JOMO KENYATTA UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE AND

TECHNOLOGY
P.O. Box 62,000 – 00200 NAIROBI, KENYA
Telephone:
067-5870001, 067-5870002, 067-5870003, 067-5870004,
Email: [email protected]

PROGRAMME: MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION(MBA)

HCBA3104 MARKETING MANAGEMENT

GROUP MEMBERS
1. Lilian Isoso ……………….... HDB311-C004-2198/2024
2. Joan Wanja ……………….. HDB311-C004-1919/2024
3.Ian Kariuki Njabani ………. HDB311-C005-2406/2024
4.Jonathan Murunga ……… HDB311-C004-2378/2024
5.Purity Majimbo ……………. HDB311-C004-2200/2024
6.Hadija Omar ……………… HDB311-C005-2407/2024
7.Emmaculate Nyaribo …..... HDB311-C004-2549/2024
8.Ibrahim Abikar …………….. HDB311-C004-2190/2024
9.Emily Umazi ……………….... HDB311-C005-2643/2024
10.Zubeda Abdalla …………. HDB311-C005-1817/2024
11.Michael Kamulu …………. HDB311-C004- 2551/2024
12.Marcyl Aboge ………….... HDB311-C004-0924/2021
13.Esha Salim ……………….... HDB311-C005-2634/2024
 CONSUMER BUYING BEHAVIOUR

1. Importance of studying consumer

behaviour
2. Classification of consumer buying
decisions
3. Consumer decision making process
4. Factors influencing consumer behaviour

BY GROUP 3 AND 4
 Introduction
Successful marketing requires that companies fully connect with their customers.
Adopting a holistic marketing orientation means understanding customers - gaining a
360 degree view of both their daily lives and the changes that occur during their
lifetimes so the right product are always marketed to the right customers in the right
way.
The consumer buying behaviour can be considered as complex decision making
processes and acts by individual consumer over a time period.
The actual purchase is usually preceded by a series of related psychological and
physiological activities. These activities influence the nature of the consumer purchasing
processes and acts before the actual buying transaction is done.
It is essential for the marketers to analyze and understand the consumer buying
behaviour because of the following reasons:-
1) A firm’s success depends on the reaction and behaviour of the consumers
towards its marketing programmes and strategies.
2) The marketing concept states that a firm’s marketing mix should satisfy the
consumers’ needs and wants.
3) A better understanding of factors influencing consumer buying behaviour is
necessary. Why? The marketer is in a safer position to anticipate and predict
how consumer will respond to the firm’s marketing strategy.
 Classification of Consumer Buying Decisions
The consumer buying decisions can be classified into the
following categories:-
a) Routine response behaviour. This is applied when the
consumer makes frequent and common purchases e.g. buying
soap, salt or bread. These are commodities of low cost and
risk.
b) Limited decision making behaviour. This is used when
the consumer purchases products occasionally or when she/he
requires information about some unfamiliar brand in a familiar
product category.
c) Extensive decision-making behaviour. Applies when the
consumer purchases an unfamiliar expensive, high risk or
infrequently bought product.
d) Impulsive buying behaviour. Occurs when the consumer
does an unplanned buying. This involves a powerful persistent
urge to buy something immediately without any prior decision.
Consumer Decision Making Process
A consumer decision making process has five (5) distinct stages:
Stage 1: Problem Recognition
This occurs when a consumer realizes that his current state of
affairs differs significantly from some ideal state e.g. lack of a
basic need like food or clothing.
A consumer must recognize a problem before the purchase
behaviour can begin.
There are several factors that influence consumer’s recognition of
problems. For example:
 Change in financial status e.g. through a salary increment
 Change in household characteristics e.g. having a new born
 Normal depletion e.g. when we use the last piece of soap
 Availability of products e.g. introduction of new products
 Stage 2: Information search

Surprisingly, consumers search for limited amounts of information. Surveys have shown
that for durables, half of all consumers look at only one store, and only 30% look at more
than one brand of appliances. We can distinguish between two levels of engagement in
the search.
The milder search is called heightened attention. At this level a person simply becomes
more receptive to information about a product.
At the next level, the person may enter an active information search: looking for reading
material, phoning friends, going online, visiting stores to learn about a product.
Information sources to which consumers will turn to fall into four groups:
 Personal – family, friends, neighbors, acquaintances
 Commercial- advertising, websites, sales persons, dealers, packaging, displays
 Public- mass media, consumer rating organizations
 Experiential - handling, examining, using the product
 Stage 3: Evaluation of Alternatives

How does the consumer process competitive brand information and make a final value judgement? No
single process is used by all consumers, or by one in all buying situations. There are several processes,
and the most current models see the consumer forming judgement largely on a conscious and rational
basis.
Some basic concepts will help us understand consumer evaluation processes.
First, the consumer is trying to satisfy a need.
Second, the consumer is looking for certain benefits from the product solution.
Third, the consumer sees each product as a bundle of attributes with varying abilities to deliver the
benefits. The attributes of interest to buyers vary by product- for example
Hotels- location, cleanliness, atmosphere, price
Mouthwash- color, effectiveness, germ killing capacity, taste/flavor, price
Tires- safety, tread life, ride quality, price
Consumers will pay the most attention to attributes that deliver the sought-after benefits.

Stage 4: Purchase decisions

In the evaluation stage, consumer forms preferences among the brands in the choice set and may also
form an intention to buy the most preferred brand. In executing a purchase intention, the consumer
may make up to five sub-decisions:
Brand (brand A), dealer (dealer 1), quantity (one computer), timing (weekend), and payment
method (credit card or cash)
 Stage 5: Post purchase evaluation
After the purchase, the consumer might experience dissonance from noticing
certain disquieting features or hearing favorable things about other brands and
will be alert to information that supports his or her decision.
Marketing communication should supply beliefs and evaluations that reinforce the
consumers’ choice and help him or her feel good about the brand.
The marketer’s job therefore does not end with the purchase. Marketers must
monitor post purchase satisfaction, post purchase actions, and post purchase
product uses or disposal. The customer has the following options of dealing with
dissatisfaction:
Factors Influencing Consumer Behavior
There are four major categories of influences on consumer buying decision process. They are:
 Personal factors
 Cultural factors
 Social factors
 Psychological factors

Personal Factors
Personal characteristics that influence a buyer’s decision include age and stage in the life cycle,
occupation and economic circumstances, personality and self-concept, and life style and
values.
Age and stage in the life cycle
Our taste in food, clothes, furniture, and recreation is often related to our age.
Consumption is also shaped by the family lifecycle and the number, age, and gender of the people in
the household at any point in time. In addition, psychological life-cycle stages may matter. Adults
experience certain passages or transformations as they go through life. Their behaviour as they go
through these passages such as becoming parent, is not necessarily fixed but changes with the times.
Occupation and economic circumstances
Occupation also influences consumption patterns. Marketers try to identify the occupational groups
that have above average interest in their products and even tailor product for certain occupational
groups.
Product and brand choice are greatly affected by economic circumstances: spendable income, savings
and assets, debts, borrowing power, and attitudes towards spending and saving
 Personal Factors continued …
Personality and self-concept
Each person has personality characteristics that influence his or her buying behaviour. By
personality we mean a set of distinguishing human psychological traits that lead to relatively
consistent and enduring responses to environmental stimuli (including buying behaviour).
Personality can be a useful variable in analyzing consumer brand choices. Brands also have
personalities, and consumers are likely to choose brands whose personalities match their own.
Stanford’s Jennifer Aaker researched brand personalities and identified the following traits
 Sincerity (down-to-earth, honest, wholesome, and cheerful)
 Excitement (daring, spirited, imaginative, and up-to-date)
 Competence (reliable, intelligent, and successful)
 Sophistication (upper-class and charming)
 Ruggedness (outdoorsy and tough)
Lifestyle and values
People from the same sub-culture, social class, and occupation may lead quite different
lifestyles. A lifestyle is a person’s pattern of living in the world expressed in activities, interests,
and opinions. It portrays the whole person interacting with his or her environment. Marketers
search for relationships between their products and lifestyle groups. Lifestyles are shaped partly
by whether consumers are money constrained or time constrained.
 Cultural factors
Culture, subculture and social class are particularly important influences on consumer buying
behaviour. Culture is the fundamental determinant of a person’s wants and behaviour
mostly through family and key institutions. Marketers must closely attend to cultural values in
every country to understand how to best market their existing products and find
opportunities for new products.
Each culture consist of smaller sub-cultures that provide more specific identification and
socialization for their members. Subcultures include nationalities, religions, racial groups, and
geographical regions. When subcultures grow large and affluent enough, companies often
design specialized marketing programs to serve them.
Virtually all human societies exhibit social stratification, most often in the form of social
classes, relatively homogenous and enduring divisions in a society, hierarchically ordered
and with members who share similar values, interests and behaviour. One classic depiction of
social class in the USA defined seven ascending levels: (1) lower lowers (2) upper lowers, (3)
working class (4) middle class, (5) upper middles, (6) lower uppers, and (7) upper uppers.
Social class members show distinct product and brand preferences in many areas including
clothing, home furnishings, leisure activities, and automobiles. They differ in media
preferences and there is also language differences.
 Social factors
In addition to cultural factors, social factors such as reference groups, family, and social roles and statuses
affect our buying behaviour.
Reference groups
A persons reference groups are all the groups that have a direct (face-to-face) or indirect influence on their
attitudes or behaviour. Groups having a direct influence are called membership groups. Some of these are
primary groups with whom the person interacts fairly continuously and informally, such as family, friends,
neighbors, and coworkers. People also belong to secondary groups, such as religious, professional, and
trade-union groups, which tend to be more formal and require less continuous interaction.
Reference groups influence members in at least three ways. They expose an individual to new behaviours and
lifestyles, they influence attitudes and self-concept, and they create pressures for conformity that may affect
product and brand choices. People are also influenced by groups which they don’t belong. Aspirational groups
are those a person hopes to join; dissociative groups are those whose values or behaviour an individual
rejects.
Where reference group influence is strong, marketers must determine how to reach and influence the group’s
opinion leaders.
An opinion leader is the person who offers informal advice or information about a specific product or product
category, such as which of several brands is best or how a particular product may be used. Opinion leaders are
highly confident, socially active, and frequent users of the category. Marketers try to reach them by identifying
their demographic and psychographic characteristics, identifying the media they read, and directing messages
to them.
 Social Factors continued …
Family
The family is the most important consumer buying organization in society, and family members
constitute the most influential primary reference group. There are two families in a buyer’s life. The
family of orientation consists of parents and siblings. From parents a person acquires an orientation
toward religion, politics, and economics and a sense of personal ambition, self-worth and love.
A more direct influence one everyday buying behaviour is the family of procreation- namely, the
person’s spouse and children. Research has shown that more than two thirds of 13- to 21- year-olds
make or influence family purchase decisions on audio/video equipment, software, and vacation
destinations.

Role and status

We each participate in many groups- family, clubs, and organizations. Groups often are an important
source of information and help to define norms for behaviour. We can define a person’s position in
each group in terms of role and status. A role consists of the activities a person is expected to
perform. Each role in turn connotes a status. People choose products that reflect and communicate
their role and their actual or desired status in society. Marketers must be aware of the status-symbol
potential of products and brands.
 Psychological Factors
The psychological forces which influence the buying decisions are primary psychological factors
such as (a) perception, (b) learning, (c) emotions, and (d) motives.
Perception
Perception is the process of selecting, organizing and interpreting information inputs to create a
meaningful picture of the world. People emerge with different perceptions of the same object
because of three perceptual processes: selective attention, selective distortion, and selective
retention
Selective attention is the process of screening out most stimuli-since one cannot attend to all.
This means that marketers must work hard to attract consumers’ notice. The real challenge is to
explain which stimuli people will notice. Here are some finding:
People are more likely to notice stimuli that relate to their current need
People are likely to notice stimuli they anticipate
People are more likely to notice stimuli whose deviations are large in relation to normal size of the
stimuli
Selective distortion is the tendency to interpret information in a way that fits our
preconceptions. Consumers will often distort information to be consistent with prior brand and
product beliefs and expectations.
Selective retention- most of us don’t remember much of the information to which we are
exposed, but we do retain information that supports our attitudes and beliefs. Because of selective
retention, we are likely to remember good points about a product we like and forget good points
about competing products.
 Psychological Factors continued …
Learning
Learning is a change in behaviour as a result of experience. Stimulus-response learning involves
drives (a strong internal stimulus impelling action), cues (minor stimuli that determine when,
where, and how a person responds), responses, and reinforcement. This means that learning is an
activity caused by receiving information and acquiring experience. Knowledge consists of (a)
familiarity with the product and (b) the individual’s ability to apply the product, i.e. expertise.
Emotions
Consumer response is not all cognitive and rational, much may be emotional and invoke different
kinds of feelings. A brand or product may make a consumer feel proud, excited, or confident. An
ad may create feelings of amusement, disgust, or wonder.
Motive
All consumer behavioral activities are motivated by some aroused need. A motive is an internal
energy or force which directs a person’s behaviour towards seeking a need satisfaction or
achieving a goal.

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