Types of Consumer Behaviour
Here, Henry Assael’s description of several consumer behavior patterns has been repeated as relevant information worth addressing. The kind of purchase choice influences the consumer’s decision. Purchasing toothpaste, a tennis racket, a computer, and a new automobile are quite different things.
More buyer consideration and more purchasing participants are probably required for the more difficult and costly purchases. Based on the level of customer engagement in the transaction and the degree of brand distinctions, Henry Assael identified four types of consumer purchasing behaviour.
The four varieties are:
(1) Complex Buying Behavior: Consumers engage in sophisticated purchasing behavior when they are deeply invested in a purchase and are aware of the important distinctions between brands. When a product is pricey and purchased rarely, consumers get very invested in it.
Risky and very costly. The customer often knows little to nothing about the product category and has a lot to learn. A person purchasing a personal computer, for instance, may not even know what qualities to search for.
This customer will experience cognitive learning. The marketer of high-involvement products must comprehend the information-gathering and evaluation behaviours of high-involvement consumers because it is characterised by first developing beliefs about the product, then moving toward attitudes toward the product, and finally making a deliberate purchase decision.
In order to help the customer, learn about the characteristics of the product class, their relative relevance, and the strong position of his brand on the most crucial characteristics, he must devise methods. He has to highlight the unique qualities of his company and work with salespeople and a buyer buddy to sway the decision to buy.
(2) Reducing Dissonance in Purchase Behavior: When a customer is deeply invested in a purchase, they may not notice many differences between the brands. His intense engagement is a result of the purchase’s high cost, rarity, and danger. Since brand distinctions are not very noticeable, the customer will search around to understand what is available but he will purchase quite quickly.
He could react favorably to a reasonable price or the ease of making a purchase at a certain time or location. When purchasing carpet, for instance, the consumer may assume that all carpeting in a specific price range is the same since carpeting is costly and related to one’s identity.
Due to seeing some unsettling characteristics of the carpet or hearing positive things about carpets, the customer may feel prior purchase dissonance. He or she begins to get more knowledge and tries to defend the choice they made to lessen the dissonance. He initially goes through a condition of behaviour, gains some new advantages, and ultimately has a favourable opinion of his decision.
In this scenario, brand preference is significantly influenced by price, location, and successful sales staff. Market communication’s main objective is to provide beliefs and assessments that make customers feel good about their buying decisions.
(3) Habit-Based Purchasing: Many items are bought when there is little customer engagement and little distinction between brands. For instance, under the buy category. They enter the shop without a strong brand loyalty and reach for the brand. The majority of cheap, commonly bought items get little attention from them. In these situations, their behaviour does follow the typical belief-attitude-behavior patterns. They don’t look up a lot of data on the brands.
They consider the pros and cons of each before making an important choice. As they watch television or read print advertisements, they are passive recipients of information. Instead of building brand conviction, advertising repetition builds brand familiarity. Customers choose a brand just out of habit rather than developing a strong opinion of it.
Due to their lack of involvement with the goods, people may not assess it after purchase. Therefore, brand beliefs are developed throughout the purchasing process via passive learning, followed by purchase behaviour, which may or may not be followed by assessment.
Given that consumers are not very loyal to any one brand, marketers of minimal involvement items with few brand variations find it useful to utilize pricing and sales promotions as an incentive for product testing. When promoting a product with limited engagement, a few factors should be kept in mind. The ad text should just address a few crucial themes.
The importance of visual symbols and integers may be attributed to their recallability and brand associations. High repetition and brief message lengths should be the goal of the advertising efforts. Print media is less effective than television. It is a passive learning tool that requires little active participation.
(4) Variety-Seeking Buying Behaviour: In certain cases, limited customer interaction is seen, although there are noticeable brand disparities. Consumers often swap brands, according to observation. For instance, while buying cookies, the buyer picks a brand without giving it much thought and reviews it after eating it. In the future, the buyer can choose a different brand out of boredom or a desire to try something new. Here, brand switching is done for variety’s sake rather than because of unhappiness.
The market leader will try to encourage habitual buying behaviour by controlling shelf space, avoiding out-of-stock situations, and supporting frequent reminder advertising in this product category and for the minor brands. On the other hand, challenging firms will encourage variety by providing lower prices, deals, coupons, free samples, and advertising that highlights reasons for trying something new.