Buyer Behavior
With over 6.3 billion people, the world is a marketing oyster (Armstrong & Kotler, 2005). The trouble or the task that most marketers face is identifying how to sell their product to those people. There are many ways to sell a product, but identifying the buying behavior of the target market and catering to those behaviors is integral in today's complex society. Consumer buyer behavior is defined as the buying behavior of final consumers ? individuals and households who buy goods and services for personal consumption (Armstrong & Kotler, 2005).
Not only must the behavior be identified, the consumer must be enticed to buy the product. The product, price, place and promotion or the Marketing Mix are very important aspect of creating desire, but the buyer's environment will be the deciding factor in their buying behavior (Armstrong & Kotler, 2005). Why is a buyer's environment so important in their decision to buy a product or not? Because, environmental factors such as culture, social, personal and psychological factors are not areas that anyone can control and they will typically surface as a preference with no other explanation. That is why it is very important to take these factors into consideration when marketing a product.
Recently, a consumer survey was conducted on two individuals, A and B, who purchased SUV's. The purpose of this survey was to identify the process that each consumer went through during the Buyer Decision Process. Consumer A is a 56 year old working class married woman. She has no children living with her and works 40 hours a week at a location eight miles from her home. Consumer B is a 29 year old upper middle class married homemaker. She has two children ages five and one living at home.
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