Consumer Buying Behavior: Definition, Types, Process, and Influencing Factors

What is Consumer Buying Behavior?

Any action taken by a buyer before making the purchase of the product or service is known as consumer buying behavior. It is also called a consumer buying decision.

Consumers buy products mainly for consumption purposes. It is obvious that often we take many actions like asking friends, searching for information on the internet, and watching videos about the product before buying it.

All these actions and activities are included in our buying behavior. Understanding consumers buying patterns is fruitful for marketing firms in many ways – it enables them to design the right marketing strategies, increase customer satisfaction, better gain customer confidence, and so on.

Types of Consumer Buying Behavior

Consumers purchase the products in three ways. They are:

Routine Purchase

In routine purchases, consumers purchase products for daily use. That may include the purchase of milk, vegetables, food, and other grocery items that are required for everyday use.

Consumers are familiar with such products, they require little time to purchase, and their involvement is also low.

Also Read: What is Core Product?

Limited Purchase

Consumers are involved in limited purchase decisions occasionally. In this purchase, they normally think twice before purchasing the products. They gather some information and invest some to know more about the product.

Examples of limited purchases may include when people buy products on different occasions like weddings, New Year, birthday parties, and anniversaries.

Extensive Purchase

In extensive purchases, there is a high level of involvement of people in the purchasing decision. This includes buying expensive cars, houses, businesses, and other expensive products.

Usually, consumers do not buy such expensive products and are often unfamiliar with them. Thus they require to know more about the pros and cons of the products before making the buying decision.

Consumer Buying Process

It includes a series of steps consumers used to take while buying products for them. Usually, there is no strict rule that consumers must follow the following steps to purchase products. However, a rational consumer prefers to go through these five steps.

Need Recognition

In the first step, a consumer must realize a need for the product. He should realize why they need the product. The reason may be that he has to buy an outfit for his wedding.

The reason to buy the product may be anything. For example, in the spring season, we usually purchase cotton clothes while in the winter we prefer jackets that make us warmer.

Search For Information

After identifying the need for the product, a rational consumer then goes searching for related information related to his product. He may ask his friends, family, and colleagues about the best suit shop in the market.

He may search for information on the internet. For the best, he should gather information about the different suit sellers so that he can compare them and choose the right one for him.

Alternative Evaluation

This includes the activities the customer should do to analyze the information he collected about the different suit sellers. Here, consumers usually compare sellers in terms of product quality, attractive and unique features, prices, and convenience of buying from them.

Purchase Decision

Read Also: Decision-Making Process

After evaluating the different sellers, in this step, consumers purchase the products. They usually buy from a seller who provides better quality at a reasonable price and who makes their shopping convenient.

Post Purchase Decision

This includes the activities consumers do after using the product. Here, they evaluate whether or not the product they used met their expectations. If they are satisfied, may refer to someone, and are not they have to go to find another seller and product.

Factors Influencing Consumer Buying Behavior

Normally, when we have money in our pocket or wallet we confidently go to the market and shop for whatever we want. But the condition is the opposite, we hesitate to ask sellers to check the products.

What happened here is that our economic condition has influenced our buying behavior. As such, a variety of factors influence the consumer purchasing decision. Some most common are mentioned below:

Economic Factors

The consumer’s economic situation or amount of income has a significant impact on his purchasing habits. Consumers may have greater purchasing power and make more purchases if their income is higher.

Family income has an impact on a consumer’s purchasing decisions also.

Socio-Cultural Factors

Man is a social creature. Peers, family, neighbors, and friends have a significant impact on his behavior. The influence these individuals have can often determine whether a product succeeds or fails in the market.

The lifestyles and purchasing habits of these groups’ participants are significantly influenced. The influence of society or people tends to be strongest when the product is visible to others whom the buyer respects.

Psychological Factors

Consumers buying choice is also influenced by psychological factors that include motivation, perception, personality, learning, personal beliefs, and attitudes.

Demographic Factors

Consumer purchasing behavior is influenced by a variety of demographic factors, including age distribution, sex groups, family size, occupation, education, marital status, and religion.

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