Introduction Consumer behaviour is the buying behaviour of the last consumers that buy goods or services for their personal consumption. As a marketer, in order to change customers’ think and act, understand consumer behaviour is really important. They have to know the ‘why’ to influence the remaining ‘WH’ in consumer behaviour (Kotler and Armstrong, 2014)1. In this assignment, I will be aiming the white-collar workers which also known as office workers, their ages are around 30 to 50 years old. I’ve chosen psychographic segmentation to target buyers in the market. This segmentation classify consumers based on social class, personality or lifestyles (Kotler and Armstrong, 2014)2. Office workers are the bunch that always work overtime and seldom have proper meal. This unhealthy lifestyle causes most of them having weak digestion system. Carbonated water is a plain water with sugar free, no calorie and contains carbon dioxide, it gives a bubbly mouthfeel and slightly sour taste. It also known as sparkling water, seltzer water or soda water (Collins, 2015). According to Greenfield (2014), consume carbonated water can help in curing the digestion problem like dyspepsia and constipation. Besides, with carbonated water that contained sodium, it can help in reduce the risk of getting heart diseases. Also, people will tend to drink more carbonated water because of its unique taste, it is good for those who are having dehydration.
The Characteristics that Affect Consumer Behaviour There are few factors affecting the consumer behaviour which are cultural, social, personal and psychological characteristics (Kotler and Armstrong, 2014)3. In my opinion, factor that influencing the office workers to purchase carbonated water is personal factor. In every stage of the lifetimes, people change their needs and tastes in purchasing goods and services (Kotler and Armstrong, 2014)4. The family lifecycle of an individual will have an impact to his or her buying behaviour by depends on their marital status and so on (Perreau, 2013). For example, those office workers who are bachelors, they are more willing to spend extravagantly for enjoyment and healthy lifestyle. Besides, persons in different occupational groups and economic conditions will have different kind of buying behaviour. Office workers which are also known as white-collar workers, they are classified as middle class in the social level. They want better things in life, they will follow trends and have a better living (Kotler and Armstrong, 2014)5. Therefore, this group of consumers are not grudge to buy carbonated water if they know it will benefits them. Not only that, Perreau (2013) stated that lifestyle of an individual are depends on their activities, interest and opinions. Consumers will buy goods or services according to their lifestyle. For example, a consumer with healthy lifestyle will eat organic products while the consumer with unhealthy lifestyle, they eat fast foods very often. Therefore, marketers can encourage the office workers to improve their lifestyle conveniently by consume carbonated water.
The Types of Consumer Buying Decisions There are two buying decision behaviours that influencing consumers in purchase bottled water (Custom Essay Cheap. 2011)1. Firstly, many consumers buy bottled water under habitual buying behaviour. They are in the low involvement and few substantial brand differences which charge them in a low costs and risks, they do not have to think much to decide on purchasing that certain products. Consumers in this group only buy the brand they recognise, and if they keep buying the same brand, it doesn’t mean they are loyal but just a habit. This kind of consumers can easily switch brand if there are sales promotions on other brands’ bottled water (Kotler and Armstrong, 2014)6. For the other group of consumers, they are under variety seeking buying behaviour. Bottled waters are containing low involvement but have multi-choices of brands. Because of this, consumers do brand switching very frequently (Kotler and Armstrong, 2014)7. In this situation, the leader and minor brands of the bottled water are having different marketing strategies. For the market leader, they are trying to encourage habitual buying behaviour; while the minor brands prefer variety seeking buying behaviour (Custom Essay Cheap, 2011)2. The example of the other product which manage these buying decision behaviours is biscuits. In the market, there are many types of biscuits with different flavours and brands.
The Components of the Decision-Making Process According to Kotler and Armstrong (2014), it involves 5 steps in consumers’ decision making process. First of all, the process will start with need recognition, it is an important stage where the buyers have a need and therefore they will purchase (Perreau, 2013)1. The recognition may be caused by internal stimuli when consumers’ needs have arises to become wants; whereas by external stimuli, they are influence by the advertisements or their friends and family (Kotler and Armstrong, 2014)8. What is the reason for them to purchase a goods and services? Because of their unhealthy lifestyle, I’ve aim the office workers to buy carbonated water because they will be concern about their health and this water can help them in repairing weak digestion system and reduce the possibility of getting heart diseases. Secondly, people are divided into two groups for information searching. For some of the consumers who have a strong desire on getting that product, they might just buy it; whereas for another group of consumers, they will have a consideration and do further information research. The office workers might get information of the carbonated water from their friends and family, advertisements, websites and many other sources, these are known as external information search. Besides, consumers can get information search internally through experiences and memories (Kotler and Armstrong, 2014)9. By word-of mouth influence or self-experienced, office workers can get information of carbonated water from their colleagues’ experiences or their own memories. Next, consumers will use an alternative evaluation to choose final brand of the product. Consumers in different buying situation will cause them to have different kind of way in evaluate purchase alternatives. Sometimes, they might just buy a certain products impulsively without any thinking. At another times, the same consumer will rationally do comparison among the brands by comparing prices, popularity, ranking, benefits or other factors (Kotler and Armstrong, 2014)10. There are many kinds of bottled water in the markets, consumers will or will not do all these comparison in decide which bottled water they want to buy. If the office workers want to buy bottled water, they might consider carbonated water since it benefits their unhealthy lifestyle. After evaluating, it is the step on purchase decision. Consumers will decide to buy their preferable brand (Perreau, 2013)2. However, based to Armstrong to Kotler (2014), there are two factors might interfere the purchase decision. First, it’s the attitude or feedback from the others. For example, when an office worker want to buy plain water, his or her friends will suggest them to buy carbonated water because of its benefits; the other way round, when an office worker wanted to buy carbonated water, but his or her family tell them the disadvantages of it, they might not consider to buy it anymore. Second, there are some unexpected situational factors. When the colleagues of office workers tell them the improvement of their digestion system after consuming carbonated water, they might switch to buy it from their actual purchase choice. Lastly, this is the most important part among the five stages which is post-purchase behaviour. After consuming carbonated water, the office workers might be satisfied or dissatisfied with it. The experiences will be shared by word of mouth, it depends on the relationship between the product performance and consumers expectation. Consumers with dissatisfaction might criticize the products to their friends and families, while consumers who are satisfied with the experiences and products, they might be loyal to that certain brand (Flekel, 2015). However, cognitive dissonance always occur for almost every purchases. For an example, although sometimes when the office workers are actually satisfied with carbonated water, but somehow they will feel losing the benefits of the other bottled water like vitamin C water (Kotler and Armstrong, 2014)11.
Marketing Recommendations First of all, choosing a value proposition is very important for a company to set their position in the market with promises and satisfactions they can deliver to the targeted market (Skok, 2013). The bottled water I would like to sell is carbonated water, it gives a ‘fizzy’ and vibrant feeling in the mouth. Besides, carbonated water provides several health benefits to the consumers as well.
Next, as my target market are those office workers, what they will prefer is convenient and can easily look for. I will suggest to sell the products at convenient stores such as 99 Speedmart and 7-Eleven because these stores are normally located around the workplace and housing area. Not only that, selling products at hypermarkets and supermarkets are also needed since there are the places with a tide of people.
Besides, the marketers need to decide on how much the carbonated water they want to charge. This is the most important component as if the price was set too high, consumers will choose to buy other products; whereas if too low, people will suspects their products quality. The main targets for this product are office workers, therefore the price must be set at a value where they are afford to pay. For the promotion, I think advertising is importantly needed to introduce carbonated water to the general public. There are actually many people that do not know the benefits of carbonated water, people only related it to the sugary soda which are soft drinks but do not know that carbonated water are majority sell in form of bottled water as mineral water which is hydrating, sugar free and zero calorie. It does bring a lot of benefits rather than consuming plain water. A research has been done with patients that suffering from constipation and dyspepsia. They were divided into two groups for more than two weeks, one is drink carbonated water and another group drink tap water. The results had shown with patients who drink carbonated water improved in digestions and have less frequent of constipation than the group who drink tap water (Greenfield, 2014). Besides, the rumours about carbonated water’s health myth such as weakening our bones have to be clear. According to a professor in Nebraska, Robert Heaney had found out that carbonation did not cause calcium erosion from bones (Oaklander, 2015). With an advertising that have complete information of carbonated water’s benefits will attract the attention of consumers like office workers that seldom have proper meal, people who suffering in impaired digestion system, heart diseases and dehydration.
Conclusion
It can be seen about the importance of marketers to understand and grasp consumers’ buying behaviour and marketing segmentation. From this study, I’ve use psychographic segmentation to choose target market which are office workers in 30-50 years old to promote carbonated water that give them health benefits. The consumers’ buying behaviour in purchasing bottled water is mostly based on their personal characteristics which are family lifecycle, occupational groups, economic conditions and lifestyle. Besides, there are two buying decision behaviour when consumers buy bottled water which are habitual buying behaviour and variety seeking buying behaviour. It is not easy for the consumers to make a decision in buying goods and services. There are 5 stages in the process of decision making which are need recognition, information search, alternative evaluation, purchase decision and post-purchase behaviour. During making the marketing recommendation, I’ve obey the marketing 4P’s strategies by concern from the products, place, price and promotion aspects.