Lecture 4

BUYER/CONSUMER BEHAVOIR
Learning objectives:
By the end of this chapter the learner should be able to:
1. Understand the concept consumer behavior.
2. Explain the factors that influence the consumer behavior.
3. Discuss the steps in the buyer’s decision process.
4. Explain four types of consumer buying behavior.
Defining consumer behavior
Consumer behavior refers to the study of how individual consumers, groups, or households select,
purchase, use, and dispose of goods, services, ideas, or experiences to satisfy their needs and wants.
 It examines the decision-making processes before, during, and after purchase, as well as
the factors influencing these decisions.
Consumer behavior is the decision processes an individual or group involving evaluating,
acquiring, using or consuming goods and services.
Nature and Structure of Consumer Markets
1. Large number of buyers: Consumer markets consist of a vast number of buyers who
purchase goods and services for personal or household consumption, making the market
highly diverse and complex.
2. Geographic dispersion: Consumers are widely spread across different regions, countries,
and cultures, requiring firms to adopt varied marketing strategies.
3. High volume, Low unit purchases: Consumers usually buy small quantities per
transaction, but collectively account for large total market demand.
4. Heterogeneous needs and preferences: Consumer tastes, preferences, income levels, and
lifestyles differ significantly, leading to market segmentation.
5. Emotional and psychological influence: Purchasing decisions are often influenced by
emotions, attitudes, perceptions, and personal beliefs.
6. Short buying cycles: Many consumer goods are purchased frequently, such as food and
personal care products, resulting in quick decision cycles.
7. Brand sensitivity: Consumers often show loyalty or strong preference toward certain
brands based on past experiences and perceptions.
8. Influence of intermediaries: Retailers, wholesalers, and online platforms play a

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 significant role in connecting producers with consumers.

Importance understanding consumer behavior

A firm needs to analyze buying behavior for:
1. Helps in market segmentation: Understanding behavior enables firms to divide the market
into meaningful segments based on needs and preferences.
2. Improves product development: Consumer insights guide the design and improvement of
products that better satisfy customer needs.
3. Enhances customer satisfaction: Knowledge of expectations and preferences helps firms
deliver superior value.
4. Supports effective marketing communication: Marketers can design promotional messages
that resonate with consumers’ attitudes and motivations.
5. Improves competitive advantage: Firms that understand their consumers better can
outperform competitors.
6. Reduces marketing risk: Behavioral analysis minimizes uncertainty in product launches and
promotional campaigns.
7. Builds brand loyalty: Understanding buying patterns helps firms develop long-term customer
relationships.
8. Supports strategic decision making: Consumer behavior information supports pricing,
distribution, and positioning strategies.
The Model of Consumer Behavior
1. Marketing stimuli: Includes product, price, place, and promotion activities designed to
influence consumers.
2. Environmental stimuli: Economic, technological, political, cultural, and social factors
affecting consumer decisions.
3. Buyer’s black box: Represents the consumer’s mind where stimuli are processed, influenced
by personal characteristics.
4. Buyer characteristics: Include cultural, social, personal, and psychological attributes of the
consumer.
5. Decision-making process: Steps consumers follow when choosing whether and what to buy.
6. Purchase decision: The actual choice of product, brand, quantity, timing, and place of

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 purchase.
7. Post-purchase behavior: Consumer evaluation after purchase, leading to satisfaction or
dissatisfaction.
8. Feedback loop: Post-purchase experience influences future buying behavior and attitudes.

Model of the buyer decision process

To understand, the buyer decision-making process, the general model of the buyer decision process
serves as a tool. This model consists of these five steps or stages, including the post- purchase step
or stage:
1. Problem recognition
2. Information search
3. Evaluation of alternatives
4. Purchase decision and purchase
5. Post-purchase behavior
Figure 5 shows the common general model of the decision process.

Let us briefly look at the steps, as they are also called stages, of the model.
Actual purchasing is only one stage of the process. Not all decision processes lead to a purchase.
All consumer decisions do not always include all stages.
1. Problem recognition: the first step is to recognize that there is a need, for
instance, the need for food since the buyer feels hungry; and hunger stimulates
the need to eat. That again triggers the need to search information for food.
2. Information search: information search leads to internal search, from memory
or to the external search (from media, friends, shopping, internet, etc.,), or from
both internal and external search. This stage may lead the stage of evaluating the

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 alternatives. Which type of food to eat? At what price? Where? And when? And
how?
3. Evaluation of alternatives: depending on criteria for evaluation and features the
buyer wants or does not want, the buyer chooses the food to buy.
4. Purchase decision: the purchase decision includes product, package, store,
method of purchase and timing
5. Purchase: purchase may differ from decision, for instance, time of purchase and
product availability.
6. Post-Purchase behavior: this may be satisfaction or dissatisfaction after
purchase. There is a concept called Cognitive Dissonance- the situation of doubt
about whether the right decision to purchase was made. This can be reduced by
warranties, after sales communication and supportive measures.
Factors affecting the consumer behavior
The factors that affect the characteristics of consumer behavior:
1. Cultural factors
2. Social factors
3. Personal factors
4. Psychological factors
1. Cultural Factors
Consumer behavior is deeply influenced by cultural factors such as: buyer culture, subculture, and
social class.
• Culture
Basically, culture is the part of every society and is the important cause of person wants
and behavior. The influence of culture on buying behavior varies from country to country
therefore marketers have to be very careful in analyzing the culture of different groups,
regions or even countries.
• Subculture
Each culture contains different subcultures such as religions, nationalities, geographic
regions, racial groups etc. Firms can use these groups by segmenting the market into
various small portions, for example, by designing products according to the needs of a

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 particular geographic group.
• Social Class
Every society possesses some form of social class which is important, because the buying
behavior of people in a given social class is similar. In this way marketing activities could
be tailored according to different social classes. Here we should note that social class is
not only determined by income but there are various other factors as well such as: wealth,
education, occupation etc.
2. Social Factors
Social factors also impact the buying behavior of consumers. The important social factors are:
reference groups, family, role and status.
• Reference Groups
Reference groups have potential in forming a person attitude or behavior. The impact of
reference groups varies across products and brands. For example if the product is visible
such as dress, shoes, car etc then the influence of reference groups will be high. Reference
groups also include opinion leader (a person who influences other because of his special
skill, knowledge or other characteristics).
• Family
Buyer behavior is strongly influenced by the member of a family. Therefore marketers
are trying to find the roles and influence of the husband, wife and children. If the
buying decision of a
particular product is influenced by wife then the marketers will try to target the women
in their advertisement. Here we should note that buying roles change with change in
consumer lifestyles.
• Roles and Status
Each person possesses different roles and status in the society depending upon the groups,
clubs, family, organization etc. to which he belongs. For example a woman is working in
an organization as finance manager. Now she is playing two roles, one of finance
manager and other of mother. Therefore her buying decisions will be influenced by her
role and status.

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3. Personal Factors
Personal factors can also affect the consumer behavior. Some of the important personal factors
that influence the buying behavior are: lifestyle, economic situation, occupation, age, personality
and self-concept.
• Age
Age and life-cycle have potential impact on the consumer buying behavior. It is obvious
that the consumers change the purchase of goods and services with the passage of time.
Family life-cycle consists of different stages such young singles, married couples,
unmarried couples etc which help marketers to develop appropriate products for each
stage.
• Occupation
The occupation of a person has significant impact on his buying behavior. For example
a marketing manager of an organization will try to purchase business suits, whereas a
low level worker in the same organization will purchase rugged work clothes.
• Economic Situation
Consumer economic situation has great influence on his buying behavior. If the income
and savings of a customer is high then he will purchase more expensive products. On the
other hand, a person with low income and savings will purchase inexpensive products.
• Lifestyle
Lifestyle of customers is another import factor affecting the consumer buying behavior.
Lifestyle refers to the way a person lives in a society and is expressed by the things in
his/her surroundings. It is determined by customer interests, opinions, activities etc and
shapes his whole pattern of acting and interacting in the world.
• Personality
Personality changes from person to person, time to time and place to place. Therefore it
can greatly influence the buying behavior of customers. Actually, Personality is not what
one wears; rather it is the totality of behavior of a man in different circumstances. It has
different characteristics such as: dominance, aggressiveness, self-confidence etc. which
can be useful to determine the consumer behavior for particular product or service.

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4. Psychological Factors
There are four important psychological factors affecting the consumer buying behavior. These are:
perception, motivation, learning, beliefs and attitudes.
• Motivation
The level of motivation also affects the buying behavior of customers. Every person has
different needs such as physiological needs, biological needs, social needs etc. The nature
of the needs is that, some of them are most pressing while others are least pressing.
Therefore a need becomes a motive when it is more pressing to direct the person to seek
satisfaction.
• Perception
Selecting, organizing and interpreting information in a way to produce a meaningful
experience of the world is called perception. There are three different perceptual
processes which are selective attention, selective distortion and selective retention. In
case of selective attention, marketers try to attract the customer attention. Whereas, in
case of selective distortion, customers try to interpret the information in a way that will
support what the customers already believe. Similarly, in case of selective retention,
marketers try to retain information that supports their beliefs.
• Beliefs and Attitudes
Customer possesses specific belief and attitude towards various products. Since such
beliefs and attitudes make up brand image and affect consumer buying behavior therefore
marketers are interested in them. Marketers can change the beliefs and attitudes of
customers by launching special campaigns in this regard.
Types of consumer buying behavior
Types of consumer buying behavior are determined by:
 Level of Involvement in purchase decision, importance and intensity of interest
in a product in a particular situation
 Buyers level of involvement determines the reasons for motivation to seek
information about a certain products and brands but virtually ignores others

The eight type of consumer buying behavior are:

1. Complex buying behavior: Occurs when consumers are highly involved and perceive

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 significant differences between brands.
2. Dissonance-reducing buying behavior: High involvement but few perceived brand
differences, leading to post-purchase doubt.
3. Habitual buying behavior: Low involvement purchases made out of routine, such as daily
groceries.
4. Variety-seeking buying behavior: Low involvement but significant brand differences,
leading to brand switching.
5. Impulsive buying behavior: Unplanned purchases driven by emotions or sudden urges.
6. Rational buying behavior: Purchases based on logical evaluation of price, quality, and utility.
7. Emotional buying behavior: Decisions driven by feelings, moods, or brand attachment.
8. Online buying behavior: Purchasing decisions influenced by digital platforms, reviews, and
online convenience.
Review questions
1. Define the concept consumer behavior.
2. Discuss four factors that affect the consumer behavior. Give local examples.
3. Explain the steps in the buyer decision process. Use a local case to explain.
4. Identify and explain four types of consumer buying behavior.

Further Reading
Kotler, P., Gary, A. (2008). Principles of Marketing. 12th edition. Upper Saddle River, New
Jersey: Pearson Education.
Kotler, P., Kevin, L. K. (2006). Marketing Management. 12th edition. Upper Saddle River, New
Jersey: Pearson Education.