Understanding Customers
Introduction:
We will look at Modern Perspectives on Consumption, which examines the elements that impact consumer behaviour in various commercial marketing contexts, tourism, and contemporary consumer behaviour theories, ideas, and models, as well as their application, in this project. Consumer behaviour theory's applications in various commercial and marketing sectors, as well as tourism, are discussed. Further the project briefs about Individual decision-making and Involvement, where a customer is actively involved in the decision-making process while buying a product or service. Further, the Importance of Perceptual Processes in understanding individual consumers is studied. The Perceptual processes are based on the consumer’s perception regarding a brand or product and their reaction when they come across that brand. Later Consumers in Society (Groups and Social Processes) is studied in the project, where the social and cultural construct of the society plays a crucial role in influencing the individuals of the society to buy a particular product, and then Future Trends in Consumer Behavior is studied in brief.
Main Body
Consumer behavior includes various activities, ideas, decisions, and experiences that can satisfy consumer demands and needs (Sima et al., 2020). Economic considerations are the most important determinants of consumer behaviour in companies, since consumers purchase goods and services based on the country's economic position. The people's purchasing power is great when the country is economically robust. Customers have their own thoughts and beliefs about a certain product or service, therefore psychological considerations have an impact on them. Humans are social creatures that live in communities with others who might affect their purchasing decisions (Altinay et al., 2019). Consumer behavior in tourism is one area of tourism that is most researched. The factors affecting the consumer behavior in tourism are tourism destination, social and cultural factors, educational qualification of the tourist, place of origin, and geographical factors. Trying to meet the consumer’s needs is the goal of any business. The in-depth knowledge on this subject can be studied through theories, concepts, and models (Crick et al., 2018). Consumer behaviour theory enables firms to gain a thorough understanding of their target consumers and create future predictions based on that knowledge. The consumer behaviour theory enables businesses to better understand their customers' preferred payment methods, purchasing habits, and environmental elements that impact their decisions. Dissonance-reducing purchasing, variety-seeking purchasing, repetitive purchasing, and complicated purchasing are the four categories of consumer behaviour. In the tourism industry, consumer behavior affects in such a way that how the consumer chooses their restaurants, entertainment, accommodation such as hotels, cottages, guest houses (Dey et al., 2020).
When a consumer buys any product for the first time, they think about the product they are buying. Sometimes the consumer goes shopping thinking about buying a particular brand and ends up buying a completely different brand. When a consumer goes to buy something in a supermarket, the person takes time and thinks in detail about whether to purchase the product or not, is it worth the price or not, is the product of a superior quality or not, all such question arises at that time. Decision-making while buying a product or service are of two types, one is high-involvement decision making and the other is low involvement decision making (Klaus and Zaichkowsky, 2022). The decisions which may affect our lives are known as high involvement decisions for example getting cosmetic surgery done, which will have an impact on our body and appearance. When a consumer is hungry they will most likely go to a nearby restaurant and have a meal, which will satisfy their hunger. If the consumer is not satisfied with the meal they will not buy it again, but the outcome is not something that has to be taken seriously. Such types of decisions are known as low involvement decisions.
Perception is the process that involves organizing, selecting, and interpreting information (Rodriguez et al., 2020). It works based on stimuli reaction through sensory receptors such as taste, smell, texture, sound, sight, and also includes the response to the external environment. Perceptual mapping is a visual diagram that represents the perceptions of the consumers, about a specific aspect of a product, brand, idea, or service (Hlee et al., 2018). The maps of perception are using bipolar scales of judgment. It helps in understanding the perceptual processes in understanding individual consumers. Perceptual maps help the businesses to understand at which position does the consumer place their company’s product in comparison to its competitors in the market (Manrique-Sancho et al., 2018). The perceptual process is also called consumer information processing there are various stages such as The sensation stage, which is the stage where the sensory receptors of the consumer responded to external stimuli. For example, a café includes all the senses in its marketing. The customer will visually experience the making of the coffee, smell the aroma of coffee and also hear the grinding of fresh coffee beans, there will also be pleasant music played in the background which will enhance the customer’s overall experience.
Culture is the total of customs, knowledge, learned ideas, beliefs, and values that regulate the behavior of society (Megeirhi et al., 2020). In a social system, the mental traits of the people are studied on the assumption that some members of the society possess the same principles, ideas, ethics, and views, which affect consumer buying behavior and shopping patterns. Reference groups are also known as social groups are the groups used by an individual for the basis of comparison, which helps in the formation of behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs (Grilli et al., 2021). Social groups influence the members of society to buy a particular brand or product as they share their experience with the same brand or product. There are two types of reference groups that affect the behaviors of consumers in society. The groups work on four factors that are contractual or associative, aspirational, disclaimant, and avoidance or dissociative (Groenewald and L., 2019). An associative member is a member of the family or a friend. Aspirational includes the people who admire the product or the service, often from afar. Disclaimant means the group where an individual used to belong in the past but does not associate with them in present. Dissociative groups are, in which an individual does not have positive feelings towards the group.
The future of consumer behavior is new technology and digital media, because of innovation and upgraded technology. The tourism sector has started the use of RFID which is an acronym for Radio Frequency Identification, which allows the customers to share their personal tourism experience on social platforms, apps (Dragovi? et al., 2018). For example, Disneyland provides an RFID wristband called as MagicBand to its attendees. Post covid-19 there has been an increase in the usage of technology by businesses and organisations. The role of the shopping mall has changed as people now live in shorter spaces and need more space to shop at the same time to socialize. The shopping malls will offer a superior experience to the customers through multichannel strategies and leveraging technology (Gomez et al., 2019). China is already witnessing the future of shopping, where shopping is done through social media via live streams. The usage of big data is increasing and will increase more in near future. Big data is a wide concept that finds ways to analyze and systematically extract the information and deals with the data sets that are complex and too large in size which works on specific software (Mariani et al., 2018). In the future trend of consumer behavior, there will be an increased demand for transparency. The customer will demand transparency so that they are not cheated in any way from the product or services. The massive increase in E-commerce and online buying or shopping. Post covid-19 the world has witnessed an increase in online shopping and this will continue to be in the future (Zo?al et al., 2020). There will be seen a shift in omnipresent communication. The businesses will move to online mediums, this will create a cohesive brand experience.
Conclusion:
In this project perspectives on consumption were studied, which include various factors such as consumer behavior and shopping patterns, their ideas, and opinions. The practical implications of consumer behaviour theory in numerous business, marketing situations, and tourism were investigated, as well as modern business theories and ideas and the four categories of consumer behaviour. Following that, the study looked at individual consumer decision-making, which was divided into two categories: low involvement decision-making and high involvement decision-making. Further, the reaction of sensory receptors of the consumer was studied under perceptual processes using the example of a café shop. Aspirational, disclaimant, and avoidance or dissociative were the reference groups that came under consumers in society. Future trends in consumer behavior were studied using the example of shopping through the live stream in China, and new advancements in technology like big data will be used on a large scale in near future.
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