Decision processes of purchases of different items Generally speaking, there're 5 stages in the decision process of a purchase: need recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision and postpurchase behavior. Let’s take a look at how these stages contrast for purchasing different items, say, for a new notebook PC and a jar of peanut butter. Firstly, the process starts with need recognition. The need of a jar of Jif is much triggered by internal stimuli (hunger here). But the need of a new Notebook PC is triggered by external stimuli. You may increase the efficiency and productivity for school or work by having a new PC. The second stage is information search in which different search process may be used. In your notebook PC information search, you may pay attention to your colleagues’ PCs, notebook PC ads, notebook PC conversations, where your knowledge about PCs can be increased, and you may learn about several available brands and also help you drop certain brands from your consideration list. In contrast, you don’t have to do that many things or even anything when you simply want a 16 oz. jar of Jif creamy style peanut butter, because you know you are going to get one at Wal-Mart. Then, we need to work on evaluation of alternatives. We are familiar enough with the Jif peanut butter, so we don’t need to put too much effort for it in this stage. We are certain that a 16 oz. jar of Jif creamy style peanut butter is right what we want. But a notebook PC is not a common touch, which means we might want to have an elaborate evaluation process for purchasing one. For instance, we might pick a brand or make the decision based on what attributes we care about, customer services provided and other careful calculation and logical thinking etc. The next stage is purchase decision. It takes us much longer to make a decision about