Marketing professionals need to understand why people buy the things they do, and how do they arrive at a final decision of buying a certain product from among many at a certain place (retailer, wholesaler, manufacturer, ecommerce, etc.). In order to understand consumer preferences one needs to understand the elements that drive consumer behaviour in the buying process.

Buyer Behaviour is concerned with decision making process of consumers and organisations that purchase products for personal use, or adding value to the product before selling to the final consumer.

Buyers can be final Consumers as well as Industrial buyers.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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