Week 2 Project

Buying Behavior

Both qualitative and quantitative research may be applied to marketing. In place of focus groups and surveys, marketing managers use secondary information about an organization's strategies, �nances, and markets to understand its buying behavior. Marketing managers may then contact key purchasers or other personnel with a role in decision making to determine what their needs are. Often, this research is done informally by the organization's salespersons who service those accounts. The goal, as with marketing research, is to better understand the needs of the customers.

There are �ve important stages of buyer behavior:

1. Information Search,

2. Purchase Decision,

3. Need or Want Recognition,

4. Evaluation of Alternatives,

5. Post purchase Evaluation.

There are also four basic markets based on the buying mechanism and customer needs.  All four markets may be local or global, depending on the size of the �rm and its product mix. 

The four basic markets are:

1. Government,

2. Business,

3. Consumer,

4. Nonpro�t.

For the purpose of understanding buying behavior, the markets are further clustered into:

Consumer markets: In the consumer markets, consumers use their own money to purchase goods they utilize for their own purposes. For consumers, the process is internal and is often applied unconsciously.

Organization markets: Organization markets, by contrast, use money belonging to other people (stockholders, taxpayers, and donors) to buy products they need to produce the goods and services consistent with their organization's mission. The buyer decision process is common to both consumer and organization markets. For organizations, the buyer decision process is often spelled out in detail in policy manuals and procurement regulations.

Factors Affecting Consumer Behavior

Brand Advocates - These customers enhance your brand's market position by sponsoring and supporting the actions of the brand's organization. For example, some customers go out of their way to promote the services of an organization. The customers might communicate this through means such as electronic blogs or testimonials for the organization.

Word of Mouth - This may be positive or negative depending on the customers' experiences. It is dif�cult for an organization to control this factor because the organization does not know where the customer stands (being neutral in his or her opinion). It could help or hurt an organization depending on what the customer says.

Trial Purchase - This takes place when customers want to try products or services to see if they would like to purchase similar items or services in the future. Here, customers are looking to purchase products or services to meet only short-term needs.

Purchasing Barriers - These may be created naturally or arti�cially to block present or future purchase of products or services by customers. An example of this is when customers cannot reserve a hotel's rooms because all rooms are already booked.

Need Recognition - This leads a customer to purchase a brand only if it enhances his or her status. For example, customers may use high-end hospitality services such as luxury spas and resorts to enhance their status.

Brand Protestors - These are deterrents to the actions of the brand itself. These are customers who had a bad experience with the brand or have adverse feelings toward the brand. These customers go out of their way to discourage others from using the brand.

Additional Materials

View a Pdf Transcript of Buying Behavior (media/transcripts/Week_1/SUO_MKT3010%20W2%20L1.pdf? _&d2lSessionVal=2l62M8CfZKmEhm3v7ZkPzOSfo&ou=80393)

