families of orientation - The buyer's Parents provide a person with an orientation
toward religion, politics, and economics and a sense of personal ambition, self-worth,
and love. Even if the buyer no longer interacts very much with parents, they can still
significantly influence the buyer's behavior.
Families of procreation – the buyer's spouse and children have a more direct
influence on everyday buying behavior. This family is the most important consumer
buying organization in society, and it has been researched extensively.

III. Roles and Status

A person belongs to many groups – family, clubs, and organizations. The person's
position in each group can be defined in terms of both role and status. For instance, a
person plays the role of a child with his/her parents. In his/her family, he/she plays the
role of marketing manager.
A role consists of the activities people are expected to perform according to the
persons around them. Each of a person's roles will influence some of his/her buying
behavior. Each role carries a status reflecting the general esteem given to it by society.
For example, as a marketing manager, a person will buy the kind of clothing that reflects
his/her role and status.
C. Personal Factors
A buyer's decisions also are influenced by personal characteristics such as

I. Age and Lifecycle Stage

People change the goods and services they buy over their life times. Tastes in food,
clothes, furniture and recreation are often age related. Family life cycle – the stages
through which families might pass as they mature overtime. Marketers often define their
target markets in terms of life cycle stage and develop appropriate products and
marketing plans for each stage.
II. Occupation
Marketers try to identify the occupational groups that have an above – average interest
in their products and services. Marketers specialize in making products needed by a
given occupational group. For example, computer software companies will design
different products for marketing managers, accountants, engineers, lawyers and doctors.
III. Economic Situation
Marketers of income sensitive goods closely watch trends in personal income, savings
and interest rates. If economic indicators point to a recession, marketers can take steps
to redesign, reposition, and re-price their products.
IV. Life Style
People coming from the same subculture, social class, and occupation may have quite
different lifestyle. Lifestyle is a person's pattern of living as expressed in his/her
activities, interest and opinions. Lifestyle captures something more than the person's
social class or personality. It profiles a person's whole pattern of acting and
interacting in the world. The technique of measuring lifestyle is known as
psychographics. It involves measuring the major dimensions shown in the table below.

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Activities Interest Opinions Demographics

Work Family Themselves Age
Hobbies Home Social issues Education
Social events Job Politics Income
Vacation Community Business Occupation
Entertainment Recreation Economics Family size
Club membership Fashion Education Dwelling
Community Food Products Geography
Shopping Media Future City size
Sports Achievements Culture Stage in life cycle
Fig. 4.3 Life Style Dimensions
Life style classifications are by no means universal – they can vary significantly from
country to country. The lifestyle concept, when used carefully can help the marketer
understand changing consumer values how they affect buying behavior.

V. Personality and Self-Concept:

Personality refers to the unique psychological characteristics that lead to relatively
consistent and lasting responses to one's own environment. Personality is usually
described in terms of traits such as self-confidence, dominance, sociability, autonomy,
defensiveness, adaptability and aggressiveness. Personality can be useful in analyzing
consumer behavior for certain product or brand choices.
Many marketers use a concept related to personality – a person's self-concept (also
called self image). The basic self-concept premise is that people's possessions
contribute to and reflect their identities; that is, "We are what we have". Thus, in
order to understand consumer behavior, the marketer must first understand the
relationship between consumer self-concept and possessions.

D. Psychological Factors
A person's buying choices are further influenced by four major psychological factors:
Motivation, Perception, Learning, Beliefs and attitudes.

I. Motivation
A person has many needs at any given time.
 Biological, arising from states of tension such as hunger, thirst or discomfort.
 Psychological, arising from the need for recognition, esteem or belongingness.
 Motive when it is aroused to a sufficient level of intensity. A motive (drive) is a
need that is sufficiently pressing to direct the person to seek satisfaction. Strong
enough to motivate the person to act at a given point in time.
Two of the most popular-the theories of Sigmund Freud and Abraham Maslow – have
quite different meanings for consumer analysis and marketing.
Freud's Theory of Motivation
 He assumes that people are largely unconscious about the real psychological
forces shaping their behavior. He sees the person as growing up and
repressing many urges. These urges are never eliminated or under perfect
control, they emerge in dreams, in slips of the tongue, in neurotic and

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obsessive behavior, or ultimately in psychoses. Thus, Freud suggests that a
person doesn't fully understand his/her motivation.

Maslow's Theory of Motivation

 Abraham Maslow sought to explain why people are driven by particular need
at particular time. Why does one person spend much time and energy on
personal safety and another on gaining the esteem of others? Maslow's
answer is that human needs are arranged in hierarchy from the most pressing
to the least pressing. In order of importance, they are physiological needs,
safety needs, social needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization needs.

Self-actualization Needs (Self-dev't and realization)

Esteem needs (Self-esteem, Recognition, and status)
Social needs (sense of belonging, love)
Safety needs (Security, protection)
Physiological needs (hunger, thirst shelter, Air, sex)

Fig. 4.4 Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

 A person tries to satisfy the most important need first. When that important
need is satisfied, it will stop being a motivator and the person will then try to
satisfy the next most important need. As each important need is satisfied, the
next most important need will come in to play.
II. Perception
A motivated person is ready to act. How the person acts is influenced by his/her
perception of the situation. Two people with the same motivation and in the same
situation may act quite differently because they perceive the situation differently. Why
do people perceive the same situation differently? All of us learn by the flow of
information through our five senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste. However,
each of us receives, organizes, and interprets this sensory information in an individual
way. Perception is the process by which people select, organize and interpret
information to form meaningful picture of the world.
People can form different perceptions of the same stimulus because of three
perceptual processes: selective attention, selective distortion and selective retention.

 Selective Attention: the tendency for people to screen out most of the
information to which they are exposed. It is impossible for a person to pay
attention to all these stimuli. People who are in the market may not notice the
message unless it stands out from the surrounding sea of other ads.
 Selective Distortion: it describes the tendency of people to adapt information
to personal meanings. In other words, noted stimuli do not always come across
in the intended way. Each person fits incoming information into un-existing

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mind-set. People tend to interpret information in a way that will support what
they already believe. Thus, marketers must try to understand the mindsets of
consumers and how these will affect interpretations of advertising and sales
information.
 Selective Retention: people also will forget much that they learn. They tend to
retain information that supports their attitudes and beliefs. Because of
selective retention, a person is likely to remember good points made about a
particular product, which he/she is familiar, and forget good points made
about competing products.
III. Learning
When people act, they learn. Learning describes changes in an individual's behavior
arising from experience. Learning theorists say that most human behavior is learned.
Learning occurs through the interplay of drives, stimuli, responses and reinforcement.
The practical significance of learning theory for marketers is that they can build up
demand for a product by associating it with strong drives, using motivating cues, and
providing positive reinforcement.

IV. Beliefs and Attitudes

Through doing and learning, people acquire their beliefs and attitudes. These, in turn,
influence their buying behavior. A belief is a descriptive thought that a person has
about something.
Marketers are interested in the beliefs that people formulate about specific products
and services, because there beliefs make up product and brand images that affect
buying behavior. If some of the beliefs are wrong and prevent purchase, the marketer
will want to launch a campaign to correct them.
People have attitudes regarding religion, politics, clothes, music, food and almost
everything else. An attitude describes a person's relatively consistent evaluations,
feelings and tendencies toward an object or idea. Attitudes put people into a frame of
mind of liking or disliking things, of moving toward or away from them.
Attitudes are difficult to change. A person's attitudes fit into a pattern, and to change
one attitude may require difficult adjustments in many others. Thus, a company should
usually try to fit its products into existing attitudes rather than try to change attitudes.
Of course, there are expectations in which the great cost of trying to change attitudes
may pay off.
We can now appreciate the many individual characteristics and forces acting on consumer
behavior. The consumer's choice results from the complex interplay of cultural, social,
personal, and psychological factors. Although many of these factors cannot be influenced by
the marketer, they can be useful in identifying interested buyers and in shaping products and
appeals to better serve their needs.

4.1.3. Types of Buying Decision Behavior

There are four types of consumer buying behavior based on the degree of buyer involvement
and the degree of differences among brands.
Complex Buying Behavior:
 Infrequent + High Involvement + Significant Brand Difference

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 Consumers when they are highly involved in a purchase and perceive significant brand
differences. Consumers may be involved when the product is expensive, risky,
purchase infrequently, and highly self-expressive (e.g. Car). Typically the consumer
has to learn about the product
Dissonance-reducing Buying Behavior:
 Infrequent + High Involvement + Not Large Brand Difference
 It occurs when consumers are highly involved with an expensive, infrequent, or risky
purchase, but see little difference among brands. For example a consumer buying
carpeting may face a high-involvement decision because carpeting is expensive and
self-expressive. Yet buyers may consider most carpet brands in a given price range
to be the same. In this case, because perceived brand differences are not large,
buyers may shop around to learn what is available, but buy relatively quickly. They
may respond primarily to a good price or purchase convenience. After the purchase,
consumer might experience post-purchase dissonance (after sale discomfort) when
they notice certain disadvantage of the purchased carpet or hear favorable things about
brands not purchased. To encounter such dissonance, marketer’s after-sale
communications should provide evidence and support to help consumers feel good
about their brand choices.
Habitual Buying Behavior:
 Frequent + Low involvement + little significant brand difference.
 For example, Sal. Consumers have little involvement in this product category- they
simply go the store and reach a brand. Consumers appear to have low involvement
with most low cost, frequently purchased products.
Variety-Seeking Buying Behavior:
 Low involvement + significant perceived brand differences.
 In such cases, brand switching occurs for the sake of variety rather than because of
dissatisfaction.
4.1.4. The Buyer Decision Processes
Consumers pass through all the five stages with every purchase. But in more routine
purchases, they often skip or reverse some of the stages.

Need Information Evaluation of Purchase P os t

Recognition Search Alternatives Decision Purchase
Behavior
Fig. 5.2 Buyer Decision Process
Need Recognition
The buyer recognizes a problem or need. The buyer senses his/her actual state and
some desired state. The need can be triggered by internal stimuli when one of the
persons normal needs, hunger, thirst, sex – rises to a level high enough to become a
drive. A need can also be triggered by external stimuli. The marketer should research
consumers to find out what kinds of needs or problems arise, what brought them
about, and how they led the consumer to this particular product.
Information Search

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If the consumer may not store the need in memory it undertake an information search related to
the need. The consumer can obtain information from any of several sources:
 Personal Source: family, friends, neighbors, acquaintances.
 Commercial Sources: advertising, salespersons, dealers, packages, displays
 Public Sources: mass media, consumer-rating organizations.
The consumers' awareness and knowledge of the available brands and features increase. A
company must design a marketing mix to make prospects aware of and knowledgeable about its
brand. Consumers should be asked how they first heard about the brand, what information
they received, and what importance they placed on different information sources.
Evaluation of Alternatives
The marketer needs to know about alternative evaluation that is, how the consumer processes
information to arrive at brand choices. Certain basic concepts help explain consumer evaluation
process:
 We assume that each consumer sees a product as a bundle of product attributes. They
pay the most attention to those attributes connected with their needs.
 The consumer will attach different degrees of importance to different attributes according
to his/her needs and wants.
 The consumer is likely to develop a set of brand beliefs about where each brand stands to
each attribute. The set of beliefs held about a particular brand is known as the brand image.
 The consumer's expected total product satisfaction will vary with levels of different
attributes.
 The consumer arrives at attitudes toward (through) the different brands through some
evaluation procedure.
Marketers should study buyers to find out how they actually evaluate brand alternatives.

Purchase Decisions
In the evaluation stage, the consumer ranks brands and forms purchase intentions.
Generally, the consumer's purchase decision will be to buy most prepared brand,
But two factors can come between the purchase intention and the purchase decision.
 The first factor is the attitude of others.
 The second factor is unexpected situational factors.
The consumer may form a purchase intention based on factors such as expected
income, expected price, and expected product benefits.
Post Purchase Behavior
The marketer's job doesn't end when the product is bought. After purchasing the
product, the consumer will be satisfied or dissatisfied and will engage in post purchase
behavior of interest to the marketer.
The negative feeling that may occur after a commitment purchase has been made is
called cognitive dissonance. What determines whether the buyer is satisfied or
dissatisfied with a purchase? The answer lies in the relationship between the
consumer's expectations and the product's perceived performance.
If the product falls short of expectations, the consumer is disappointed, if it meets
expectations, the consumer is satisfied, if product's performance exceeds expectations,
and the consumer is delighted.

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