Question:
Discuss About The Influencing Consumer Purchase Decisions?
The aim of the assignment is to understand the consumer decision process and key factors influencing consumer purchase decisions. The paper takes into account laptops to study the customer purchase decision making process. The assignment opens with description of laptop as product. It divides the total product of laptop into core, actual and augmented products. The next part deals with analysis of laptop as a medium high involvement product. The next section deals with target market profile of laptops analysing it into demographic, business and psychgraphic factors. The last section deals with one factor which goes into making customer purchase decision. The main sources of data are the secondary sources like articles, journals, books and official websites of laptop manufacturing companies. The limitation while preparing the paper was that of time and budget.
Laptop is a speciality product for consumers are ready to pay more prices. Laptop is a specialised product, which is manufactured by multinational information and communication companies like Del and HP. It comes with special specification in terms of product features like RAM and memory. Laptops are available in the market in variety of prices; some are low-priced while others are extremely expensive. The laptop as a product can be divided into three main parts, the core product, the actual product and the augmented product (Harman et al. 2014). The core product consist of the convenience a laptop creates to a user like the user can carry it anywhere and use it to do his official work as per convenience. The actual product consists of the physical hardware and software which the user can use to wok. The augmented product of the laptop include the brand value which the consumers buy along with the laptop. The satisfaction which the consumers purchase by buying a laptop also form a part of augmented product(Byrd et al. 2016).
A laptop is a high involvement product which buyers buy with lot of involvement. It is an expensive product, which buyers buy to satisfy specific needs like working in office, sending mails and do online shopping. As a result the consumers put a lot of emphasis on the specifications of the laptops like memory, hardware and power to support accessories like key board. The laptops show that preferences, personality and lifestyle of the users. The product shows the status and purchase power of the buyers. These features reveal a laptop is a medium high involvement product, which shows high involvement of the buyers(Zhang, 2016).
Laptop is a medium-high involvement product because consumers are ready to high price to purchase the product. It is a specialised product which consumers purchase to serve specific needs like doing official work, sending and receiving mails and giving presentations. The following analysis would elaborately explain the reason why laptop is a medium-high involvement product:
The medium-high involvement products are high priced products which make consumers pay a lot of attention while purchasing them. A laptop is very expensive but not as expensive as other high involvement goods like cars and buildings. The buyers pay a lot of attention on the features and specification while buying laptops but pay less involvement while buying second hand laptops. This analysis of the features of the laptop shows that it is a medium-high involvement product(Palla, Tsiotsou & Zotos, 2016).
A very significant characteristic of medium-high involvement products is the consumers emphasise on the technical features of these products. The consumers while buying laptops pay a lot of emphasis on the technical features of them. The consumers who are technically strong buy laptops to serve their needs like doing official work. The manufacturers of the laptops provide manuals along with them to help financial buyers get acquainted with the features of the laptops. Moreover the sales people demonstrate the basic features of the laptop to the consumers while selling them. The consumers spend a lot time to know the technical features of the high-involvement products. This analysis shows that laptops are medium-high involvement products.
One of the very important features of medium high involvement product is that there exists a major difference between products by different product manufacturers. Several multinational companies like HP, HCL and Apple manufacture laptops. The laptops by these different manufacturers show a lot of different in features and attributes. This difference in features and attributes differentiate laptops manufactured by one company from the other. The customers while buying laptops pay a great attention to the manufacturers who manufactures the laptops. It can also be pointed out that consumers have preferences for specific brands of laptops and remain loyal to the companies. This analysis shows that laptop is a medium-high involvement product.
The consumers of medium-high involvement product are very specific about the products they buy and consume. They are ready to pay extra price to buy the brands of products they prefer consuming. The consumers of laptops are very specific about the brands of laptops they buy and consume. They consumers intentionally pay more to buy a specific brand of laptops because that projects their social status. Many consumers view laptops as status symbols and prefer buying expensive laptops to show their social status. The buying decision of the consumers while purchasing luxurious products like laptops is dominated by money power. This explanation shows that laptop is a medium high involvement product.
The consumers evaluate the risk factors like actual quality and utilities of medium-involvement products while purchasing them. They consider whether the products are worth the prices. They also consider whether the products are capable of having negative impacts on their health while consuming them. For example, while buying laptops buyers consider the impacts of the strong radiations emitted from the screens of the laptops. They even try to minimize or avoid the negative impacts medium-high involvement products. Users install additional screens laptops which filter the harmful radiations to protect their eyes. This shows that laptops are medium high-involvement products.
The above study of the characteristics of medium-involvement products show that the products show specific characteristics, as they are expensive and command brand loyalty. It can be stated that laptop is a product, which satisfies all these characteristics of high involvement products. This explains that the purchase of laptops is a medium-high involvement
The target market profile for laptops can be divided demographically on the variables like age, gender, occupation, social class, marital status and educational attainment. As far as demand for laptops are concerned, the people using laptops are mostly young and middle aged. The product finds equal acceptances among male and female customers alike. As far as segmentation of customer profile of laptops on the basis of occupation is concerned, laptops are more in demand by the working people. The target customer profile for laptops are mostly educated people. The social class using laptops consist of rich upper class people who can afford to buy and use laptops. Laptop is a medium high involvement product which requires technical knowledge and knowhow for users to use them. Hence the product is more in use by the rich upper class consumers who use it to do their office work. It can also be pointed out that laptops are in use in both homes and offices alike. The laptops are more used in cities compared to the rural areas. Thus it can be inferred from the discussion that laptops are used by educated, rich upper class customers who use them to do their office.
The variables of behavioural segmentation of customer profile of laptop are purchase occasion, benefit sought, user status, usage rate, loyalty status, buyer readiness, attitude to product and adopter status. The purchase occasion refers to the occasion which make the purchasers buy laptops. Most of the buyers of laptop may purchase for regular use while others buy laptops to gift them on special occasions. The customer prtofile of laptop can also be grouped on the basis of benefits sought. Laptop is a high involvement product which the buyers buy to serve specific purposes like sending mails, doing their office work and so on. The buyers of the laptop may seek various types of facilities like carrying it around as per convenience. The user status for laptops can be the users who are using the laptop for the first time and the ones who use laptops on regular basis. The customer profile on the basis of usage can be divided into three groups. The first group consists of users who use laptops on heavy basis while the second group uses laptops only for work. The third group consists of users who use laptops on moderate basis occasionally. The customers can be divided into loyal users, disloyal users and users who have switched over to the competitor products. The buyers can be divided into three categories on the grounds of readiness to buy the products. The first set of buyers are aware about the usage of the laptops while the second set of consumers are ready to buy laptops. The third set of consumers are not aware and willing to buy the product. The customer target market profile can be divided into enthusiast, indifferent, hostile, price conscious and quality conscious on the basis their attitude towards laptops. Laptops are high inovolvement products and the buyers are enthusiastic about purchasing them. The people who buy laptops are normally concerned about the quality and brand values of laptops. They are specialised products which has quality conscious educated and rich customers as the target customer segments. The customers of laptops can be divided into early adopters and late adapters on the grounds of adopter status.
Psychographical profiling of the customer base of laptops shows that educated upper-class customers use the product. The customers who use laptops are rich people who have the economic capability of buying expensive laptops. The customer profile using the laptops consist of customers who primarily use it for works. There are also customers who use laptops for leisure and other purposes. It can also be stated that laptops are primarily used by people who like using electronic items to do their work.
Each and every business organization has some internal as well as external environmental forces which impacts its growth and progress. At times, it becomes uncontrollable by the business owners and their management team. These forces can be anything, such as, customers, creditors, competitors, government, socio cultural organization, national as well as international organizations, political influence and few others. A business organization has some general and specific forces. General forces affect a firm indirectly and specific forces are the ones which affect an enterprise on a daily basis. Uncertainties arise when the future of any organization is too unpredictable and the changes are too frequent (Sekaran, & Bougie, 2016).
The internal forces have a direct impact on the business organizations. The influences generally come from the consumers’ lifestyle and the way they think, that is, their personal thoughts, feelings, self concepts, attitudes, memory and motivation. These can also be regarded as the psychological influences, that is, the influence on the consumers’ purchasing behavior or their decision making process (Wheelen & Hunger, 2017). It depicts the way through which customers interact with others. The most influential internal force which affects the purchasing behavior of the consumers is their personal needs or motives and attitudes. The consumers’ needs can be referred to as the lack of anything or difference between their actual or desired state (Davies, Lee & Ahonkhai, 2012). Motive can be defined as a customer’s inner state which encourages him/her to satisfy the specific need. For example, if an individual is hungry, it defines his/her actual state, but when he/she has a strong wish of being fed well then that is his/her desired state. Motive is the inner state of an individual which encourages him/her to satisfy the specific needs or desires. The need of the individual can motivate him/her discover some great restaurant in order to satisfy his/her desires (Solomon, 2014).
All the needs of the customers are nearly impossible to define. It is important to identify their specific demands and desires, which influences their purchasing decisions. Therefore, a thorough understanding of the needs is very crucial to direct the customers towards their purchasing decisions. A customer may buy a laptop only after deciding whether they need it or not (Wilson et al., 2012). There are different needs of a consumer, be it basic or psychological. For example, a college student needs to submit his/her assignment before deadline, otherwise his grades will fall. Therefore, he/she needs portability to work in home and at the college as well. Therefore, at this point, he/she recognized his/her problem which is to be solved only by buying a laptop (East et al., 2016).
After recognizing the solution to the problem of the consumer, he/she now needs to do a background research about the brands of the products available in the market, which can satisfy his basic requirements. He/she would gather the available information about the brands with higher specification, that is, HP, Mac, Dell and others. Evaluation of products on the basis of its performance, warranty, service, price, high battery life, durability, quality and others, has direct influence on their buying process. After evaluating all the above factors, the college student will make his/her final choice of buying the product (Babin & Zikmund, 2015).
Moreover, the consumers’ attitude influences their buying behavior. It defines the way an individual thinks or feels about some particular brand or product. Once a buyer’s attitude is fixed, it becomes very difficult to change his/her perception about that particular product. It can be negative as well as positive (Farzana, 2012). It informs the marketers about the consumers and how are they established overall in the market place. Identification of such attitude can help the marketers know about the consumers’ minds and perceptions. It becomes essential that the marketers design their product’s advertisements appropriately without hurting anybody’s feelings. Once the product has negative impact on the consumers’ minds, they may end buying it (Kozar & Hiller Connell, 2013).
For example, the college student’s attitude will change if the marketers advertise the laptop brand negatively. It will create a bad impression on the student’s mind and he/she may not buy that product. Moreover, while analyzing the post purchasing attitude, it can be stated that if the student is dissatisfied after buying the laptop his/her perception about the brand will change. He/she will then persuade his/her friends to stop buying that particular laptop brand, and as a result, the product will lose its brand value (Bian & Forsythe, 2012).
Conclusion:
It can be concluded from this assignment that laptops are medium- high involvement products because they are priced high so that the customers become careful when making such purchases. The findings show that only the technically potential customers can afford to buy laptops to serve their personal or professional purposes. The target groups of the laptop companies are based on the gender, age, occupation, marital status, social class and educational qualification. The preference scale is more tilted on the working customers’ side than others. The user manuals that are provided along with the laptops are beneficial for the customers as they can get ready and instant help. There are different features and attributes which make a laptop different from the other. There are customers who make up their mind which brand to purchase and do not deviate from their decision. This shows their loyalty and dedication towards the specific company. Sometimes, they even become ready to offer extra money for their chosen product. The reason behind doing this is that they like to portray their social strata. At the same time, they even raise questions while purchasing the laptops that if the price is worth the product. The consumers’ buying behavior is not only limited to purchasing the laptop but also the different accessories associated with it such as, screen cover, headphone etc. The research on the topic derives the conclusion that laptop is a medium- high involvement product because medium involvement products showcase certain characteristic features like high cost and brand value.
Laptops are medium-high involvement products consumers purchase to serve their professional and personal purposes. The following recommendations can be made to the laptop making companies in the light of the above discussion:
References:
Babin, B. J., & Zikmund, W. G. (2015). Exploring marketing research. Cengage Learning.
Bian, Q., & Forsythe, S. (2012). Purchase intention for luxury brands: A cross cultural comparison. Journal of Business Research, 65(10), 1443-1451.
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Farzana, W. (2012). Consumers’ psychology Factors Association with Brand Equity of High-Involvement Product: Case of Laptop. World, 2(5).
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Sekaran, U., & Bougie, R. (2016). Research methods for business: A skill building approach. John Wiley & Sons.
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