CUSTOMER BEHAVIOR AND RELATIONSHIP

The study of consumer behavior has become essential. Consumers are the kings of markets. Without
consumers no business organization can run. All the activities of the business concerns end with
consumers and consumer satisfaction. Customer behavior study is based on consumer buying.
Consumer behavior has been always of great interest to marketers. The knowledge of consumer behavior
helps the marketer to understand how consumers think, feel and select from alternatives like products,
brands and the like and how the consumers are influenced by their environment, the reference groups,
family, and salespersons and so on. A consumer’s buying behavior is influenced by cultural, social,
personal and psychological factors. Most of these factors are uncontrollable and beyond the hands of
marketers but they have to be considered while trying to understand the complex behavior of the
consumers.

The case study focus or tries to show that how the consumer buying behavior is influenced by many
factors such as family, technology, personal, age, money special offers and so on and it also focus how
the buying behavior is affected by market segmentation this factor.

Beyond these there are many factors that affect the buying behavior of consumers. The first is culture and
social environment. Culture is crucial when it comes to understanding the needs and behaviors of an
individual throughout this existence, an individual will be influenced by his family, his friends, his
cultural environment or society that will “teach” him selves, preferences as well as common behaviors to
their own culture. The second is social factor are among the factors influencing consumer behavior
significantly such as reference groups, family and social roles and status.

The membership groups of an individual are social groups to which he becomes and which will influence
him. The membership groups are usually related to its origin age place of residence, work, hobbies,
leisure etc. The third factors that affect the buying division personal factor such as age and way of life a
consumer don’t buy the same product or service at 20 or 70 years. His lifestyle, values, environment,
activities, hobbies and consumer habits throughout hiss life. The forth factor is Psychological factor
among the factors influencing consumer behaviors are motivation, perception, learning as well as beliefs
and attitudes.

In addition the case study tries to fell more about how to collect or make a research to understand the
buying behavior of consumer. Many researchers have been described their own research to put the
strength and weakness of market research judgment as stated in the case the marketers make structured
questionnaire surveys may have a role for collecting large scale of factual data and ethnographic
approaches from the case study we will answer the questions that are asked on by one as much as
possible.

1. One or more individuals involved in a buying decision who share the same objective and risks in
making the purchaser. The members of the household are a decision milling unit (DMU)
marketers need to know who participated in decision and the relative influence of each in order to
create advertising that influence the decision.

As stated in the case study we are understood the importance of knowing the composition of decision
making. From this, adapting the marketing strategy now consumer behave in different to many
products based on age, groups, literacy rate such as adoption of technology that the companies used in
order to market their product, knowing personality of the family such as real life factors that influence
their purchasing decisions and special offers that buying need to be. Most important, knowing the

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 decision making units are very important to create advertising that influence that decision to design
special training for sales persons correctly understand the emotions. Today marketers need to know
advertising that influenced the decision. Auto manufacturers have recently began to target their
advertising toward women packaged food and household cleaning product manufacturers are now
targeting some of their advertisings to teenagers, who are increasing by participating in house hold
responsibilities such as cooking and cleaning and consequently influence related purchases.

2. In marketing, mostly used methods for segmenting consumer markets are Geographic
segmentation, Demographic segmentation, behavioral segmentation, psychological segmentation
and cultural segmentation. To answer the question that asked in the case there is no new
possibilities of market segmentation that have been opened in the research approach so as to tell
about the case study it mostly stress about Demographic segmentation, Behavioral segmentation
and Psychological segmentation as a result of this there is no new possibility stated beyond this.

3. The scope for expanding this type of research as a means of learning more about buyer behavior
can be assessed in the following ways.

This type of research should be expanded by including other factors which influence the buying
behavior of consumers. Some of the factors which influence the buying behaviors are cultural
factors, psychological factors, economic factors and personal factors (age, family, friends etc).

Market Research is often needed to ensure that we produce what customers really want
and not what we think they want.

Surveys, as any kind of research, are vulnerable to bias.  The wording of a question can influence the
outcome a great deal.  For example, more people answered no to the question “Should speeches against
democracy be allowed?” than answered yes to “Should speeches against democracy be forbidden?”  For
face-to-face interviews, interviewer bias is a danger, too.  Interviewer bias occurs when the interviewer
influences the way the respondent answers.  For example, unconsciously an interviewer that works for the
firm manufacturing the product in question may smile a little when something good is being said about
the product and frown a little when something negative is being said.  The respondent may catch on and
say something more positive than his or her real opinion.  Finally, a response bias may occur—if only
part of the sample responds to a survey, the respondents’ answers may not be representative of the
population.

Personal interviews involve in-depth questioning of an individual about his or her interest in or
experiences with a product.  The benefit here is that we can get really into depth (when the respondent
says something interesting, we can ask him or her to elaborate), but this method of research is costly and
can be extremely vulnerable to interviewer bias.

Personal interviews are highly susceptible to inadvertent “signaling” to the respondent.  Although an
interviewer is looking to get at the truth, he or she may have a significant interest in a positive consumer
response.  Unconsciously, then, he or she may inadvertently smile a little when something positive is said
and frown a little when something negative is said.  Consciously, this will often not be noticeable, and the
respondent often will not consciously be aware that he or she is being “reinforced” and “punished” for
saying positive or negative things, but at an unconscious level, the cumulative effect of several facial
expressions are likely to be felt.  Although this type of conditioning will not get a completely negative
respondent to say all positive things, it may “swing” the balance a bit so that respondents are more likely
to say positive thoughts and withhold, or limit the duration of, negative thoughts.

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One potential benefit of online surveys is the use of “conditional branching.”  In conventional paper and
pencil surveys, one question might ask if the respondent has shopped for a new car during the last eight
months.  If the respondent answers “no,” he or she will be asked to skip ahead several questions.

Researchers use a more elaborate version of this type of program in some communities.  Here, a number
of consumers receive small payments and/or other incentives to sign up to be part of a research panel. 
They then receive a card that they are asked to present any time they go shopping.   Nearly all retailers in
the area usually cooperate.  It is now possible to track what the consumer bought in all stores and to have
a historical record.

The consumer’s shopping record is usually combined with demographic information (e.g., income,
educational level of adults in the household, occupations of adults, ages of children, and whether the
family owns and rents) and the family’s television watching habits.  (Electronic equipment run by firms
such as A. C. Nielsen will actually recognize the face of each family member when he or she sits down to
watch).

It is now possible to assess the relative impact of a number of factors on the consumer’s choice e.g.

 What brand in a given product category was bought during the last, or a series of past, purchase
occasions;
 Whether, and if so, how many times a consumer has seen an ad for the brand in question or a
competing one;
 Whether the target brand (and/or a competing one) is on sale during the store visit;
 Whether any brand had preferential display space;
 The impact of income and/or family size on purchase patterns; and
 Whether a coupon was used for the purchase and, if so, its value.

Physiological measures are occasionally used to examine consumer response.  For example, advertisers
may want to measure a consumer’s level of arousal during various parts of an advertisement.   This can be
used to assess possible discomfort on the negative side and level of attention on the positive side.

Mind-reading would clearly not be ethical and is, at the present time, not possible in any event.  However,
it is possible to measure brain waves by attaching electrodes.  These readings will not reveal what the
subject actually thinks, but it is possible to distinguish between beta waves indicating active thought and
analysis—and alpha waves, indicating lower levels of attention.

An important feature of physiological measures is that we can often track performance over time.   A
subject may, for example, be demonstrating good characteristics—such as appropriate level of arousal
and eye movement—during some of the ad sequence and not during other parts.  This, then, gives some
guidance as to which parts of the ad are effective and which ones need to be reworked.

Research sequence: In general, if more than one type of research is to be used, the more flexible and less
precise method—such as focus groups and/or individual interviews should generally be used before the
less flexible but more precise methods.

Cautions: Some cautions should be heeded in marketing research.  First, in general, research should only
be commissioned when it is worth the cost.  Thus, research should normally be useful in making specific
decisions (what size should the product be?  Should the product be launched? 

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Secondly, marketing research can be, and often is, abused.  Managers frequently have their own
“agendas” (e.g., they either would like a product to be launched or would prefer that it not be launched so
that the firm will have more resources left over to tackle their favorite products).  Often, a way to get your
way is to demonstrate through “objective” research that your opinions make economic sense.

To what extent does the family act as a unit in making various types of decisions? In economic theory, the
family is treated implicitly as a unit, though evidence is accumulating that this assumption is not really
valid. Indeed, some of the models on economic behavior, such as on labor supply, are beginning to
assume that the different members of the family act as individuals with their own goals and objectives,
and that these goals are more important for work behavior than any attitudes or preferences of the family
as a group

Some work on this question has been done on the influence of children, and of teenagers especially. The
influence of other family members seems to have been virtually ignored. Nevertheless, in one study some
time ago.

What is the role of decision-making on impulse behavior? The question itself may seem like a
contradiction, but the studies that have investigated the circumstances surrounding so-called impulse
purchases suggest that many of these purchases are not so unplanned as would seem from initial
observation, in the sense that prior discussion regarding the possibility of a purchase may have already
taken place but the purchase itself was triggered by an event unexpected at that particular time. Other
unpublished studies have had similar findings.] In effect, within a decision-making framework, "impulse"
behavior may be less impulsive or irrational than appears at first sight.

FAMILY INFLUENCE

A family exerts a complex influence on the behaviors of its members. Prior family influence
research has focused on intergenerational rather than intergenerational influence in consumer
Generation allocation. As has been compellingly demonstrated, parents influence children. Yet
consumption domains clearly exist where sibling efforts may also be exerted.

Research Setting and Sample

The setting for this study was organizational decisions regarding acquisition of telecommunications
products and services. This setting is desirable because, depending on the experience of the organization,
characteristics of organizational needs, and the products/services being considered, purchase situations
can involve the full range of buy class categories.

Data Collection Procedures

In recent studies of organizational buying behavior, researchers have employed elaborate data collection
procedures referred to as "snowballing". "Snowballing" entails establishing a contact within an
organization and querying that informant about who else participated in the decision process. In turn, this
second wave of informants is queried about others in the DMU. The process is repeated until no new
informants emerge. Thus, data are collected from a number of informants in each organization and,
ostensibly, the researcher has access to information from all members of the DMU.

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Information was collected from a single critical key informant who was identified as knowledgeable and
important in this purchase decision. Most often this key informant was in the upper management echelon.
The selection of this knowledgeable key informant, the relatively small size of the buying organization,
and the nature of the variables under investigation rendered an elaborate "snowball" data collection
procedure unnecessary in this case.

The Family Life Cycle. Individuals and families tend to go through a "life cycle:" The simple life
cycle goes from

YOUNG SINGLE…TO… YOUNG COUPLE… TO….FULL NEST I/II/III…TO…. EMPTY

NEST I/II ….. TO .…. OLDER SINGLE

For purposes of this discussion, a "couple" may either be married or merely involve living
together. The breakup of a non-marital relationship involving cohabitation is similarly
considered equivalent to a divorce.

In real life, this situation is, of course, a bit more complicated. For example, many couples undergo
divorce. Then we have one of the scenarios:

YOUNG SINGLE…TO… YOUNG COUPLE & SINGLE PARENT

YOUNG COUPLE … TO….FULL NEST I/II/III & YOUNG SINGLE

FULL NEST I/II/III …TO… SINGLE PARENT

Single parenthood can result either from divorce or from the death of one parent. Divorce usually entails a
significant change in the relative wealth of spouses. In some cases, the non-custodial parent (usually the
father) will not pay the required child support, and even if he or she does, that still may not leave the
custodial parent and children as well off as they were during the marriage. On the other hand, in some
cases, some non-custodial parents will be called on to pay a large part of their income in child support.
This is particularly a problem when the non-custodial parent remarries and has additional children in the
second (or subsequent marriages). In any event, divorce often results in a large demand for:

 Low cost furniture and household items

 Time-saving goods and services

Divorced parents frequently remarry, or become involved in other non-marital relationships; thus, we may
see

SINGLE PARENT….TO…. BLENDED…TO…. FULL NEST I/II/III   

Another variation involves

YOUNG SINGLE…TO….SINGLE PARENT

Here, the single parent who assumes responsibility for one or more children may not form a relationship
with the other parent of the child.

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Generally, there are two main themes in the Family Life Cycle, subject to significant exceptions:

 As a person gets older, he or she tends to advance in his or her career and tends to get greater
income (exceptions: maternity leave, divorce, retirement).
 Unfortunately, obligations also tend to increase with time (at least until one’s mortgage has been
paid off). Children and paying for one’s house are two of the greatest expenses.

Note that although a single person may have a lower income than a married couple, the single may be
able to buy more discretionary items.

Family Decision Making: Individual members of families often serve different roles in decisions
that ultimately draw on shared family resources. Some individuals are information gatherers/holders, who
seek out information about products of relevance. These individuals often have a great deal of power
because they may selectively pass on information that favors their chosen alternatives. Influencers do not
ultimately have the power decide between alternatives, but they may make their wishes known by asking
for specific products or causing embarrassing situations if their demands are not met. The decision
maker(s) have the power to determine issues such as:

 Whether to buy;
 Which product to buy (pick-up or passenger car?)
 Which brand to buy;
 Where to buy it; and
 When to buy.

Note, however, that the role of the decision maker is separate from that of the purchaser. From the point
of view of the marketer, this introduces some problems since the purchaser can be targeted by point-of-
purchase (POP) marketing efforts that cannot be aimed at the decision maker. Also note that the
distinction between the purchaser and decision maker may be somewhat blurred:

 The decision maker may specify what kind of product to buy, but not which brand;
 The purchaser may have to make a substitution if the desired brand is not in stock;
 The purchaser may disregard instructions (by error or deliberately).

It should be noted that family decisions are often subject to a great deal of conflict. The reality is that few
families are wealthy enough to avoid a strong tension between demands on the family’s resources.

Measures

In general, measures were developed on the bases of academic literature, trade literature, and field
interviews in the industry. Initial versions of the research instrument were pretested on a small pool of
managers from organizations in the Northeast who had recently acquired a telecommunications system.
The general format, content, and specific measures were revised on the basis of the pretest results.

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As indicated in the research propositions, six variables were included in this study with the major focus
(i.e., the major dependent construct) on Decision Making Time. An open-ended item asking respondents
to indicate the number of months from initiation to completion of the purchase process was used to assess
DMT.

Decision making
A business organization is a decision-making unit that sets out to produce a product in the form of goods
or services. Key decisions need to be made about an organizations plant, its products, and its people.

1. Short-term operating control decisions. These have to be made frequently involving short-term,
predictable operations.

2. Periodic control decisions. These are made less frequently and are concerned with monitoring how
effectively an organization is managing its resources. For example, this might include the review of
pricing strategies for certain products, reviewing problems occurring in an on-going company budget, or
the re-appraisal of the way the sales force is being used. Such decisions are concerned with checking for
and rectifying problems concerned with meeting company objectives.

3. Strategic decisions. These are major decisions about overall strategy. They will often require a
considerable use of judgment by the person or group responsible for making the decisions. This is
because although such decisions will require a considerable amount of analysis, important pieces of
information will frequently be missing and so risk will be involved. Such decisions might involve the
development of a new product, investment in new plant, or the development of new marketing strategy.

Decision Trees

Decision trees are so named because of the way in which they separate out into branches (outcomes) from
an original stem (a decision). Decision trees are a technique for tracing through all the known outcomes
of a particular decision in order to draw out the possible consequences.

In a decision tree, points at which decisions are made are represented by squares (decision forks), and
points where chance/probability comes into play are represented by circles.

Recommendations
We would like to recommend the research that had been made by many researchers as stated below.

Marketers must understand the behavior of consumers so as to market to product effectively and to
maximize their profit margin.

As stated in case way marketing research approaches are used by marketing research agencies such as
structured questionnaire, qualitative approaches, with their own weakness and strengths.

Ethnographic approaches and conventional

Researches other than traditional approaches of gathering data regarding now consumers behave
differently. In this case marketers must design effective marketing strategy depending on family, age,

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group literacy rate, personal habit the product that need special offer, understand inconsistencies between
what people say that do and what they actually they do and also crucially understand the quirks in
consumer behavior using the marketing strategy that consumers able to understand such as the technology
that the company used in order to market the products.

Conclusion
To conclude the case study many focuses how consumers differently behave to make purchase decisions
in different age groups, life style and technology n the market. Using the appropriate marketing strategy
in order to understand how consumers behave is the crucial to obtain large amount of market share and
profit.
In the case study the first and the most things knowing the real life factors that influence the purchase
decision of consumers and personality of the family. So as to minimize marketing problems marketers
must address such thing, effectively and utilize their capacity efficiently.

Reference

 Introduction to marketing management

 Principles of marketing
 Lars Perner, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Marketing
Department of Marketing
Marshall School of Business
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA USA