Understanding Consumer Behavior The study of consumer behavior touches almost every aspect of our lives. We spend much of our waking day being consumers. Our everyday actions form part of the study of consumer behavior. It is considered to be an integrated part in the marketing field (Khaniwale, 2015). Sciffman and Kanuk define consumer behavior as an examination of how consumers allocate their available resources (time, money, effort) on purchases. Hayden Noel added that “it is an analysis of how consumer buy, use and dispose products acquired through purchases. Buying behavior is a concept which answers what, why, when, where, how often consumers buy and how often they use it. It has been defined as: ‘the study of the processes involved …show more content…
Briefly, purchases are strongly influenced by personal (e.g. age, life cycle, occupation, lifestyle, personality, economic situation), social e.g. family structures, peer or reference groups, roles and status), cultural (e.g. culture, sub-culture, social class), and psychological (e.g. motivation, learning, attitudes, perception, beliefs) factors (Kotler and Armstong, 2011). Khaniwale (2015) emphasizes that these factors knowingly or unknowingly affect the decision to buy which may be in or beyond control of the buyer. Consumer Decision Making Learning about consumer buying behavior is no easy task as the answers lie deep within their minds. There are number of studies by researchers about the consumer decision process whereby most of them developed a five stage model. Despite various definitions of the stages by other others, all of them revolves around the same idea as they go about defining the stages. Kotler and Armstrong (2011) offered the typical model of buying process a consumer through described as …show more content…
Kotler and Armstrong, 2011, specified that there are significant differences among competing brands. Therefore, the buyer will engage in extensive information search as it involves expensive, risky and infrequently purchased items to reach a good decision. b) Variety-seeking buying behavior This type of decision requires low buyer involvement but since there is significant differences between brands, consumers do a lot of brand switching. c) Dissonance-reducing buying behavior Practically, it relates to risky, costly or infrequent purchases where little difference exist between brands. Consumers usually find it difficult to differentiate between brands (Alamgir et al, 2010). In such cases, the level of consumer involvement is relatively high. d) Habitual buying