Consumer Decision Making Process
Steps in the process of buying
Step 1: What you need or want
In the first step of the buying process, the consumer realises that he or she has a problem or a need that needs to be met. The needs can be caused by things inside or outside of the person. In this step, the marketer should study and get to know the customers to find out what kinds of needs they have, why they have them, and how they led them to a certain product.
Step 2: Look for information
At this point, the consumer wants to know more. The consumer may pay close attention or search for information on their own. Any of these sources can give the consumer information. This includes personal sources (like family, friends, neighbours, and acquaintances), industrial sources (like advertising, salespeople, dealers, and packaging), public sources (like the media, consumer ratings, and organisations), and experiential sources (handling, examining, using the product). The amount of weight each of these information sources has depends on the buyer and the product.
Step 3: Look at the alternatives
At this stage, the consumer uses the information they’ve gathered to compare different brands. How a consumer decides between two or more options for a purchase depends on the consumer and the situation. In some situations, consumers think logically, but in others, they don’t evaluate much or at all. Instead, they buy based on their hopes and hunches. Sometimes people decide what to buy on their own, and other times they rely on friends, family, consumer guides, or salespeople.
Stage 4: Deciding to buy
The consumer actually buys the product at this point. Most of the time, a consumer will buy the most popular brand, but there are two things that can change that: the consumer’s intentions to buy and the final decision to buy. The first is how other people act, and the second is unplanned things that happen. The consumer may decide to buy something based on things like his or her usual income, price, and product benefits.
Stage 5: Behavior after the purchase
In this stage, consumers decide what to do next after making a purchase based on how happy or unhappy they are. Satisfaction and dissatisfaction depend on how the product meets or falls short of the consumer’s expectations. When a product doesn’t live up to the customer’s hopes, the customer is disappointed. On the other hand, the consumer is happy if it meets their expectations. And if it is better than what they expected, they are happy.
When there is a big difference between what the consumer wants and what the product actually does, the consumer will be very unhappy. This means that the seller should make claims about the product’s performance that are true so that the buyers are happy.
Customer satisfaction is important because a company’s sales come from two main sources: new customers and customers who have already bought from them. Most of the time, it costs more to get new customers than to keep old ones, and the best way to keep them is to make sure they are happy with the product.