8 Week 2: Understanding Consumers

Introduction

The relationship between the customer (also called the buyer) and the provider (the seller) forms through a phenomenon called a market exchange. During the exchange process, each party assesses the relative trade-offs they must make to satisfy their respective needs and wants. On the part of the seller, the trade-offs are guided by company polices and objectives. For example, company policy may dictate that it can proceed with an exchange only when the profit margin is 10 percent or greater. The buyer—the other party in the exchange—also has policies and objectives that guide his or her decisions in an exchange. For individual buyers, these are usually unwritten personal policies and objectives that people make at each stage of a purchasing decision based on the information and options available to them.  Even more likely, individuals often are not fully conscious of what prompts them to behave in a particular manner.

Essential Questions About Buyer Behavior

Buyers are essential partners in the exchange process. Without them, exchanges would stop. Buyers are the focus of successful marketing; their needs and wants are the reason for marketing. Without an understanding of buyer behavior, it isn’t possible to tailor an offering to the demands of potential buyers. When potential buyers are not satisfied, exchange does not proceed, and the goals of the marketer are not met. As long as buyers have free choice and competitive offerings from which to choose, they are ultimately in control of the marketplace.

A market can be defined as a group of potential buyers with needs and wants and the purchasing power to satisfy them. During the exchange process, the potential buyers “vote” (usually with their dollars) for the market offering they feel best meets their needs. When marketers understand how buyers arrive at a decision, they can create offerings that will attract buyers. Two key questions a marketer needs to answer related to buyer behavior are:

• How do potential buyers go about making purchase decisions?
• What factors influence their decision process and in what way?

The answers to these two questions form the basis for the design of a market offering.

Buyer Behavior As Problem Solving

A common way for marketers to think about consumer behavior today is as a set of activities a person goes through in order to solve problems. This problem-solving process is triggered when a consumer identifies some unmet need. For instance, a family consumes all of the milk in the house, or a birthday party is coming up and a gift is needed, or a soccer team is planning an end-of-season picnic. Each buying scenario presents a problem the buyer must solve. These problems can involve two types of needs: physical (such as a need for milk, a birthday gift, or picnic food) or psychological (for example, the need to feel secure, the need to be loved, or the need to have fun).

This problem-solving process also involves needs and wants. A need is a basic deficiency for an essential item. You need food, water, air, security, and so forth. A want places specific, personal criteria on how a need must be fulfilled. To illustrate, when we are hungry, food is a need. When we have a specific food item in mind, that item is a want. That difference is illustrated by the familiar scenario of standing in front of a full refrigerator and complaining that there is nothing to eat.

Most of marketing is in the want-fulfilling business, not the need-fulfilling business. Swatch and Timex do not want you to buy just any watch. They want you to want their brands of watches. Likewise, H&M wants you to desire their brand of clothing when you shop for clothes. On the other hand, the American Cancer Association markets to you in the hope that you will feel the need to get a checkup, and it doesn’t care which doctor you go to. But in the end, marketing is mostly about creating and satisfying wants.

This model of consumer behavior acknowledges that both rational and irrational factors may shape a buyer’s purchasing decisions. It also recognizes that internal and external factors play a role in the decision process. In fact, the problem-solving model helps us map a consistent process individuals go through as they make buying decisions. When marketers understand this process and the factors that influence it, they can take action to influence buyer perceptions and behavior at various stages of the process.