1) Information on buyer behaviour is used to forecast and predict the buyers’ actions. The organisations have to ensure that they have the right information about the buyers for making right marketing decisions like product development, promotion, etc.

2) The buying behaviour is not the same for all individuals. Customers may say something but do something else. They may change their preference because of an influence. Therefore, it becomes critical for organisations to device correct promotion activities for making high sales.

Continue Reading »

Not all consumer exhibit the same buying behaviour. The buyer in influenced by various variables like cultural, social, personal, and psychological factors.

1) Cultural factors – there is culture in every society. Culture forms the ideas, beliefs, values and behaviour of a person living in a particular region. People living with each other in an area are influenced by each other. A person brought up in a Hindu family will have different set of behaviour for buying meat products as compared to a person raised in a Muslim family. They both have religious restrictions on consumption of cow and pork meat. Culture has a powerful influence on individuals with guidelines and rules acceptable to them.

For example, display of nudity or partial nudity is fine with some cultures; some European cultures. Same is relaxed to an extent in America. Organisations take this as an opportunity to display intimate scenes in their advertisements, etc. In some cultures (some East Asian cultures), men don’t directly talk to women. So organisations have to be very careful when sending a delegation for a business meeting to such regions. In Japan, elders in the family are final decision makers. So in business meetings the discussion has to be done directly with the senior person. In America, views from all the people in the meeting are discussed openly and can be criticised, but some cultures don’t appreciate this.

Continue Reading »

Consumer decision making involves buying a product to satisfy needs and wants. There are different factors which determine if the consumer will do information search and evaluate the options available to satisfy the needs and wants. For example, for buying a pencil there isn’t much research done about the product and its price, whereas for buying a car extensive research is mostly done, and the decision process is a bit lengthy.

There are four types of decision making processes based on the product and it usage–

1) High utility value (significance) and less familiarity –
Product is expensive, has brand significance in society, less frequently bought, less or no knowledge about the product

Continue Reading »

Consumer Decision Making Process / Consumer Buying Process refers to activities involved by a buyer in making a purchase by searching and evaluating the options available, and determining satisfaction with the purchase for satisfying a need or want

The consumer buying process is shown in the figure below-

Marketers needs to ensure that they have thoroughly studied the customers in the target market to understand their buyer behaviour and their decision making process. The process of decision making begins as a result of unsatisfied need or want.

Continue Reading »

Marketing environment is external to the marketing operations, partially controllable, and is relevant to the marketing decision making process. Environment refers to factors which affect the marketing functions of an organisation. Every company operates in an environment. As an organisation works in an environment, the changes in the environment naturally affect the operation and functions of the organisation.

The environment is made up of Macro and Micro environment components –
For most companies, the Micro environmental components are: the company, suppliers, intermediaries, customers, competitors.

Continue Reading »

Environment Analysis results in identifying trends and events, and its occurrence and impact on the organisation. These trends and events directly or indirectly impact the marketing strategy. The organisation has to know where the environment is heading, what trends are emerging therein, and what should be its response to the environmental changes.

The marketing environment consists of macro environment and micro environment. Certain environmental forces are controllable and some are largely uncontrollable. An organisation has its own internal environment which consists of its culture, people, work ethos, etc. This includes the non-marketing departments within the company. The organisation has to deal with the environmental forces within the company.

Continue Reading »

The Micro environment factors are partially controllable and the management can adjust them to suit the objectives of the organisation depending on how these factors are placed in the environment.

1. Company – Apart from external environment,Strategy development also depends on the strengths and capabilities of the organisation. The organisation is able to do a detailed analysis, as lot of information is available about the performance, organisational structure, management style, etc. Proper coordination between various departments, and flow of correct information is key to smoothly running the activities with minimal costs and effectiveness. A simple classification to look for in an organisation is given below (7M’s)-

a) Members –
Human resources information: staff appraisal records, manpower plan, skills testing programme, data with recruitment and retaining managers, etc.
Quality of management: Availability of skills with in the company, manager, employee capability and performance
Wages, costs and productivity
Training needs, etc.

Continue Reading »

All the organisations operate in a Macro Environment which has largely uncontrollable factors that pose threats and opportunities to the organisation.
These are –
1. Demographic,
2. Technological,
3. Natural or physical
4. Social and cultural
5. Political, Legal or Government
6. Economic

1. Demographic Environment –

• Age, size, education etc. of population
• Racial or ethnic composition
• Demographic trends that affect market size
• Significant trends offering threats and opportunities
Continue Reading »

Analysis of the marketing environment is of great importance to marketers because of the following reasons-

1) The impact of the environment on the organisation is enormous. To understand the trends and events in the market and successfully analysing the data to produce a product of customers need.

2) The changes in the environment affect the functioning of all the departments. The organisations who constantly screen the environment become future ready to overcome the challenges from environmental changes.
Continue Reading »

Strategic planning is a continuous process that begins with the analysis of the situations faced by the organisation. Below are the steps involved in the strategic planning process –

I. Analysis – if we were to go on a long distance motorbike ride, we will check our capabilities as well as the place we are planning to travel. Similarly, analysis for Marketing planning involves analysing the organisations capabilities, economic conditions, competitors and customers to list out the strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities. (SWOT analysis)

II. Organisations mission and objectives – it refers to clearly laying out the purpose, responsibilities towards the market, product, organisations performance expectations and its stake holders. It also cover guidelines on its business strategy – human resources, research and development. Organisational mission refers to a long term commitment to a type of business as well as the place on the market. The mission statement gives direction to all the employees in an organisation towards a specified goal. Some mission statements of organisations-

Continue Reading »