Research in Marketing

Literature Review

According to Perner (2008), consumer behaviour refers to the process of consumers purchasing goods or services, tangible or intangible as per their needs and requirements. Over the years there has been a significant rise in the power that is yielded by the consumers and this has shown its relevance in performance in various economies across the globe. The modern consumer takes time out to make decisions on their purchases and they do so with a lot of thought and care. All this signifies the fact the consumer behaviour is indeed a process in itself that encompasses sub processes such as gathering of information related to buying, regarding the products and the prices, selection of the required product based on the information, its buying and the ultimate consumption ( Hansen et al., 2004) . Therefore is not just a sheer concept of buying products but it has changed to being a multi faceted complex procedure. The internal factors that are responsible for changing consumer patterns are lifestyles of consumers, demographics of different relevant areas, social conditions and situations and cultural factors. The external factors that are the other motors of consumer behaviour are economic conditions and the condition and the stability of the economy, advertising and promotional activities on the part of the companies and customer service qualities. Both are factors are not mutually exclusive, they depend on one other and affect one another to influence the decision making process of the consumers.

The buying behaviour of consumers can be basically divided into four different types. This categorisation is made depending on the rate of occurrence, the emotional factor of the consumers, the difficulty in the process of making sound decisions and the inevitable risk that is associated with the whole process. All these factors lead to categorisation of consumer buying pattern into four main types which are programmed behaviour, limited decision making buying behaviour, impulsive purchasing and high decision making behaviour (Arnould et al., 2002). Purchasing that happens on a daily basis and that happens regularly and consistently is termed as programmed behaviour. It is a habitual process and it is not greatly affected by the crisis because it usually involves very low key items like newspapers, travel tickets and snacks. In programmed behaviour there is always very little research that goes on behind the buying pattern (Arnould et al., 2002). There is no process of decision making in this case and the process is pretty simple and straight forward. When there is low but definite decision making involved in purchasing it is known as limited decision making buying behaviour. However, the amount of information that is involved in such consumer is very low and not mightily significant. The best example for this would a consumer shopping for buying clothes where information on the products are available quite easily like the quality and the price of the product and it is not time consuming from the buyer side as well.

Foxall and Goldsmith (1994) pointed out other buying behaviour that involves a lot of research on the products and services and requires some amount of sound decision making. This category is called as the extensive decision making buying behaviour. The consumer in this case requires a lot of time to think about the products and services offered and also have access to a lot of information regarding the same. This behaviour is often a direct result of sudden unpredictable buying of products that has a lot of risks associated with it such as economic as well as psychological risks (Peter and Olson, 2007). According to Wells and Prensky (1997), when there is absolutely no planning before buying anything the process is known as impulsive buying behaviour. It is often a direct result of an external factor and it is a sort of reflex action. It means that in this case, it is usually short term as the purchase is made because of some sort of unavoidable temporary marketing strategy that is used by the companies or other such external factors. The common factor that can be seen in all four types of consumer buying behaviour is the emotions that are associated with the consumers.  According to Hansen et al (2004), it is one of the most basic factors guiding consumer behaviour. The emotion helps in making decisions and it can have its effect upon various internal as well as external factors.