Consumer Decision Making Model

Question: Discuss about the Consumer Decision Making Model. Answer: Introduction: The problem recognition is the most important and first step in buying process. If there arises no problem, then no purchase will take place. The problem recognition is the stage when consumers actual situation differs from ideal and desired situation (Purnawirawan et al., 2012). The recognition of problem can be identified through various ways. Internal stimuli can be defined as physiological need of the individual because of hunger or thirst which is exactly opposite to External stimuli. An external stimulus arises because of exposure to advertisement. Internal stimuli can be generated in the buyers mind from past experiences and the buyer try to keep him motivated (Theconsumerfactor, 2016). External stimuli can be generated in the mind of buyer by watching a TV commercial of vacation in India. From overseas holiday the functional need of the buyer can be satisfied. Functional need generally relates with the feature or specific functions which is the answer to the functional statement. By booking tickets online of travelling, the buyer will respond to the need of travelling without booking tickets physically. Social need is a need which comes from willingness to integrate and create a sense of belongingness in the social environment (Li et al., 2010). From overseas holiday the buyer will be able to upload new pictures of fascinating places on social media sites. Need for a change has its origin developed from the desires of change in the mind of consumer. This result in the buying of overseas holiday for fulfilment of need to change occurred in the mind of consumer. A person has many needs at a given period of time, some of them are arising out of hunger, thirst and discomfort which are considered as biological and the others are psychological which are arouse out of tensions such as recognition, esteem needs or belongingness needs. A motivation is a factor which should be arose to the sufficient level. Maslow has developed hierarchy needs stating arrangements of needs on the basis of priority (Chaudhary and Gupta, 2012). Maslow stated that for continuing the next step in the hierarchy of need, it is necessary to satisfy the underlying need. After satisfaction of underlying need, then only a person can move for the satisfaction of another need. These needs are generally prioritized on various aspects. For instance, if a person has less finance available in hand, then he will book hotel with basic amenities rather than 5 star hotels. There are various determinants and influential factor which affects the travel decision making in the mind of buyer (Purnawirawan et al., 2012). Maslows five level hierarchy need theory has been widely accepted and used to define the consumer buying behaviour. Satisfaction of physiological and safety needs- Buyer will get physiological and safety need satisfaction if the tourist place will provide high quality rooms with basic amenities and food. Moreover, if the place is safe then it will encourage the buyer to plan a trip there. If the rooms are provided with Wi-Fi facilities, clean washrooms then the customer will be motivated to buy the vacation over that place. Satisfaction of belongingness - Belongings need of a buyer will be satisfied if that tourist place communicates a friendly and welcoming atmosphere for travellers. A destination can satisfy these needs through various numbers of tourists from different places (Reisinger and Dimanche, 2010). This will lead to creation of community and creates satisfaction in the mind of buyer. Satisfaction of self esteem- These needs of self esteem of buyer of overseas tickets can be satisfied through sharing the information of trip with other people, after returning from trip. Satisfaction of self actualization- Buyer can attain self actualization through improvement in his own skills and interests up to a professional level in tourism industry. Self actualization can also be attained by buyer for the desire to do good for other people. Daily working arouses the need for overseas holiday for relaxation. Internal stimuli for me are the hunger for travelling and external stimuli is the advertisement about vacations in India which I have seen over social media. The travelling in India are going to satisfy my psychological, safety, social, esteem and self actualization needs. The expectation from travelling is to get relaxed from work overload. For this I choose India for vacations, as the environment is very friendly. In context of Maslow theory of motivation a buyer has different needs which he wants to satisfy and for the satisfaction of these different needs he gets motivated to work towards fulfilment of these needs. From Maslow hierarchy of theory conclusion can be drawn that from overseas travelling, a buyer will fulfil the need of self actualization through acquiring of new knowledge and helps in drawing learning of various culture (Smallman and Moore, 2010). It can be concluded that all the travellers cannot get the level of self actualization. Information Search This is the second stage defines that how consumers drive. In this step, information search is started from the consumers memory. Information search by the internal sources is enough to purchase the item (Horner and Swarbrooke, 2016). But, from using the external sources, the consumer can assess the more information. There are several modes of using external sources such as personal sources, commercial sources, and public sources. The consumer can assess the information by personal sources included the family, friends, co-workers. Further, commercial sources included the advertising, sales personnel, and dealers. Public sources included the hotel, restaurant review, and consumer rating organizations (Demir et al., 2014). Therefore, the consumer can gain information and knowledge about the available product and services and their features to gather the information from the different sources. There are mainly two sources for searching the information about the overseas holiday in India are as follow: Internal sources In this sources, consumers recall from their past experiences (i.e. good or bad) about the particular Holiday Packages. Internal information is already available in the memory of consumer. Information comes from the previous experiences and his opinion about the product and services. But, this type of information is only sufficient to purchase the everyday products and services because consumer knows about the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) and Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) (Gssling et al., 2012). When a consumer purchases the major item with stronger involvement, then consumer does not want enough information, they must need to turn to another external source. External sources Through this source, buyer receiving the feedback from his friends and family, analysis marketing advertisements on TV, newspaper, and radio, viewing public sources of information like web site reviews, blogs, and magazines or taking the personal experience and testing the product and services (Gardiner et al., 2013). Consumer gained and obtained information about the product and services with the friends and family, review from the other consumers and from the press. Further, official sources like advertising and sellers speech are also another source of gaining external information (Foxall, 2014). During the buying decision process, the consumer will pay more attention to external sources like advertising, commercial brochures rather than paying attention to the internal sources. Moreover, there is the emerging trend of online search that can be used by the consumer via smartphone, tablet device or Pc for dominating the starting place. When buyers identify their need then, they search for information regarding how to satisfy it. Information can search by recalling from memory as the consumer has satisfied from the similar need in the past. Further, they can consult with other people like a family member and their friends (Garcia et al., 2015). Another way of searching information that can use by the buyer is sales people, advertisement, and packaging. The consumer also assesses the information through the media publicity and report about the destination place. They also gained information by experiencing the Overseas Holiday. Information search entails the listing choices that will solve the problem at hand and also determine the distinctiveness of each. As the risk increases, the amount of required information also increases (Solomon et al., 2012). Once the information search is accomplished by the buyer, they determined whether the shortage or unfulfilled needs can be achieved by the alternatives. In the searching phase, buyer research about the products or services which satisfy his needs or wants. Further, search engines have become the key research tool for searching the Overseas Holiday. Since, it is an instant and easy way to find out about the desire overseas holiday of the consumers. There is another source to find the information is actually human beings such as friends and family (Robinson et al., 2011). Since they have different information hence they can offer the recommendation to the buyer. Therefore, the consumer can prefer the actual human beings rather than search engine to search the information (Chon et al., 2012). If Consumer has life experience in the past, then they will make the appropriate purchase decisions. Because consumer aware about that how to solve the problem. Consumer search more or less information based on the complexities of choices but, the consumer also consider the level of involvement. For example, buying overseas holiday needs little information because there is high involvement of consumer (East et al., 2013). Afterward, the consumer will look information for making the opinion to guide his choices. I have actual search information from the external sources like selects the online channel to gain information about the overseas holiday in India. Through this channel, I get the information about the culture, beliefs and ethics of the India. In this channel, there are lots of information has given about the India. Perception Perception is the important concept that used to understand the consumer buying behaviour in relation to the decision-making process. It is defined as the procedure by which consumer receives, selects, organizes and interprets the information into the meaningful picture. For conducting the research, the consumer gets the view from online shopping mode (Bhasin, 2016). In this mode, consumer assesses different things about the overseas holiday like check price of holiday package and reading views of another consumer. From this research, the consumer obtains the quality information about the country and gets the competitive price list for an overseas holiday. Evaluation of alternatives The next step is the analysis and evaluation of different options present in the market. Evaluation may result from market attitude, product research and personal experiences. In the evaluation stage customer or buyer purchase the product or service after providing rank to brands. Mostly, the consumer decision making process involves purchasing of well known brand in the market but this decision process is influenced by two factors mainly. The first factor which influences the decision of purchase is the attitude of other people including family members (Demir et al., 2014). The second factor is various situational factors arise at the time of purchase decision like sudden increase in price of air ticket. The evaluation stage in travel overseas decision making process involves activities carried out prior to incorporation, need recognition stage and information search stage. Travelling to the destination includes range of experiences and the level of services depending on the transport mode (Schiffman et al., 2013). Travel decision making also involves evaluation of the mode of transport whether luxury train travel in India or travel through cab. There are various variables which are considered by buyer at the time of evaluation in decision making process and they are demographic, psychographic and behavioural factors. So, those destinations with appropriate product, reasonable price with the proper communication of above mentioned attributes will be chosen by buyer. Affective factors are the customer feeling towards the brand because of their awareness. Affective factors can be culture diversification, beautiful monuments and luxurious hotels. Positive affective association about destination induces the buyer to visit and negative affective association factors make the buyer to not visit to that place. In evaluation stage buyer evaluates his preference on the basis of destination awareness and affective associations, in which the buyer provides rankings to alternative destinations on the basis of most liked to least liked (Foxall, 2014). Destination choice is influenced by situational variables and intention to visit. Consideration set, Inert set, unavailable or aware set and inept set influences the decision making process at the time of evaluation of alternatives. The consideration set is the subset of brand which consumer is aware of and customer thinks that purchasing of that particular brand will satisfy his needs. The inert set are set of those travel places which are known to buyer but having an attitude of neither negative or positive towards them. The reason behind having neither positive nor negative attitude is unavailability of proper information for effective evaluation. The unavailable/ aware set are those tourist places about which buyer have full knowledge and awareness but is not able to purchase because of constraints like financial, demographic or legal(Chon et al., 2012). The inept set is the set where the buyer knows all about tourist places and have perfect knowledge but possess a negative feedback because of past experience or availability of negative information. Marketing mix variables also affect the consumer buying decision making process. Marketing mix model includes variables like process, people and physical evidence. A businessman travelling plans have different expectations from a backpacker studying in college. The production outcome is central to customers evaluation rather than the process (Garcia et al., 2015). The customer evaluation of travelling overseas includes telephone contact at the time of reservation, manner in which hotel greets them at the time of check in, and flight servicing. The marketing variables and traveller variables is going to analyse the consumer consideration set. Marketing variables include product, people, process and physical evidence. Travellers variable includes all the characteristics of individual travellers which induce their purchase behaviour of travelling overseas. Travellers variables include demographic, psychographic and behavioural characteristics (Chand, 2015). Different destinations will be attractive to different travellers on the basis of marketing variables and other factors. Personal factor also plays a very important role in evaluation of alternatives at the time of decision making process. Family life cycle states that a young unmarried person can spend more on travelling in comparison to married person because of less financial burden. Economic situation of an individual plays a very important role. Making trip overseas for an individual is only possible if he has sufficient funds. Persons self image also plays an important role in evaluation (Bhasin, 2016). An extrovert person chooses the travel destination which involves interaction and introvert person chooses destination which gives peace to his mind. I choose to plan a trip in India from other alternatives available. Other alternatives were travelling in China or travelling to Egypt. Budget of $5,000 will also suitable for travelling to India. Mainly there are two attributes which induced me to plan a trip in India. Firstly, my family members and friends as they already went India in past and gave me a positive feedback. Secondly, situational factor induces me because the trip to India is available at low cost with all the amenities at make my trip. Beliefs and attitudes of my family towards India also play an important role in decision making process. I am an intellectual kind of person and want to explore new things. This was the personal characteristic which influences my decision to plan trip to India because of presence of various culture over there. Choice/Purchase This is the fourth stage where consumer takes purchase decision. The final decision made by the consumer is based on the two factors such as unfavourable feedbacks from other users and the level of motivation to accept the opinion. For example, after the three stages, the consumer chooses to buy overseas holiday. Because his friends give him positive feedback hence, they buy the overseas holiday. In this stage, consumer evaluates various overseas holiday package and purchase the overseas holiday that offers maximum benefits or satisfaction (Flekel, 2015). Further, a consumer selects most attractive overseas holiday that offers more benefits like the price of selected overseas holiday are minimum than the other overseas holiday. Moreover, consumer compares on the basis of superiority or inferiority of the overseas holiday. There are three factors that transform buying intention to an actual purchase decision. These are attitude, unanticipated situational factors and perception. The first factor is the attitude of other that has an impact on the purchase decision of buyer. This factor depends on the degree of the favourable attitude towards the preference of overseas holiday and degree of compliance of other consumer choices. Moreover, purchase decision may modify due to unanticipated situational factors like price increases, job failure, family income, medical expenses, and non-availability of the desired overseas holiday package. Consumers perceived risk depends on the price, quality ambiguity, penetration of finest product, and his confidence (The consumer factor, 2016). Along with this, there are different decisions made by the consumer to purchase the overseas holiday like the brand decision, retailer decision, quantity decision, timing decision, and payment decision. I have purchased overseas holiday package for India through the make my trip that is online mode. I have selected this channel because this provides high quality services in my budget that was $5,000. Further, this channel provides several services to me like cab facility, hotel, and food facility and other accommodation facility with the safety. Integration In this stage, consumer buying behaviour is based on the integration process. Through this process, consumer evaluates the different attitude, perception, quality, features and competing offer (Seabra, et al., 2013). In this stage, the consumer has mixture of competing offer in his mind to take the final decision. Post purchase evaluation/behaviour After the purchase of goods and services, the process has not completed. Because, it can reduces the revenue and the customer loyalty. After a purchase, it is expected that whether the consumer is satisfied with his decision or not. Moreover, if a purchaser thinks that they take the incorrect decision then they will return the goods and services. This can be declined to recognize the sources of conflict, and to offer the exchange that is simple and uncomplicated (Chand, 2015). Furthermore, if the customer is satisfied with his purchase decision, then they will think about the future purchase. Because sending follow-up review and emails show gratitude towards the consumer to make the purchase. 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