Introduction:
Marketing managers should be aware of their customers. In this competitive world, it becomes hard for marketing and sales management team to understand what is the reason that customer selects those products that have no consumer orientation. To move ahead with the competition, a firm needs to remain on top when it comes to wants, needs and desires. The buying behaviors of the consumers will permit the firm to accomplish its development in the market. Basic concern of the producer is the insatiable wants of the consumer as explained by psychology of consumer behavior. For example, majority of the consumers have a need of food items or a desire to have a specific product. According to the marketing perspective, the existing consumer needs become more effective for marketing when the same are offered by the producers to it’s consumers (Hall, 2005).
The driving force is consumer motivation that can result in unsatisfied need based on internal tension. Those needs are considered as the one that may be innate or acquired. The air, water, food, shelter, sex or clothing are the innate needs and example of physiological needs, whereas, acquired needs are the ones which are obtained from the response to culture or environment and these needs can be learned (Hall, 2005).
The Conflict Typical Consumers Experience, When Faced with Deciding Between What They Need and What They Want
Consumers may have several questions while deciding what they really need and what they want. Few of those questions may emerge as follows:
- Why do you purchase the stuff you do?
- How did you select to drive to the school you are attending?
- How you decide about the shop, from which you like to purchase your stuff?
These are the questions consumers think before they make the decision for buying the stuff that they need or want and marketers have to find answers to this question to meet the consumer expectations. Marketers ought to fulfill the desires, needs and wants of its regular and potential customers.
While getting to find the answers, the professionals will get a better idea about the product that consumers are willing to purchase. The marketers needs to study the consumer behavior first before understanding the market competition, as consumer behavior is related to its personal, social, psychological and situational need while deciding to buy a specific product (Hall, 2005).
There are many companies around the globe that are investing money on an annual basis to know what creates customers “tick”. The big concern is the search engines such as Google, Yahoo and AOL, which companies don’t want to monitor what their web patterns are for searching sites. Furthermore, it is related to the one in which companies find those who pay for advertising in order to represent on the web pages.
The focus of the consumer behavior is angled towards specific decisions made by the individuals about spending the resources they have in their hand. These resources may come in terms of money, time, and effort on the stuff that is relevant to their consumption. Consumers have their own reasons for what they want to buy. They have a mindset based upon their logic, intuitions or interests that make them decide the following: why they want to buy, where they want to purchase from, how often would they buy such item, when do they purchase it and how frequently they utilize it. Consumers examine a product they bought from the market, they have their own criteria of examining the item after purchase and have their own way of analyzing it to coin a decision, whether to buy the same product in the future.
The most essential constant above all is that it’s the “individuals” who are the consumers. In spite of all, they are the ones who are utilizing or consuming stuff on a daily basis, stuff like food, shelter, clothing, education, equipment, vacations, necessities, transportation, services, ideas and not to disregard the luxuries (Cho, 2001).
The prime factor that affects the basic raw materials, production, transportation and banking is consumer purchase decisions. The implications of this sole factor are so pronounced that they affect the resources of the employees and workers, leading to situations that decide the success and failures of industries, manufacturers and distributors. Consequently, it becomes important for marketers to understand the needs of their customers and the driving factors along with the influences that they adopt from their surroundings that carry an impact on their buying decision. Besides professionals need to know about the ways that consumers utilize for spending their free time (Rowe & Wilcox et al., 2009).
The reflection of consumer behavior is based on the consumer decisions moving around disposition, acquisition and consumption of time, services, ideas and goods linked to the human decision making on time-to-time basis. The scope of consumer behavior roams around entities that are two in number:
- The Organizational Customers
- The Personal Customers
Profit and non-profit businesses, institutions and government agencies are the one who fall in the category of organizational customers. Whereas goods and services used for fulfilling own needs and wants falls in the category of personal customers. The importance of consumer behavior and its implications can be capitalized upon if the producer understands the consumers. The biggest concern of learning consumer behavior is to know how product or service plays an important role in their lives to build a long lasting relationship. The researcher further explains that most of the time of the consumer is spent on shopping or engaging in activities, in the market place. He also defines that the amount of time spend in figuring out the products and services in which consumers show their interest were much more than the left over time that is spent with friends and watching ads (Rowe & Wilcox et al., 2009).
This phenomenon has a bigger impact on the daily lives of the consumers. For example the way consumers buy and utilize goods. However, the researcher shows concern for application towards decision making. There are two different aspects which are influencing the decision making process and these are Micro and Macro Perspective (Valocchi & Energy et al., 2008).
How a Person’s Values Link to the Consumer Behavior
The researcher of this paper further elaborates the connection between the values and emotions with the consumer behavior while experiencing consumption. There are two perspectives mentioned in this paper towards conceptual relationship. It is known fact that spending most of the time on consuming products has become a daily routine and need. It is very important to know what the consumer feels about consumption. Also, the consumer must have values that are obtained from consumption. More important is the connection of values and feelings towards consumption experience in the consumer behavior (Laverie & Kleine et al., 1993).
According to the researchers that explains the specific way of how a consumer feels, selects and respond to such activities accordingly and based on the values they give importance to it. Consumer’s behavior is connected with feelings and values both, and this impacts the customer consumption experience. The researcher have questions concerning consumers’ associated specific feelings with a specific kind of values towards consumption experience (Laverie & Kleine et al., 1993).
The study explains that the relation of consumption behavior with emotions and values is interrelated. The significance of the emotion is that it defines the behavior in conditions where others create attitude. Further to define emotions that are connected to the particular behavior of the consumer. This reflects a certain complex realm of phenomena as compared to attitudes that are being made. There are different kinds of emotions like positive, negative or a combination in valence. The greater comparison with the attitude are conflicting and complex emotions (Laverie & Kleine et al., 1993).
However when it comes to value, the researcher refers it to abstract and complex creation that offers continuous standards to the behaviors. The influence of values on the human behavior is because the behavior mode, in a particular way, is favored on other alternatives. When the values are explained in terms of consumer behavior they vie as the guide of behavior that is an evidence mentioned in sociology, organizational behavior and psychology (Laverie & Kleine et al., 1993).
Consumer’s behavior has a greater influence of values that are a powerful tool to some extent that plays a vital role in behavior of the customer. The major constructs like product attributes, product classifications, attitudes, degree of deliberating and lifestyle are all those contributions, which can be suppressed by values (Laverie & Kleine et al., 1993).
That is why it is considered that a specific value can fulfill a product consumption. For example people who want to have fast cars or love motor biking will prefer a particular product and activity. However on the other hand, airbag in a car or long walks in the country are the examples of those who prefer a security as most important aspect when considering any product and activity (Laverie & Kleine et al., 1993).
It is explained that values and behaviors have a connection and significance are there towards the value interaction with the different situations. The study of relevant values with consumption is that consumers are generalized and oriented with numerous activities. Researchers have mentioned numerous factors as values; these are enjoyment, fun, warm relationships with others, security, self-respect, sense of belonging and most important is a sense of accomplishment. Values can be compared and measured with lifestyles (Laverie & Kleine et al., 1993).
Values and emotions both have parallel relations that bring out numerous interesting aspects. Many researchers and authors agree on the particular study that values and emotions both have a significant role when it comes to addressing behavior. It is also mentioned that beliefs are the values and feelings express emotions when connecting to a particular behavior (Laverie & Kleine et al., 1993).
Further, it is explained that positive and negative emotions have an effective opposition of both that have a greater involvement of values and are tied to it. The result of emotions is expressed by values while accompanying consumption experience. It is also explained in the paper that intertwined in consumption are values and emotions. Although consumer behavior has a connection with emotions and values when we talk about consumption behavior (Laverie & Kleine et al., 1993).
Concept of Values to One’s Own Consumer Behavior.
According to the researches that explain about the basic values which are conformity value related to interaction and survival of the group. There are ten main values that are featured as the middle part of motivational goal. Achievement, power, hedonism, self-direction, stimulation, conformity, security, benevolence and tradition are the ten basic values (Laverie & Kleine et al., 1993).
The most important concept of value towards consumer behavior is opportunities to continue or expression to some value in the individual life dealing with numerous situations. Such as it is simple to pursue with power of values for wealthy peoples and those consumers who have self-direction to express their values more easily (Laverie & Kleine et al., 1993).
Different situations bring different constraints for consumers toward expressing or pursuing values. Like parents having dependent kids become a big issue to them as they have to minimize their pursuit of stimulation for getting rid of risky activities, so there are some values that they have to follow in their daily routine (Laverie & Kleine et al., 1993).
According to the researcher, it is hard to express universalism values for the people who have strong ethnocentric peers. Another point of view is that situations create the expression or pursuit of numerous values that might be less or more costly or rewarding (Laverie & Kleine et al., 1993).
Conclusion
This research paper clearly identifies that challenges for the company remain to determine what the consumer needs and behaviors are. Consumers’ wants and needs depend upon the services and products they are being offered, through which a marketer will understand the demand of a particular product and the value it enjoys in the eyes of the consumers. This is how the company professionals can determine about the consumers behaviors, what the consumer’s behavior represents and how interest can be generated in the consumers mind towards a specific product. For attracting the attention of the prospective and potential customers or consumers, you need to understand their needs, values, emotions and behavior. Understanding of these vitally important traits will help the producers to influence buying decisions by their consumers for a particular product or service. With the help of all such relevant information, marketers will have increased traffic in their stores and most importantly, a sizeable boost in the sales of their products and services.
Another important aspect of this study is the buying habits of consumers. For great success company’s professionals need to know the behavior of their consumers. Such as consumer’s zip codes will help in finding the location and informing them where they can find the company’s nearest outlet or store. Suggestions for the company are that to do a consumer survey and other related studies which will help them in understating the buyer’s needs for the purchase to know how they experience the product or service.
References
Goodwin, N., Nelson, J. A., Ackerman, F. & Weisskopf, T. (2008). Consumption and the consumer society. Retrieved december, 15 p. 2008.
Cho, S. (2001). Influence of consumer age and clothing type of salesperson on consumer satisfaction with salesperson’s performance.
Hall, A. (2005). Consumer behavior: capitalizing on consumer perceptions \& illusions.
Rowe, M., Wilcox, L. & Gadlin, H. (2009). Dealing with--or reporting--" unacceptable" behavior. Journal of the international ombudsman association, 2 (1).
Valocchi, M., Energy, G., Schurr, A., Juliano, J., Nelson, E. & Leader, I. (2008). Plugging in the consumer. World, 10 (4), p. 80.
Laverie, D. A., Kleine, R. E. & Kleine, S. S. (1993). Linking emotions and values in consumption experiences: an exploratory study. Advances in consumer research, 20 (1), pp. 70--75.
