Consumer Behavior

The buying decision process a. Introduction of buying decision process b. The buying decision process c. Evaluation of alternative d. Purchase decision e. Post purchase behavior 5. Theoretical frame work a. Consumer involvement theory 6. Consumer behavior models a. Introduction and Intergradations of three models b. Hierarchy needs of consumer behavior model.

The author wish to thank the faculty of International marketing of the Halmstad University involved in the Master of Science in International Marketing. In particular I am grateful to my supervisor Venilton Reinert and my professor Svante Andersson, for their guidance and incentive give throughout the dissertation. I thank my friends, who are co-operated in this research area, I express my deep gratitude to my parents for their permanent love and support. I Vamshi thank my dear friends, who are supported for this research, I am grateful to my mother for her dedication, encouragement while doing the research.

Once more I thank to my mother and father for their belief that, through education we can make a better world for ourselves, and the world around us. Finally, last but not least, my beloved brother for his constant support and affection. ‘‘Process of learning, one should not forget the purpose of Learning.

The paper focuses on attitudes and behavior on the concept of the youth’s buying behavior towards branded sports shoes, different consumers have got different decision 3 aking process. The buyer’s ultimate goal is to buy the product of qualitative, quantitative with low/best affordable price. In order to identify different kinds of consumer’s behavior towards buying of different branded shoes and Nike sports shoe. I have carried out buying behavior of youth and different kind of consumer behavior models, literature and theory of consumer behavior; finally, I analyzed and concluded with research based on questionnaire of Nike shoes and case studies of Nike sports shoes at Halmstad University.

Why studying youth buying behaviour? Youth is perhaps the most difficult demographic group to communicate with. Not only they have a short attention span, they are also elusive in media consumption, fickle in brand preference, and simply challenging to engage and entertain. Marketers spend millions in marketing research every year trying to predict, or anticipate, changing youth behaviours. With the continually proliferating choices of sports shoe, not only does this group embrace technology at an early age, it quickly becomes the early adopters of all new trends and convergent platforms.

One can argue that whatever youth does today foreshadows what older demographic groups will adopt in the near future. All this makes it extremely difficult to understand and target their behaviours. Background Consumer has been elated with the kind of reception; they are getting from various companies these days. The reason behind a drastic change in consumer behavior is because the consumer is no more treated as a hire purchaser but, he is treated as the decider of the company’s fortune. Companies or marketers cannot hire any fortuneteller to guess the consumer’s attitude.

Guessing or measuring the consumers attitude is not a cake walk but this is because predicting consumers attitude is as tough as predicting consumer’s mind (Bheri, 2004). Consumers are continuously choosing among the various products though they are not aware of the products and usage, even though they are intentionally purchasing the various new brands without any knowledge about the new products, furthermore if new 4 company enters into the market, for every consumer it is very difficult to understand the features of the news products and this makes confusion among the consumers to obtain the information.

For example: If one local company enters into the market then to gain the knowledge about the features of the new product, it will take long time for the consumers to understand (Nelson, 1970). The term ‘consumer’ can be described as a person who acquires goods and services for self satisfaction and his often used to describe two different kinds of consuming entities: the personal consumers and organizational consumers. The personal consumers buy goods and services for his/her own use.

In this context, the goods are bought for final use by individual, who are organizational consumers, they encompasses for profit and not for profit business, government agencies, institutions, all of them must buy products, equipment and services in order to run their organization (Hawkins, Best and Coney 1998). The consumer will respond according to the product quality and reliability, the fundamental understanding of products is necessary to understand the product features, products reliability and product benefits (Baker, 2004).

The consumer is the end user for the product; consumers buy the products in market; in order to perform successful sales operations in the market an effective distribution channel and networks are required for the organizations. Distribution channels and networks play an important role in the consumer goods industry. Consumer is the ultimate user of every product, without any consumer there is no market as such (Baker, 2004). Every region wise the different consumers are using different kind of products.

Every consumer has their own tastes and preferences. So, every consumer’s opinions and preferences are different from one another. The local marketers have good idea about, what the local consumers are using (region wise). For example: The south Indian food habits and tastes and preferences are different, when compared to north Indian food habits (Thomas, 2004). Based on above paragraph, direct marketing activities have big impact on every consumer, because through direct marketing every company knows about the behavior of 5 every consumer in the market.

Manufacturing companies, retailer and suppliers do not have an idea about the consumer behavior in the local market. So, author suggested that direct marketing activities should be left to the local market leaders, because the local market leaders have best idea of local market and local consumer behavior. This theory helps for the organization and sub-organizations to know the consumer behavior in different market environments, taste and preferences of the consumer behavior (Thomas, 2004).

McDonald’s would not have made a big impact in the Indian market had it persisted with its U. S. roduct line that included beef products, moreover, McDonald’s repositioned the brand as family-oriented and children-friendly, catering the traditional Indian middleclass segment that finds pride in its family culture and is especially conscious of childcare. So in this point of view Mc Donald’s have approached differently, because they identified that, which they followed earlier that will not get good impact on their business so, they immediately changed the business line to achieve the targets, thus, this is one kind of business strategy to achieve the set goals in huge populated countries (Dash, 2005).

For perspective of globalization we can not change the system of tastes and preferences of Consumers. Another instance demonstrating the ignorance of local tastes in the wake of globalization features the multinational mobile phone makers, Nokia had tasted success with its soap-bar designed phones and ceased producing the flip phones that consumers found irritating to use (Zaccai, 2005).

The Chinese business people are giving importance to Chinese traditional, patriotic values; the business people are running their businesses by showing their traditional, patriotic advertisement and promotional campaigns to get the business from the Chinese people. The Chinese consumer’s perspective, by assessing their preferences amongst a host of advertisements and promotional campaigns, later on the business people are started the global

Advertisement campaigns with status and social appeal, they sought immense pride in clinging to the traditional, cultural nd patriotic values through the local campaigns, with this theory helps by knowing the Chinese consumer behavior and also they are giving same importance to traditional and patriotic values in the name of 6 advertisements. Finally, they want the advertisements with traditional and patriotic values of Chinese culture (Zhou and Belk, 2004).

The consumers mind is different from one another in this as author said in the definition that according to the human psychology, demographical differences, age & sex and to understand people needs. Kotler, 2004), to assess the influences of every consumer approach is different, in theory explained that consumer is treated as decider of the company, what ever the product comes to the market, the consumer is the ultimate purchaser for every product, some times the consumers are choosing, selecting and going for family decision making to choose differently, in one point of time the consumers differentiated and explained that they are going for personal and some of the them are using products for profit.

Demographical differences make new food habits for every consumer. The choice of variation for every consumer (Kotler, 2004). The example of above paragraph, two countries, therefore Chinese consumers are giving respect to traditional and patriotic values, where as Indian consumers are more religious when they are using the products. These are influences that make the consumer to purchase different products; mostly those influences are more related to the physiological, demographical, social, cultural, economic, family and business influences.

According to Kotler (1994), consumer behavior is the study of how people buy, what they buy, when they buy and why they buy. It is a subcategory of marketing that blends elements from psychology, sociology, socio psychology, anthropology and economics. It attempts to understand the buyer decision making process, both individually and in groups. It studies characteristics of individual consumers such as demographics, psychographics, and behavioral variables in an attempt to understand people needs.

It also tries to assess influences on the consumer from group such as family friends, reference groups, and society in general (Kotler, 1994) for example while consumers purchase the shoe, then they go for family decision, comfort, satisfaction, price and quality. Every family member doesn’t have the same opinion to buy the same product; different family members have different choice to buy the product. So, in one family consumer behavior is different.