Marketing Research Assignment

Unit 17 Marketing Research Assignment - BTECHND Assignment

LO1 Understand buyer behaviour and the purchase decision making process

Q1.1 Describe the main stages of the purchase decision-making process for an individual consumer. (i.e. business-to-consumer).

The purchase decision making process is the process in which the consumer decides whether to buy a product or not. The organisations try to understand this process to devise best marketing strategy possible to maximize the sale of their products (Bettman, 1991). This process consists of five important stages,

Need recognition

In this stage the customer realizes the need of a particular type of product in his life and decides that the requirement can be satisfied only by buying the product.

Information search

In this stage, the customer researches about the range of products or services available in the market that can satisfy the need recognised in the first stage.

Evaluation of alternatives

In this stage, the customer evaluates all the alternatives found in the last stage for the product or service required to satisfy his need and chooses one which is the most suitable for him.

Purchase

This stage actually consists of the process of buying the product or service and the monetary transactions associated with it.

Post purchase behaviour

In this stage, the consumer tries to evaluate his decision to buy the product or service and tries to come up with the facts supporting the purchase (Häubl, 2000).

Q1.2 Explain two theories of buyer behaviour in terms of individuals and markets.

Buyer behaviour can be defined as the processes and actions of the consumers in buying and using a product or service. There are several theories and approaches used for analysing, identifying, anticipating and evaluating the buyer behaviour of the consumers (Howard, 1969). These theories help the organisations to plan an effective marketing strategy to maximize the sale of their products or services. Two of those theories are described below.

Cultural theory

The influence of the social culture of the consumer affects the buyer behaviour of the individual consumer and the potential buyers in the market. Different societies have different cultural values and beliefs. So there are some restrictions or preference of products and services in some markets. The products or services have to be approved by the society for it to be sold in the market. Thus the buyer behaviour of the individuals is affected by the cultural factors.

Internal theory

There are several personal factors that influence the buyer behaviour of the individuals. Every individual is different than the other. So the personal socio-economic status, locality and lifestyle of an individual affect the buyer behaviour (Sheth, 1973). Similarly the geographic location of the market defines some of the personal traits of the people residing there. So the personality factors of the individuals affect the buyer behaviour.

Q1.3 Explain two factors that could affect buyer behaviour.

There are several factors that influence the buyer behaviour of the individual customers. These factors are present in the market environment, personal life and society of the customers. There are four major factors that influence the buyer behaviour the most, such as cultural factors, social factors, personal factors and psychological factors (Stávková, 2008).

Personal factors

There are several personal characteristics or personal traits that influence the buyer behaviour of the customers. For example the decision making process of a person who loves shopping will be very different from the person who hates shopping. Another example can be given as the fact that there are people who love to go through all the alternatives available in the market and choose one depending on its price and there are some other people who just buy the product which they like the best without going through the rest of the alternatives.

Social factors

As discussed earlier, the social beliefs of an individual affect the buyer behaviour to a great extent. The influence of the family, friends and surroundings of an individual on his buying behaviour is very high. For example a girl having restrictions from her family regarding the dresses can’t shop for miniskirts.

Q1.4 Evaluate the relationship between brand loyalty, corporate image and repeat purchase.

Brand

Brand is the name, symbol, status or design of a particular product of a seller that distinguishes it from the products of other sellers. Brand basically allows the organisations to place their product as the best choice in the minds of the customers (Andreassen, 1998).

Brand loyalty

After a product of an organisation is established as a brand in the market, people who give brand value a lot of importance buy prefer the product of the same brand than the others. This is called brand loyalty, which causes customers to choose one brand over all the other brands for a particular product.

Corporate image

This is the mental image of the people in the market about what they perceive or think of a particular organisation. The corporate image of an organisation is defined by its popularity, demand and reputation.

Repeat purchase

A consumer buying the products of the same brand as the previous purchases is known as repeat purchase. The positioning of the brand image of an organisation in the minds of people in the market is related to the corporate image in way that they are directly proportional i.e. if the brand value of a product of an organisation increases, then the corporate image of the organisation becomes stronger. Increase in brand value causes more customers to be loyal to the brand, causing increase in brand loyalty (Sharp, 1997). Increase in brand loyalty causes the loyal customers to buy the products from the same brand multiple times, causing increase in repeat purchase.Order Now