Name: Sania Merchant

Class: TY-BAMMC
Division: A
Academic Year: 2021-2022
Semester: 5
Roll No.: 39
Course: Consumer Behaviour
Topic: Current problems in consumer behavior

Current problems in consumer behaviour

Introduction:

Just like any other field of study, consumer behaviour is constantly evolving to cater to the
purchasing habits of the consumers who are influenced by multiple, dynamic factors. With the
introduction of technology and its ease of use, along with the rise in the number of options
available and new trends, the way a consumer behaves has changed.

What is consumer behaviour?

Consumer Behaviour is an important field of study, adding value by sharing insights to help
businesses understand the market’s needs and wants better, helping them tap into the right target
market.

Review of Literature:

Over the years, Consumer Behaviour as science has been thoroughly studied through observation
and research. There are global patterns that businesses followed in the study of consumers,
relying on professional research work and their findings to help them navigate the business
industry. The studies have briefed upon various important concepts like Consumer Loyalty,
Segmentation, Consumer Attitude, Influences, Decision-Making and other groundbreaking
observations which changed the way businesses operate after learning of the findings that came
from these studies (Consumer Behaviour: Always Learning- Leon Schiffman, Joseph Wisenblit
and Ramesh Kumar, 2016). The behavior and trends in consumers are dynamic causing the need
for constant observation to trace the new changes in the modern-day consumer’s buying patterns
(Consumer Behaviour: A European Perspective- Michael Solomon, Gary Bamossy, Søren
Askegaard and Margaret K. Hogg, 2006) to help businesses assess the changes they need to
make to keep up with the changing habits of consumers and their wants.

Current Problems with Consumer Behaviour:

1) Variables of consumer behaviour and its problems:

Before we assess the changes in consumer behaviour during contemporary times, let us look at
some unique variables related to consumer behaviour to understand how to works, and evolves.
● Consumer behaviour is studied with the help of diverse sciences like economics,
psychology, chemistry & biology.
● It studies the way consumer chooses a product or service, purchases them, uses them and
disposes of them.
● It considers the mental, emotional, and behavioural responses of the consumer.

Just like any other science, consumer behaviour requires in-depth study of the target audience,
something which smaller brands don’t have the resources to do so, especially due to the rise in
technology leading to increased competition and decreased brand loyalty, especially for start-
ups.

2) The problem of assessing consumer behaviour:

When assessing the behaviour and comparing, the following thoughts should be considered:
● What the consumer feels or thinks about the product or service?
● What is their opinion on alternatives and competitors?
● What factors influence the consumer?
● What are their shopping habits?
● How often does the consumer follow trends?
● Are there any marketing tactics used?
● What is the influence of the marketing tactics used?

These are the questions that companies often ask themselves and unless they have hired a
marketing specialist who can study the current trends, it is difficult for companies to understand
consumer behavior without background knowledge or experience with how business-consumer
relationship works.
 3) The problem of consumer behaviour affecting brand vision:

It is crucial to ask the questions to understand the way consumer behaviour works considering
the importance of consumer behaviour since it affects:
● Increase in sales
● Prices of the goods and services
● Sales Promotion
● Helps with competitive analysis
● Helps with forecasting
● Trageting & segmentation
● Designing product portfolio

The study of consumer behaviour is although meant to help businesses grow and strategize, in
certain cases, it requires the brand to do a complete 180’ and get a makeover to appeal to the
customers due to its massive impact which makes the businesses run, which in certain scenario
leads to brand losing its authenticness and original vision to attract the masses.

4) Buying Process:

We must also consider the buying process to understand the rationale behind the consumer’s
behaviour. It consists of the following 6 steps:
Consumer Behaviour is a complex study made up of nuanced steps, due to the issue of it always
gradually changing as the market evolves and new trends arise. Consumer behaviour due to its
delicate nature can be influenced by any of the 6 stages, causing businesses to work on trying to
reach a balance where they can satisfy the consumers’ wants and needs at all 6 stages.

5) Factors Influencing Consumer Behaviour:

It is difficult to label the influence to be one factor, as the final decision is based on the
accumulation and influence of all the factors combined, although in certain cases, some factors
have more influence than others.

Some of the factors are:

Economic Personal Psychological Cultural & Marketing Mix
factors: Factors: Factors: Social Factors: Factors:

Personal Income Age Motivation Culture Product

 Family Income Occupation Involvement Subculture Price

Expectations Life Cycle Perception Social Class Promotion

regarding Future Changes
Income

Level of Lifestyle Learning Social Groups Place

Standard of
Living

Liquid Assets Personality Attitude Opinion Leaders Process

Savings Self-concept Beliefs Role & Status People

These factors have their own sub-categories of further complex, demographics, that can’t be
assessed via tangible means or without bias and guesswork, making consumer behaviour more
difficult to assess and understand except for the over the surface, easily accessible data unless
you have the opportunity and resources to narrow down the audience to extreme detail and
observe their behaviour closely.

6) Types of Consumer Behaviour and Issues that arise with them:

The behaviour also depends on the type of purchase and behaviour it is, it can be categorized into
4 types with each type having its own pros and cons, based on the type of goods and services the
businesses offer. The types of behaviour are:
All of these types of behaviour come with a set of their own problems ranging from brand
loyalty to advertising strategies that vary in multiple ways and require different solutions based
on what category they fall into:

I. Complex Buying Behaviour:

● This behaviour is observed when the consumer is making an infrequent, expensive and
risky purchase.
● The consumer spends a lot of time researching their options, assessing their value,
returns, and risk in the long-term scenario.
● The consumer has high involvement in this scenario, where they invest their time a lot
before they spend their money on any purchase.
● The consumer also the brands and the differences between the, seeking opinion and
validation from other resources too before they make a purchasing decision.
● E.g.: When buying a house the consumer will evaluate and look into the price, functions,
location, effect on his social status, environment and social life, opinion of close friends
and family, and future predictions of the real estate market.
● It becomes necessary for businesses to work on their message to tap into the consumers’
attitudes and beliefs after they themselves have a deep understanding of the goods and
services they plan to market.

II. Dissonance Reducing Buying Behaviour:

● This happens when the consumer makes an infrequent but expensive purchase.
 ● The priority is to buy a product that is easily available and has all the features the
consumer seeks. Hence, it requires high involvement to help them find the closest match
that meets their needs without researching the options in high detail.
● The consumer will often have trouble distinguishing between brands and post-purchase
will seek opinions to see if they made the correct decision.
● Eg.: A consumer buying wallpaper will go for the ones that suit their aesthetic and
matches the functional needs.
● Businesses need to work on after-sale services to ensure that the customer builds brand
loyalty over time by educating them about their products and features for future
references along with offering discounts and incentives.

III. Variety Seeking Behaviour:

● Although the consumer is satisfied with the current products and services, they still
proceed to shop to have more variety of goods.
● This switch happens often and unintentionally and is due to curiosity and boredom
typically with no long-term economical effect on the consumer.
● In this scenario, the consumer has low involvement in making the purchase decisions and
the difference between brands may seem significant since they want to try different
brands.
● Example: Buying different kinds of perfumes for diverse collections to consume.
● To overcome this issue, businesses offer, more discounts, frequent advertising free
samples, exciting deals, coupons, etc as incentives.

IV. Habitual Buying Behaviour:

● In this scenario, the consumer doesn’t put a lot of thought into the purchase since it is
often a product not for luxury but daily, uneventful use.
● There is often a lack of brand loyalty from the consumer.
● There is low involvement from consumers’ side with them not putting much effort into
research and the differences between brands is insignificant to them.
● E.g.:- Daily products like salt, where the consumer doesn’t stress too much about the
brand.
● Businesses cope up with this issue by constantly advertising their products so that the
consumer picks their product due to familiarity with the name and also offer attractive
and eye-catching packaging to retain the consumers’ attention.
 7) Rising Problems with Consumer Behaviour:

With the rise of technology, competition, marketing strategies education, and trends, the way a
consumer behaves during the purchasing process is quite different now than what it was years
ago. Some changes that lead to problems are:
1. Incentives: Living in a world where people don’t make purchases without the incentive of
discounts, businesses are selling their products for extremely high prices and then
offering tremendous discounts to lure customers. Due to this, the balance of factors shifts
more towards economical factors, making it difficult for brands to create loyal customers
as they did earlier by tapping into socio-cultural factors.
2. Rise in choices: Consumers have limitless options when it comes to buying due to high
competition, this rise in options although comforts the consumer, make it difficult for
consumers to make a purchasing decision due to the inevitable question of ‘what if the
competitor is better,’ adding more time gap between the evaluation of options and
purchasing decision, with the consumer’s rationale clouded due to being overwhelmed by
the options.
3. Trends: The rise of social media has lead to a boost in purchases during a season when a
certain idea is trending. This trend, however, causes consumers to face only a temporary
sense of satisfaction since the value of their purchase disappears once the trend is over,
causing consumers to have a potential bias towards the brands they bought from
depending on the impact of the trend.
4. Virtual World: A new but extremely strong factor of influence is social media where
consumers often make purchases based on recommendations by social media influencers
without assessing the purchase decision and making unpredictable decisions just to jump
on the bandwagon.
5. Limited Attention Span: With the consumers being more impatient and wanting quicker
services and purchases opportunities, getting the attention of the consumer for more than
a fleeting moment has become a tedious task. The consumer wants everything to be
faster, bigger, and better.
6. Access to misinformation: With all of the human knowledge available at the edge of our
fingertips, we have the ability to access information anytime and anywhere. However,
 this also makes us easy targets to misinformation due to lack of reliable information with
the rise of publishing spaces without fact-checking features established.
7. Lack of physical application: With everything virtual, the brick and mortar stores are
facing issues. From restaurants to clothes shopping to doctors appointments being online,
the scope for effective outdoor marketing has gone down where one didn’t need to fight
competitors for the consumers’ attention as much as they do now in the digital world. The
consumers aren’t able to test products physically until they receive them, making every
order feel like a game of chance causing them to go for businesses with better marketing
tactics instead of better quality products.

Conclusion

Consumer behaviour has certainly evolved over the decades with the rise in wants now instead of
just needs. With social media and technology acting as a catalyst further, consumer behaviour is
set to be full of more unpredictable trend-induced purchases along with the herd mentality
increasing to buy goods and services for external validation and rich in social status in the virtual
world.

It is up to the consumers to adapt to modern-day marketing strategies and breeze through

misinformation and the heaps of trends to configure that their needs and wants are making
purchases to suit them.

The consumer’s behaviour as well the study of consumer behaviour is set to rapidly change
without any signs of the frequent development in the behaviour of consumers stopping anytime
soon.

This problem of the constant shift of paradigm will require businesses, marketers, and agencies
to constantly evolve too to keep up with the consumer’s wants and come up with innovative
ways to attract consumers.
Bibliography

Books
● Authors: Michael Solomon, Gary Bamossy, Søren Askegaard and Margaret K. Hogg
Title: Consumer Behaviour: A European Perspective
Edition: Third
City of Publication: Edinburg, England
Publisher: Pearson Education Limited
Date published: 2006

● Authors: Leon Schiffman, Joseph Wisenblit and Ramesh Kumar

Title: Consumer Behaviour: Always Learning
Edition: Eleventh
City of Publication: Chennai, Tamil Nadu
Publisher: Pearson India Education Services Pvt. Ltd.
Date published: 2016

Online Resources:
● Consumer Behavior in Marketing: https://www.omniconvert.com/blog/consumer-
behavior-in-marketing-patterns-types-segmentation/

● Consumer Behaviour: Emerging Issues

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/consumer_behavior/consumer_behavior_emerging_issues
.htm

● Current Trends in Consumer Behaviour

https://www.freedmaninternational.com/insights/8-current-trends-in-consumer-
behaviour-around-the-world/