Portfolio Activity Unit 2

BUS 5112 Marketing Management

UNDERSTANDING CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

Exploring Factors That Influence Consumer Loyalty

Businesses is known not to exist without its consumers. Having the right structure business plan

to grow your consumer base and retain repeat purchases is key to building a successful empire.

Consumer retention is crucial for business success. This is a crucial item for companies. Akaeze,

C., & Akaeze, N. (2017) stated, in the assigned reading, that “Investing in current consumers will

bring more long-term revenue and be cheaper than finding new ones”.

Three of the components that influence consumers’ loyalty written in the assigned reading

are;

a. Consumer Satisfaction

b. Product Quality

c. Service Quality

Thus, there are some useful consumer retention strategies for organizations:

1. Making consumers satisfied by providing top-notch and consistent product quality and

service, delivering on the consumer’s expectations and providing them exceptional values

which are above their expectations, sending them tangible rewards, freebies and

surprises, and appreciating repeated clients by registering them into loyalty programs.

When consumers are satisfied, they will become loyal and spread their positive feedback

about the product.

 2. Letting consumers spend less effort by improving processes and technology to save time

and bring more convenience.

3. Building relationship with consumers that is trustworthy by communicating with them on

regular basis via different platforms like email or social media. Listening to consumers by

reading their reviews, opinions, feedback, and complaints. This will help improve on

company products and services.

According to The University of Minnesota (2010, p. 79-83), the actions involved in the final

purchase decisions are need recognition, information search, and evaluation of alternatives.

Consumers must realize their current wants or needs. Then, customers will search for data to

fulfill their needs via different sources. Once they gather enough data, they will consider

different options to find out which products meet the criteria in their minds. After these actions

are conducted, consumers will enter the product choice and purchase stage.

From experience, I always collect as much information as possible as I can get hold of before I

purchase something, especially for valuable products. The first criteria that I look for are the

product price, so I will look for as many vendors as I can who provide a specific price point.

Next, I look for the quality of the product by reading the information provided by vendors and

reviews

from other consumers. Reviews usually guide me from making mistakes of other buyers so I

always go through reviews before purchasing online. I also try to know about the vendor’s

credibility and their pre-purchase and post-purchase services for the products such as delivery

terms, payment terms, return policy, warranty, and consumer service. Among these criteria, most

of the time, price is the most compelling for me. Because the price element drives my behavior, I

give reference to the video on ‘Impulse Buying’ in Mapscu (2016). I have bought impulsively
many on sale or discounted items especially clothes without thinking whether I need those or not.

For example, I bought an earring I felt was lovely to wear and it’s getting to two years now I

haven’t put it on which I can’t tell the reason for it I just felt it look lovely on the model use in

the advert and so I would look lovely on it as well.

In conclusion, in order to improve on my consumer behavior, I will follow the illustrated steps in

the video as given by creating and sticking to a budget to buy only my prioritized wants and

needs, walk away from sales, give time for myself to consider if I really need that purchase, and

go shopping with people who will remind me not to buy unnecessary things (Mapscu, 2016).

Reference:

Akaeze, C., & Akaeze, N. (2017). Exploring Factors That Influence Consumer Loyalty to

Automobile Dealerships in New York. Journal of Business Theory and Practice 5(6), 35–47.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316320629_Exploring_Factors_That_Influence_Consu

mer_Loyalty_to_Automobile_Dealerships_in_New_York

Atchision, J. (2019, November 12). How to Boost Consumer Retention. Retrieved from

https://www.business.com/articles/boost-consumer-retention/

Mapscu. (2016, January 5). Impulse buying. Retrieved from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY6pCHkeED4&feature=youtu.be

The University of Minnesota. (2010). Principles of marketing. Licensed under Creative

Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0.