Chapter Five
Consumer and Business
Buyer Behavior
Roadmap: Previewing the Concepts
1. Understand the consumer market and the
major factors that influence consumer buyer
behavior.
2. Identify and discuss the stages in the buyer
decision process.
3. Describe the adoption and diffusion process
for new products.
4. Define the business market and identify the
major factors that influence business buyer
behavior.
5. List and define the steps in the business
buying decision process.
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Case Study
Harley-Davidson – Devoted Consumers
Building Success
Measuring Success
 Offers good bikes,
upgraded showrooms
and sales tactics.
 Research has helped to
understand customers’
emotions and motivation.
 Consumer emotions,
motivations, and lifestyle
have been translated into
effective advertising.
 Currently has 23% of all
U.S. bike sales and 50% of
heavyweight segment.
 Demand above supply with
waiting lists up to 2 years.
 Sales doubled in the past
six years while earnings
have tripled.
 2005: 19th straight year of
record sales and income.
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Consumer Buying Behavior
 Refers to the buying behavior of people
who buy goods and services for
personal use.
 These people make up the consumer
market.
 The central question for marketers is:
– “How do consumers respond to various
marketing efforts the company might
use?”
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Model of Buying Behavior
 Marketing factors and other stimuli are
inputs into the “buyer’s black box.”
 Here, stimuli are evaluated in light of
the buyer decision process and the
buyer’s characteristics.
 Buyer responses influence choice of
the product, brand, vendor, as well as
the timing and amount of purchase.
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Culture
 Culture is the most basic cause of a
person's wants and behavior.
– Culture is learned from family, church,
school, peers, colleagues.
– Culture reflects basic values, perceptions,
wants, and behaviors.
– Cultural shifts create opportunities for new
products or may otherwise influence
consumer behavior.
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Consumer Buying Behavior
 Factors influencing consumer behavior:
– Cultural factors:
• Culture, subculture, social class
– Social factors:
• Reference groups, family, roles and status
– Personal factors:
• Age/life-cycle, occupation, economic situation,
lifestyle, personality and self-concept
– Psychological factors:
• Motivation, perception, learning, beliefs, and
attitudes
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Culture
 Subculture
– Groups of people with shared value
systems based on common life
experiences.
 Major Groups
– Hispanic Consumers
– African-American Consumers
– Asian-American Consumers
– Mature Consumers
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Social Class
 Society’s relatively permanent and
ordered divisions whose members
share similar values, interests, and
behaviors.
 Measured by a combination of:
occupation, income, education, wealth,
and other variables.
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Social Factors
 Groups:
– Membership, Reference (Opinion Leaders),
Aspirational
 Family:
– Most important consumer buying
organization
 Roles and Status:
– Role = Expected activities
– Status = Esteem given to role by society
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Personal Factors
 Age and Life-Cycle Stage
– People change the goods they buy over
their lifetimes.
 Occupation
– Occupation influences the purchase of
clothing and other goods.
 Economic Situation
– Some goods and services are especially
income-sensitive.
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Personal Factors
 Lifestyle:
– Pattern of living as expressed in
psychographics
• Activities
• Interests
• Opinions
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Personality & Self-Concept
 Personality refers to the unique
psychological characteristics that lead
to relatively consistent and lasting
responses to one’s own environment.
 Generally defined in terms of traits.
 Self-concept suggests that people’s
possessions contribute to and reflect
their identities.
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Motives and Needs
 A motive (or drive)
is a need that is
sufficiently pressing
to direct the person
to seek satisfaction.
 Maslow’s hierarchy
of needs explains
why people are
driven by needs at
particular times.
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 Maslow’s hierarchy
of needs implies
that lower level
needs must be
satisfied prior to
higher level needs.
–
–
–
–
–
Physiological needs
Safety needs
Social needs
Esteem needs
Self-Actualization
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Perception
 Process by which people select,
organize, and interpret information to
form a meaningful picture of the world.
– Selective attention
– Selective distortion
– Selective retention
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Learning
 A relatively permanent change in behavior
due to experience.
 Interplay of drives, stimuli, cues, responses,
and reinforcement.
 Strongly influenced by the consequences of
an individual’s behavior
– Behaviors with satisfying results tend to be
repeated.
– Behaviors with unsatisfying results tend not to be
repeated.
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Beliefs & Attitudes
 A belief is a descriptive thought that a
person holds about something.
 An attitude is a person’s consistently
favorable or unfavorable evaluations,
feelings, and tendencies toward an
object or idea.
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Buying Decision Process





Need recognition
Information search
Evaluation of alternatives
Purchase decision
Postpurchase behavior
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Sources of Information




Personal
Commercial
Public
Experiential
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Buying Decision Process
 Factors that influence purchase
decision:
– Attitudes of others
– Unexpected situational factors
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Buying Decision Process
 Consumer satisfaction is a function of
consumer expectations and perceived
product performance.
– Performance < Expectations ----- Disappointment
– Performance = Expectations ----- Satisfaction
– Performance > Expectations ----- Delight
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Buying Decision Process
 Cognitive dissonance: a buyer’s doubts
shortly after a purchase about whether
it was the right decision.
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Stages in the Adoption
Process
1. Awareness: Consumer becomes aware of the
2.
new product, but lacks information about it.
Interest: Consumer seeks information about new
product.
3. Evaluation: Consumer considers whether trying
4.
the new product makes sense.
Trial: Consumer tries new product on a small
scale to improve his or her estimate of its value.
5. Adoption: Consumer decides to make full and
regular use of the new product.
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Product Adopter Categories





Innovators
Early adopters
Early majority
Late majority
Laggards
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Product Characteristics That
Influence the Rate of Adoption
 Relative Advantage: Is the innovation
superior to existing products?
 Compatibility: Does the innovation fit the
values and experience of the target market?
 Complexity: Is the innovation difficult to
understand or use?
 Divisibility: Can the innovation be used on a
limited basis?
 Communicability: Can results be easily
observed or described to others?
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Business Markets &
Business Buyer Behavior
 The business market is vast and
involves far more dollars and items
than do consumer markets.
 Business buyer behavior refers to the
buying behavior of the organizations
that buy goods and services for use in
the production of other products and
services that are sold, rented, or
supplied to others.
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Business Markets
 Market Structure
and Demand:
– Contains far fewer
but larger buyers.
– Buyers are more
geographically
concentrated.
– Business demand
is derived from
consumer demand.
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 Nature of the Buying
Unit:
– Business purchases
involve more
decision
participants.
– Business buying
involves a more
professional
purchasing effort.
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Types of Decisions and the
Decision Process
 Business buyers usually face more
complex buying decisions.
 Business buying process tends to be
more formalized.
 Buyers and sellers are much more
dependent on each other.
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Types of Buying Situations
 Straight rebuy:
– Fairly routine purchase decision.
 Modified rebuy:
– Requires some research and modified
product specifications, prices, terms, or
suppliers.
 New task:
– Requires extensive research and
evaluation of products, suppliers, etc.
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Participants in the Business
Buying Process
 Buying center:
The decisionmaking unit of a
buying organization.
– Not fixed or formally
identified unit.
– Membership will vary
for different products
and buying tasks.
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 Buying center
members:
–
–
–
–
–
Users
Deciders
Influencers
Buyers
Gatekeepers
 Members can play
multiple roles.
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Influences on Business
Buyer Behavior




Environmental
Organizational
Interpersonal
Individual
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The Business Buying Process
1. Problem
recognition
2. General need
description
3. Product
specification
4. Supplier search
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5. Proposal
solicitation
6. Supplier selection
7. Order-routine
specification
8. Performance
review
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e-Procurement
 Advantages for buyers:
– Access to new suppliers
– Lowers purchasing costs
– Hastens order processing and delivery
 Advantages for vendors:
– Share information with customers
– Sell products and services
– Provide customer support services
– Maintain ongoing customer relationships
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e-Procurement
 Key benefits:
– Reduces costs to buyers and sellers, and
makes for more efficient purchasing.
– Reduces the time between order and
delivery.
– Frees purchasing staff to focus on more
strategic issues.
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Rest Stop: Reviewing the Concepts
1. Understand the consumer market and the
major factors that influence consumer buyer
behavior.
2. Identify and discuss the stages in the buyer
decision process.
3. Describe the adoption and diffusion process
for new products.
4. Define the business market and identify the
major factors that influence business buyer
behavior.
5. List and define the steps in the business
buying decision process.
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5-35