Understanding Consumer Behaviour

4 The Decision Making Process

Most consumers go through a series of stages when making the decision to buy a product:

1. Need recognition
2. Information search
3. Evaluate alternatives
4. Purchase decision
5. Post-purchase evaluation

We’ll take a look at each in turn and how they relate to the factors that influence buyer behaviour that we looked at before.

a. Need Recognition

The first stage is recognising that there is a need for a product or recognising that there is a problem to be solved. This might be realising that you are hungry or realising that your car is old and rusty and you could do with a new one, for example.

b. Information Search

After realising you need or want a product, you have heightened awareness and you start looking for information. You might start noticing billboard advertising for different models of car, you might talk to family and friends about different models, or you might read articles in magazines to see which car would be a good option.

Information is usually obtained from a variety of sources. These are personal such as family or friends. It can be commercial sources such as advertising, packaging or sales promotions or public information such as watchdog organisations or mass media. Also experiential information such as handling or using the product is important. For a car this is demonstrated by a test drive.

c. Evaluation of Alternatives

Once all the information has been gathered, you begin to evaluate a choice. There are no set rules about doing this – Kotler suggests that people look for benefits and weigh them up product against product. It might be that the family is the biggest influence or price is the winning factor in the end.

d. Purchase Decision

After evaluation, the consumer wants to buy the product that will meet their need. The task for the marketer is to ensure that the purchase decision is put into effect easily. Everything has to be right for the customer to buy. Factors include good customer service, a well-stocked range of products, which can be easily ordered and paid for as well as easily delivered within a certain period.

e. Post-purchase Evaluation

After purchasing the product, the consumer will assess whether the product has met their expectations. If they are happy, they will promote it with good word-of-mouth and tell lots of people – usually about five. However, an unhappy person will tell about ten people about their dissatisfaction. It is therefore very important to make sure that the company makes realistic claims and does not oversell the product. The company must try to ensure satisfaction (and if possible delight) and manage the relationship afterwards by providing good customer service.

Bear in mind that this is only a model and has some limitations. We are assuming that the buyer goes through every stage of the process. In some cases the buyer might skip a stage if they already know a lot about a product. In an impulse buy, the buyer might just see a product and buy. There are also situations where the buyer might get to evaluation of alternatives and then go back one stage to information search.