CHAPTER THREE

BUYING BEHAVIOR

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I. Consumer buying behavior

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 Discussion Questions
• How do consumer characteristics influence
buying behavior?
• What major psychological processes
influence consumer responses to the
marketing program?
• How do consumers make purchasing
decisions?
• How do marketers analyze consumer
decision making?
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 Cont……
• It refers to the buying behavior of final consumers -
individuals and households that buy goods and services
for personal consumption.
• All of these final consumers combined make up the
consumer market.
• Marketers spend more money than ever to study
consumers, trying to learn more about consumer behavior.
Who buys? How do they buy? When do they buy?
Where do they buy? Why do they buy?
• The central question for marketers is; how do consumers
respond to various marketing stimuli that the company
might use?
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Models of Consumer Behavior

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 Cont…

• The marketer wants to understand how the

stimuli are changed into responses inside the
consumer's black box, which has two parts.
First, the buyer‘s characteristics influence how
he or she perceives and reacts to the stimuli.
Second, the buyer's decision process itself
affects the buyer's behavior.

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Characteristics Affecting Consumer Behavior

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 Cont….
• Consumer purchases are influenced strongly by cultural, social,
personal and psychological characteristics.
• marketers cannot control such factors, but
they must take them into account
Cultural Factors
• Cultural factors exert the broadest and deepest influence on
consumer behavior. The marketer needs to understand the role
played by the buyer's culture, subculture and social class.
A. culture
• The set of basic values, perceptions, wants and behaviors
learned by a member of society from family and other
important institutions.
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 Cont….

B. subculture
• A group of people with shared value systems based on
common life experiences and situations.
• Subcultures include nationalities, religions, racial
groups and geographic regions.
• Many subcultures make up important market segments
and marketers often design products and marketing
programs tailored to their needs.
C. social classes
• Social classes are society's relatively permanent and
ordered divisions whose members share similar values,
interests and behaviors.
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 Cont…
• social class is not determined by a single factor, such
as income, but is measured as a combination of
occupation, income, education, wealth and other
variables.
 Social Factors
• A consumer's behavior is also influenced by social
factors, such as the consumer's small groups, family,
and social roles and status.
• these social factors can strongly affect consumer
responses. Thus, companies must take into account
when designing their marketing strategies.
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 Groups
• Reference groups: a group of people who influence a
person's attitudes, values, and behavior.
• Each group develops its own standards of behavior that
they serve as guides for the individual members. 
• All the groups have direct/face to face or indirect
influence on consumers taste and preference. It can be
described as:
A. membership groups: Groups that have a direct
influence and to which a person belongs. Some are
Primary groups - with whom there is regular but
informal interaction. Some are Secondary groups,
which are more formal and have less regular interaction.
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 Cont…

B. Aspirational group: is one to which the individual wishes to

belong. Example; as when a teenage football player hopes to play
some day for Chelsea.
• Marketers try to identify the reference groups of their target markets.
 B/C; Reference groups influence a person at least in three ways:
 They expose the person to new behaviors and
lifestyles.

 They influence the person's attitudes and self- concept

because he or she wants to 'fit in'.
 They also create pressures to conform that may affect
the person's product and brand choices

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  Family

 Family group exerts the strongest and most enduring

influence on our perceptions and behavior. The family is the
most important consumer buying organization in society.
 Marketers are thus interested in the roles and relative
influence of the husband, wife and children in the purchase
of a large variety of products and services.
 Roles and Statuses
• A person belongs to many groups - family, clubs,
organizations.
• The person's position in each group can be defined in terms
of both role and status.
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 Cont..

• Role: is the activities that a person is expected to perform

according to the persons around him or her.
• Status: the esteem given to the individual by the society.
 Personal factors
 Age and Life-Cycle Stage:
. Family life cycle - the stages through which families
might pass as they mature over time.
• People change the goods and services they buy over their
lifetimes.
• Tastes in food, clothes, furniture and recreation are often
age related.
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 Cont..
Marketers often define their target markets in
terms of life-cycle stage and develop appropriate
products and marketing plans for each stage.
 Occupation
• A person's occupation affects the goods and
services bought.
• E.g. the interest of Blue-collar and white-collar
workers.
 Marketers try to identify the occupational groups
that have an above-average interest in their
products and services.
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  Economic Circumstances
• A person's economic situation will affect product choice.
• The income that he/she earns, the attitude towards
spending and saving, and the borrowing power affect
his/her buying decision..
 Marketers of income sensitive goods closely watch
trends in personal income, savings and interest rate.
 Lifestyle
• People coming from the same subculture, social class and
occupation may have quite different lifestyles.
• Lifestyle is a person's pattern of living as expressed in
his or her activities, interests and opinions.
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 Personality and Self-Concept (self-image)

• Personality: the unique psychological characteristics

that lead to relatively consistent and lasting responses
to one's own environment.
• Personality is usually described in terms of traits
such as self-confidence, dominance, sociability,
autonomy, defensiveness, adaptability and
aggressiveness.
• The attitude of people or mental picture towards
themselves is also called self-concept or self-image.
Thus, people buy products which fit their assumed
self -image.

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  Psychological Factors
• A person's buying choices are further influenced by four important
psychological factors: motivation, perception, learning, and
beliefs and attitudes.
 Motivation: it created by the state of tension or unfulfilled needs.
• A person has many needs at any given time. some are:
 biological, arising from states of tension.
 psychological, arising from the need for recognition,
esteem or belonging.
• A need becomes a motive when it is aroused to a sufficient
level of intensity.
• A motive ( drive) is a need that is sufficiently pressing to direct
the person to seek satisfaction.

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  Perception
• A motivated person is ready to act. But the way how the
person act is influenced by his/her perception of the
situation.
 perception is the process by which people select,
organize and interpret information to form a meaningful
picture of the world.
• Why People form different perceptions for the same
stimulus?
• This is because of three perceptual processes: selective
attention, selective distortion and selective retention.

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 Cont….

A. Selective attention: The tendency of people to screen

out most of the information to which they are exposed
(focus on eye catching objects or exciting message).
. Marketing implication: the ads must be provided by a
bold message and related with: current need,
anticipated need and large deviation.
B. Selective distortion: The tendency of people to adapt
information to personal meanings. It is the tendency of
people to twist information in to the way that support
our pre-conception (mind set).

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 Cont..

. Marketing implication: marketers must try to

understand the mind-sets of consumers and how these
will affect interpretations of advertising and sales
information. In addition, the ads must be brief and
simple.
C. selective retention: The tendency of people to retain
only part of the information to which they are exposed,
usually information that supports their attitudes or beliefs
(due to the attitudes and belief they have towards the
object).
. Marketing implication: must understand the customers
belief and attitudes.
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  Learning
• It is the process of changes in an individual’s behavior
that arise from (the result of)experience.
• learning is produced through the interplay of drives,
stimuli, cues, responses, and reinforcement.
• A drive is a strong internal stimulus that calls for action.
• Cues are minor stimuli that determine when, where and
how the person responds.
. The practical significance of learning theory for
marketers is that they can build up demand for a
product by associating it with strong drives, using
motivating cues and providing positive reinforcement.

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  Beliefs and Attitudes
• Through doing and learning, people acquire their beliefs and
attitudes. These, in turn, influence their buying behavior.
. A belief is a descriptive thought that a person holds
about something. These beliefs may be based on real
knowledge, opinion or faith, and may or may not carry an
emotional charge.
. Marketers are interested in the beliefs that people
formulate about specific products and services, because
these beliefs make up product and brand images that
affect buying behavior.
 If some of the beliefs are wrong and prevent purchase,
the marketer will want to launch a campaign to correct
them.
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 Cont…

. Attitude: describes a person's relatively consistent

evaluations, feelings and tendencies towards an object or
idea. It is a learned predisposition.
. Attitudes put people into a frame of mind of liking or
disliking things, of moving towards or away from them.
 Attitudes are difficult to change. A person's attitudes fit
into a pattern and to change one attitude may require
difficult adjustments in many other attitudes.
 Thus, a company would be well advised to fit its
product into existing attitudes rather than to try to
change people’s attitudes. Of course, trying to change
attitudes can pay off occasionally.
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 . Consumers’ Buying role

 Initiator: The person who first suggests or thinks of the

idea of buying a particular product or service.
 Influencer: A person whose view or advice influences the
buying decision, perhaps a friend who is a camera enthusiast
or a salesperson.
 Decider: The person who ultimately makes a buying
decision or any part of it - whether to buy, what to buy, how
to buy or where to buy.
 Buyer: The person who makes an actual purchase. Once the
buying decision is made, someone else could make the
purchase for the decider.
 User: The person who consumes or uses a product or
service.
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 Types of Buying Decision Behavior

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  . The Buyer Decision Process

 . Most large companies research consumer buying

decisions answer questions about: what consumers buy,
where they buy, how and how much they buy, when
they buy and why they buy.
. Marketers can study consumer purchases to find
answers to questions about: what they buy, where and
how much.
. But learning about the whys of consumer buying
behavior and the buying decision process is not so easy.
 Why?
 . Therefore, it is better to examine the stages that buyers
pass through to reach a buying decision.
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 Purchase
Decision
Evaluation Postpurchase
of Alternatives Behavior
Information
Search
Need
Recognition

 . This model implies that consumers pass through all five stages with
every purchase. But in more routine purchases, consumers often skip or
reverse some of these stages.
Need Recognition
• The first stage of the buyer decision process in which the consumer
recognizes a problem or need.
• It triggered by: Internal stimuli and
External stimuli
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  Information Search

• The stage of the buyer decision process in which the

consumer is aroused to search for more information. In
other hand, the consumer search information about the
need (problem ) that they have.
 They can get from:
 Personal sources
 Commercial sources
 Public sources
 Experiential sources
 The relative influence of these information
sources varies with the product and the buyer.
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  Evaluation of Alternatives

 The stage of the buyer decision process in which the consumer

uses information to evaluate alternative brands in the choice set.
There are a number of evaluation process (criteria) depends on the
individual consumer and the specific buying situations.
 1st = setting criteria
 2nd = assigning value to each criteria

 Purchase decision
1. Attitudes of others
2. Unexpected situational factors
 Post purchase behavior
 Cognitive dissonance
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II. Business (organization) buying behavior

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 Discussion Points
• What is the business market, and how does it
differ from the consumer market?
• What buying situations do organizational buyers
face?
• Who participates in the business-to-business
buying process?
• How do business buyers make their decisions?
• How can companies build strong relationships
with business customers?
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 Cont…..
• The business market consists of all the organizations that buy
goods and services to use in the production of other products
and services that are sold, rented or supplied to others.
• It is a market that involves firms and organizations buying
goods and services for the purpose of: further processing,
reselling, conducting business and leasing
 This market includes: industrial buyer, reseller,
government agencies and other institutions and agencies.
 The business buying process is the decision-making
process by which business buyers establish the need for
purchased products and services, and identify, evaluate and
choose among alternative brands and suppliers.
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 Characteristics of business market

Business market Consumer market

There are few buyers There are many buyers
Large buyers Smaller buyer
Close suppliers – buyer r/s Loose suppliers – buyers r/s
Geographically There is scatteredness
concentrated buyers
Direct purchase Long channel of
distribution
Derived demand Direct demand
Fluctuating demand Relatively stable demand

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 Cont…

Business ……………cont’d Consumer…………………… cont’d

Inelastic demand Elastic demand
reciprocity No involved such kinds
of interaction
Several participants to
make purchase decision
Several call to win
order
They have more
formalized procedure

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Model of business buyer behavior

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 Major types of buying situation
• The same purchase in two different
organizations may produce d/t purchasing
strategies under d/t buying situations

• Therefore, marketing strategy must begin with

identifying the type of buying situation.

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 Three types of business buying situation

Straight
Straight rebuy
rebuy

Modified
Modified rebuy
rebuy

New
New task
task

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 Cont…

• straight rebuy: A business buying situation in which

the buyer routinely reorders something without any
modifications.
• modified rebuy: A business buying situation in which
the buyer wants co modify product specifications,
prices, terms or suppliers.
• new task: A business buying situation in which the
buyer purchases a product or service for the first time.

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 A. straight re-buy buying situation

. Product specification
 . Price limitation
 . Selective suppliers
 . Delivery
 . payment

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 The reaction pattern of out-suppliers
 attempt to offer something new
 exploit dissatisfaction with current suppliers
Try to get small order and then enlarge their purchase
share over time

The reaction pattern of in-suppliers

Assessing customer satisfaction
Become innovative suppliers (not followers)
Reinforce (strength) the buyer –seller r/s
Alert and responsive to the changing wants of the
buying organizations 41
 B. Modified re-buy buying situation
The most important factors that leads to modified
re-buy situation are:
 The feeling that significant benefit may be
derived from re-evaluation of alternative (feeling
to some improvement)
 Search for quality improvement and search for
cost reduction
 Dissatisfaction with the performance of present
suppliers (in-suppliers)

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 The Reaction pattern of out suppliers
 Giving piece of information from time to time
 Visiting the buying organization and holding discussion
 Offering performance guarantee’s as part of sales
proposal which is not clearing currently solicited by in-
suppliers.
The reaction pattern of in-suppliers
 Make every effort to understand and satisfying the
procurement need and to move decision makers in to a
straight re-buy.
 Ask themselves why the buying organization want to
make modification to it’s current purchase situation and
act immediately to remedy any customer problems 43
 C. New task buying situation

Purpose: accomplishing a new task and solving a new

problem
 The greater the cost or risk, the larger the No. of decision
participant and the greater their information gathering &
therefore the longer time to decision completion.
Marketing implication
 Active in the initial stage of procurement process by way of
gathering information on the problem facing the buying
organizations
 Reaching as many key buying influencers as possible and
provide helpful information and assistance
 Monitor the changing wants of the organization and get
prepared to assist them 44
 Cont….
The No. of decision in the straight re-buy is fewest
but in the new task is the most. B/C:

 product specification has to be made

Price limitation has to be determined
Delivery term and time have to be determination
Service, payment term, quantity order,
acceptable suppliers, and selected suppliers has
to be determined

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 buying center
• It is All the individuals and units that
participate in the business buying decision
process. The decision making unit of a buying
organization is called its buying center.
• The buying center includes all members of the
organization who play any of five roles in the
purchase decision process

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The Buying Center
Initiators
Initiators

Users
Users

Influencers
Influencers

Deciders
Deciders

Approvers
Approvers

Buyers
Buyers

Gatekeepers
Gatekeepers
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 Cont..

1. initiators: the people who perceive problem or opportunity that may

require the purchase of a new product and they trigger the buying
process in motion. They can be any one at any level in the firm.
2. Users: Members of the organization who will use the product or
services. In many cases, users initiate the buying proposal and help
define product specifications.
3. Influencers: are those individuals inside or outside the organization
who influence the purchase decision process by information
providing on criteria for evaluating alternatives products and
suppliers. They often play a role in determining the specifications.
Technical personnel ( such as designing Engineer, and quality
control inspector) and drawn from various departments whose
knowledge is useful in making wise decisions are particularly
Important influencers.

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 Cont…

4. Deciders: People who have formal or informal power to

select or approve the final suppliers. Higher level
executive in the organization usually retain it. In routine
buying, the buyers are often the deciders or at least the
approvers.
5. Approvers: those who authorize or okay the proposal
action of buyer or deciders
6. Buyers: People with formal authority to select the
supplier and arrange terms of purchase. Buyers may help
shape product specifications, but they play their most
important role in selecting vendors and in negotiating. In
more complex purchases, buyers might include high-level officers
participating in the negotiations.
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 Cont..

7. Gatekeepers: People who control the flow of

information to other people involved in the
purchasing process.
 It can be done by controlling printed information
and advertisements, as well as by controlling
which sales persons are allowed to speak to
individuals with in the buying centers.
 For example, purchasing agents often have
authority to prevent salespersons from seeing users
or deciders. Other gatekeepers include technical
personnel and even personal secretaries.
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 Cont….
• Gatekeeper: Member of a decision-making unit or
social group who acts to prevent or discourage a
purchase by controlling the flow of information and/or
access to people in the buying center.
• A mother who does not allow her child to
choose a presweetened cereal at the
supermarket is acting as a gatekeeper.
• A secretary who does not put calls through to
the decision maker is a gatekeeper.
• Marketers must direct their advertisements not
only to the end user, but also to any potential
gatekeepers. 51
Gatekeepers

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 Major influences of business market

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54
 Please fill this table by using Yes, Maybe, & No
straight modifie New
rebuy d rebuy task
Problem Recognition
General Need Description
Product Specification
Supplier Search
Proposal Solicitation
Supplier Selection
Order-Routine Specification
Performance Review
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Buy grid Framework

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