Consumer Behaviour Process

Essay by MizuhimeUniversity, Bachelor'sB, June 2007

download word file, 14 pages 3.0

IntroductionIn our everyday lives, we are faced with problems in which decisions need to be made to solve them. Generally, we tackle decision-making based on internal influences such as past experiences, or external influences such as marketing promotions or family pressures and so on. In fact, there are millions of decisions we are and are going to make in our entire lives. Organizations and companies know this all too well, which explains why they want to know how they could include themselves as one of our choices when we make our decisions.

Consumer behavior is the study of individuals, groups or organizations and the activities they undertake when obtaining, consuming and disposing of products, services, experiences, or ideas to satisfy needs, and the impacts that these processes have on the consumer and society. It is a subcategory of marketing that blends elements from psychology, sociology, sociopsychology, anthropology and economics. It attempts to understand the buyer decision making process, both individually and in groups.

It studies the characteristics of individual consumers such as demographics, psychographics, and behavioural variables in an attempt to understand people's needs and wants. It also seeks to assess influences on the consumer from groups such as family, friends, reference groups, and society in general.

In the fast changing society today, having a roadmap of how consumers make purchase decisions is a much more reliable then having a vague set of directions. The Consumer Decision Process (CDP) model is therefore derived to guide marketers and managers on using the appropriate product mix, communication and sales strategies in an endeavor to understand the minds of modern consumers and their buying behaviors.

Q1. What is the Consumer Decision Process?The Consumer Decision Process model features seven major stages of decision making that consumers go through when making a purchase. The model...