Marketing is the process of promoting a product or service to be sold to the consumer and keep it selling indefinitely. This assignment will cover the different aspects of marketing from the purchase decision making process that consumers go through, to the theories and factors that influence the consumer’s behaviour when making a purchase. It will also evaluate the relationship between brand loyalty, corporate image and repeat purchasing and how they are all related.
When it comes to marketing, the most important factor that any business will need to consider is itself. When selling a product or service, the business will need to ensure its viable, otherwise it could lose the company money. To ensure this doesn’t happen, any business will have to analyse their markets and the different buyer behaviour of different consumers during the purchase decision making process. This is the process that a consumer goes through when purchasing a product or service. It consists of five stages, need recognition; information search; alternative evaluation; purchase decision and post purchase decision.
Need recognition or problem identification is the first stage in the purchase decision making process. The consumer has identified that there is a need that needs to be fulfilled. This need has either been triggered by internal or external stimuli. Internal stimuli are the physiological needs felt by the consumer, such as hunger, tiredness or thirst. External stimuli are the advertisements that the consumer will see in the newspaper or on the television. It can also be the conversation between friends and family about a product or service. Businesses can take this on board and find a way of making sure that when the need is triggered, their product or service is the first thing that the consumer thinks of.
Once the need has been triggered, the consumer will the search for information about how to fulfil the need. Information search is the second step in the purchase decision making process. This information will help them decide on which product or service will help fulfil their need. The consumer can either gain information from both internal and external sources. Internal sources, is the knowledge that the consumer already has. They may have used the product, service or brand before and so they know what experience they can expect. External information is the knowledge obtained from friends, family, customer reviews or advertising. This information is usually used when the consumer has now prior knowledge and they need an idea of how it can fulfil their need.
After collecting the information needed, the next stage of the purchase decision making process is alternative evaluation. This is the stage where, after the information is collected, the consumer will then evaluate the product, service or brand to find out which is more suitable for them. They will evaluate the products, services or brands by their characteristics. Firstly, they will look at their objective characteristics, which are the features and functions of the product or brand. They will then evaluate the subjective characteristics, which is how the brand is perceived and its perceptions. There are sets that are personal to the consumer, each contain different products or brands that they would happily purchase which are the evoked set, and those that the consumer wouldn’t purchase which are the inept set. There is a third set which is the inert set. These are the products or brands that the consumer has no opinion on.
After evaluating each brand or product, they will then make a decision and purchase the product that they think is suitable to fulfil their need. This is the purchase decision stage of the process. The information that they collected earlier on in the process, will be what their decision is based on. If there wasn’t a need, there wouldn’t have been any need for the purchase.
After the fourth stage of the purchase decision making process, they will then move onto the post purchase, which is the final stage within the decision making process. Once the product has been purchased, the consumer may feel satisfaction and adequacy because their need was fulfilled. If the consumer is satisfied, they will know how to fulfil that particular need. So when it comes to the evaluation of alternatives, this product will be in the evoked set. However, if they are not fully satisfied, the whole process will begin again during their next purchase. Also, the product or brand will become part of the inept set as there would be an unlikely chance that they will purchase it again.
During the decision making process, businesses will want to analyse the buyer behaviour of the consumer. Cambridge Dictionary Online defines buyer behaviour as “the decision process and acts of people involved in buying and using products”. From this definition, its understood that buyer behaviour is the way in which people act when making a purchase. Different theories have been produced explaining why people are motivated to make different purchases. One of the most popular theories is Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs.

Fig 1: Hierarchy…

Maslow’s hierarchy depicts the needs of an individual in 5 different segments. The first segment is the physiological. This is the segment for hunger, thirst and sleep. This is the segment that needs to be fulfilled first before attending to the rest. Once this segment has been fulfilled, they can then focus on the safety segment which is a sense of security which can cover, employment; family; health and property. Once they can achieve this sense of security, they can move onto achieving love and belonging. This can be obtained through friends and family, which can help achieve self-esteem as family and friends help boost confidence. With self-esteem and confidence in place, an individual can then deal with day to day life and with whatever issues and situations may arise.
A brand such as Coca Cola will be able to fulfil both the physiological and safety segments. Once the customer or consumer has begun the purchase decision making process, the target will be to fulfil the physiological need. Coca Cola, as a beverage will be able to fulfil the physiological need as its able to quench an individual’s thirst. The brand itself will be able to help fulfil the need for safety as it’s a well-known brand that has the same great taste.

Another model, is the black box theory, the definition of which is; “The black box model of consumer behaviour identifies the stimuli responsible for buyer behaviour.”. From this definition, it is clear that there are different stimuli that can influence buyer behaviour.

The black box model is split into 3 parts, the stimuli that can influence the consumer; the black box (the mind of the consumer) and the outcome or response of the consumer. For a business such as Coca Cola, to ensure that it’s their product that gets purchased, they will need to analyse the stimuli that motivates the consumer to make a purchase and try and adapt it so it’s their product that is purchased.

There are different factors that can influence a consumer’s behaviour when making a purchase. These factors can influence how a customer reacts to a certain product, or how they go about making a purchase.

The first main factor is the cultural factors. This is a crucial factor when it comes to understanding the individual and their needs and behaviour. Throughout the customer’s life, there will be different influences that make up the cultural aspect. The first major influence is the environment that they grew up in. Their surroundings will be the norm for them so any purchase that they make will reflect on how they were raised and what environment they were raised in. The next influence is their family and friends. They are more likely to purchase brands that their family and friends have recommended as they understand the tastes of these people and it may appeal to them. For a brand, this is crucial to understand and include the cultural factors when targeting a particular product. An example of where a company will need to take cultural factors into consideration is when they are marketing to areas populated by people with religious beliefs such as Judaism. According to Jewish religion, it is unacceptable for them to eat pork. This is the kind of information that businesses and companies will need to research before marketing their products.

Another factor that businesses will need take into consideration is the personal factors. Decisions made by the consumer and the way they behave when making a purchase is influenced by their characteristics. The first characteristic is the age and the way of life. A customer that is in his seventies will not be purchasing same products as they did when they were in their twenties. This is because their lifestyle, values, hobbies and interests will have changed. For example, in their twenties, they are more likely to purchase an IPhone as it’s a new mobile phone that has different apps for different day to day tasks. However, a seventy year old would not necessarily find this appealing and would rather purchase a mobile phone that was only able to text and call people. Throughout the consumer’s life, their buyer behaviour will change because of their home status, so if they were married with children, they would not purchase a sports car as they would have a family to think about. For a brand, they will have to analyse the shopping behaviour and the personal factors in order to adapt.

A third factor that would need to be analysed is the physiological factors. Firstly, a retailer will need to know what motivated the consumer to make different purchases. They understand that there is a need to be fulfilled but they will need to know what motivates the customer to make different choices and why they chose particular brands. The second segment is perception and how the consumer perceives different brands. It’s the process in which the customer will select and judge the information that he receives in order to develop an outcome. Each consumer will have different perceptions to one another and they will have different beliefs, attitudes and values.
Perception is a mechanism that is organised into 3 different levels, selective attention; selective distortion and selective retention. Selective attention is when the consumer focuses on little details of a brand or product that are more prominent to them. Different details are more prominent to different people. Brands find it difficult to capture and maintain the attention of their consumers. A good example is the pop ups and banner adverts that come up onto people’s laptops. Consumers are more likely to pay attention to new innovative advertisements. The second step within the process is selective distortion. This is where the consumer perceives a certain brand as the premium brand. The perception and brand image are very significant in the way a consumer judges the product. If a consumer was given a can of Coca Cola and a can of a lesser known brand, they would instantly choose to drink the Coca Cola as their perception would be that it was the better brand. However, if they were given the drinks in a blind taste test, the answers would be different as they wouldn’t be able to see the packaging and would only be able to perceive the product on its taste. The last step within the process is selective retention. This is where information about certain brands will be retained through association. Despite Coca Cola being prompted all year around, the Christmas advert is the most well remembered as there is a catchy jingle and the feel good factor.
With a brand such a Coca Cola, there are consumers who perceive it as a premium brand. This would mean that when purchasing carbonated beverages, they are more than likely to choose Coca cola (a brand they know and love) over some lesser known brand of Cola. This is known as brand loyalty. This is “when consumers become committed to the brand and make repeat purchases over time”. As the individual has deemed it as a premium brand, they will continue to make the purchase over time. When a consumer makes purchases the same product over time, they are repeat purchasing. Business Dictionary defines repeat purchasing as “the buying of a product by the consumer of the same brand previously bough on another occasion.” So this would indicate that whenever they hear the brand name, they will have this image of the product(s) in their head, which is also known as corporate image which is the “mental picture that springs up at the mention of the firm’s name”. Because of image that comes to mind every time the Coca Cola brand is mentioned, more people will choose to purchase the product. In a way, it’s a never ending cycle.

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