Chapter-17/18: Purchasing Process and Post Purchase Behavior

Chapter-17/18: Purchasing Process and Post Purchase Behavior

Why Do People Shop:

The obvious answer is that they need to purchase something may not reflect the consumer’s actual motivation in each circumstance. It has been suggested that both personal and social motives influence consumer’ shopping activities.

(A) Personal motives: (i) Role-playing- shopping activities are learned behavior and are expected or accepted as part of one’s position or role, such as mother or housewife. (ii) Diversion- shopping can offer a diversification from the routine of daily life and is a form of recreation. (iii) Self-gratification- shopping may be motivated not by the expected utility of consuming, but by the utility of the buying process itself. Thus, emotional states or moods may explain why and when someone goes shopping. (iv) Learning about new trends- Shopping provides consumers with information about trends and movements and product symbols reflecting attitudes and lifestyle. (v) Physical activity- Shopping can provide a considerable amount of exercise. (vi) Sensory stimulation- Shopping can provide sensory benefits such as looking at and handling merchandise, listening to the sounds (noise, silence, and soft background music) and smelling the cents.

(B) Social motives: (i) Social experience outside the home- Shopping can provide opportunities for seeking new acquaintances, encounters with friends or just people watching. (ii) Communication with others having a similar interest- Shopping often affords an opportunity to interact with customers or salespeople having similar interests. (iii) Peer group attraction- Certain stores provide a meeting place where members of a peer group may gather. (iv) Status and authority- Shopping may provide an opportunity to attain a feeling of status and power by being waited on. (v) Pleasure of bargaining- Shopping may offer the enjoyment of gaining a lower price through bargaining, or visiting special sales.  

Choosing a Store:

Basically, the consumer has certain evaluative store criteria established in her mind and compares these with her perception of a store’s characteristics. As a result of this process, stores are categorized as either acceptable or unacceptable and hence, will be patronized on this basis. If the resulting shipping experience is favorable, the consumer is reinforced in her learning experience and the matter of store choice will become largely routinized over a period of time.

Factors determining store choice: There are several important factors that influence consumer store-choice behavior. Although the influence of these elements differs, depending on such variables as the type of product purchased, the type of store, and the type of consumer, have found to exert general influence on store choice. They include store location, physical design, assortment, prices, advertising, sales promotion, personnel and service. 

(i) Store location: Generally, the closer consumers are to a store, the greater their likelihood to purchase from that store. The further away are consumers are from a store, the greater the number of intervening alternatives, and thus the lower the likelihood to patronize that store. Intercity, intra-city and intra-store may be the choices for the store location.

(ii) Store design and physical facilities: The design characteristics of a store visibility reflect its image and can dramatically influence patronage. Many consumers appear to size up a store based on its outward appearance of architecture and sings and hence are drawn to the store or repelled by it, based on their perception of whether this store looks right for them.

(iii) Merchandise: There are five attributes considered to be important here: quality, selection or assortment, styling or fashion, guarantees, and pricing. Consumers prefer stores that offer either a wide variety of product lines, brands, and prices or substantial depth to their assortment such as sizes, colors, and styles.

(iv) Advertising and sales promotion: Advertising can be important in fulfilling any of the three goals such as (a) to inform consumers such as for a new store opening, (b) to persuade consumers that they should patronize a certain store or buy a particular brand, and (c) to remind customers of the store that they are appreciated. As we also learned, advertising can be highly influential in cultivating a store image in consumers’ mind. 

(v) Personnel: Employees of a retailer also are very instrumental in influencing the store’s image. Consumers generally desire to trade where store personnel, particularly salespeople, are perceived as helpful, friendly, and courteous.

(vi) Customer service: Retail stores may offer numerous services in order to attract customers. Increase product satisfaction (credit, alteration, installation and shopper information), increase convenience (delivery, telephone ordering, parking) and provide special benefits (gift wrapping, product returns, and complaint offices). Relationship retailing or merchandising focuses on convincing focused on converting customers into clients through providing better services to existing shoppers, there by having them concentrate their purchases with the retailer. 

(vii) Clientele: Consumer will tend to patronize those stores where persons similar to themselves are perceived to be shopping. Store choices have much to do with their social-class membership. Thus, an important matching process occurs between the consumer’s self-image and the store image to influence where people shop, with choices being made of stores that possess images which are similar to the images that consumers perceive themselves.

In-Store Purchasing Behavior:

Once consumers have selected the stores they will patronize, they must then proceed to consummate the purchase. A number of factors influence consumers’ behavior within the store environment. 

Merchandising techniques: (i) Store layout and traffic patterns: a store’s interior is organized in such a manner as to accomplish the firm’s merchandising strategy. Traffic patterns are popular to determine where good or bad sales areas are within the store. (ii) Point-of-Purchase media: an effective combination of good store layout and attractive displays can change a retail environment into one not only is more exciting but also more sales. (iii) Product shelving: both the height at which products are displayed and the number of rows presented can influence sales of products. (iv) Pricing strategy: Price awareness, promotional prices, and couponing are important issues. (v) Packaging: including graphics, product information contained on the package, and the physical package. (vi) Brand choice: for a number of years, there has been a battle between manufacturer’ of national brands and distributors’ private brands for their dominance.

Non-store Purchasing Process: There is a growing tendency of in-home shopping and marketers usually refer to this approach as non-store marketing or direct marketing. It includes ordering via direct response TV, catalogues, door to door selling, direct mail, and many other developing electronic technologies.

Characteristics of purchasers: (i) Upscale households: in many cases in-home shoppers are described as above average in socioeconomic status. (ii) Racial patterns: Blacks do less mail order buying than do whites at similar income levels. (iii) Working wives: Working wives have restricted time for shopping. (iv) Geographic location: geographical location may not be convenient for in-store shopping. (v) Other characteristics: Households characteristics may influence non-store shopping. 

In-home shopping motivations: (i) Convenience: shopping convenience is probably the most important motivator in consumer decisions to shop at home and is the one so often stressed by the industry (time factor, flexibility, saves physical effort). (ii) The risk of buying: In spite of the obvious advantages of shopping at home, the higher perceived risk that may be associated with buying by description partially explains why many consumers are hesitate to use in home shopping. (iii) 

Lifestyle: Active in-home buyers are more style and value conscious, convenience-oriented, and generally are more demanding shoppers than are other consumers. They are more flexible in shopping style, often impulse and convenience oriented, and they use a variety of in-home buying methods and sources.

Purchasing Patterns: (i) Brand loyalty: Every company seeks to have a steady group of unwavering customers for its product or service. Customers may be undivided loyal buying A A A A A A., divided loyal buying A B A B A B., unstable loyal buying A A A B B B., and no loyal buying A B C D E F. Factors explaining brand loyalty include socioeconomic, demographic, psychographic, informal group influence, store loyalty, perceived risk and market structures. (ii) Impulse purchasing: some marketers prefers to call it unplanned purchasing. Pure impulse breaks normal buying pattern, suggestive impulse having no previous knowledge of a product, reminder impulse may be recall advertising and planned impulse where a shopper enters the store with the expectation and intention of making some purchases on the basis of price specials, coupons, and the like.

Post-purchase evaluation: The consumer also engages in an evaluation of the purchase decision. The consumer rethinks his decision in the post-purchase stage. First, it serves to broaden the consumer’s set of experiences stored in memory. Second, it provides a check on how well he is doing as a consumer in selecting products, stores and so on. Third, the feedback that the consumer receives form this stage helps to make adjustments in future purchasing strategies.

Consumer satisfaction and dissatisfaction: Satisfaction is an important element in the evaluation stage. Satisfaction refers to the buyer’s state of being adequately rewarded in a buying situation for the sacrifice he has made. Adequacy of satisfaction is a result of matching actual past purchase and consumption experience with the experience with the expected reward form the brand in terms of its anticipated potential to satisfy the consumer’s motives. Consumers form certain expectations prior to the purchase. These expectations may be about (i) the nature and performance of the product or service, (ii) the costs and efforts to be expended before obtaining the direct product or service benefits, and (iii) the social benefits and costs accruing to the consumer as a result of the purchase.

The result of satisfaction to the consumer from the purchase of a product or service is that more-favorable post-purchase attitudes, higher purchase intentions, and brand loyalty are likely to be exhibited. On the other hand, if consumers are dissatisfied, they are likely to exhibit less favorable post-purchase attitudes, lower or nonexistent purchase intentions, brand switching, complaining behavior, and negative word-of-mouth.

Consumer complaint behavior: What happens when consumers experience dissatisfaction? There are several negative outcomes possible. Consumer may exhibit unfavorable word-of-mouth, may not repurchase the brand, and the consumer may complain. It is important for the marketer to listen to consumers, which tremendously boosts brand loyalty.