Understanding the Consumer



Understanding Consumer Behaviour

Introduction

Recently the study of consumer behaviour with respect to the consumer decision making process has gained a lot of attention due to promising results and outcomes that the research might bring. Consumer science is the study of home economics that is evolving around new disciplines and related to the decision making process of consumers with regards to nutrition, clothing or textiles, household and interiors merchandise. The basic premise behind the decision making process is to meet consumer's different types of needs starting from the very basic ones to those at higher level which may include physical needs, psychological needs or financial satisfaction. The decision making process with regards to the purchase of products is quite complicated due to variety of external factors that are dealt with, with the help of internal context as a result of consumer socialization process. Therefore consumer science basically deals with the consumption behaviour of consumers (Schiffman & Kanuk, 2000:5). It has also been defined as the study of both consumer and marketer behaviour and has been suggested to stand at the intersecting point of human psychology and marketing science (Foxall, 2001, pp. 165). Study of marketing is equally important to understand as it has been referred to as the process of analyzing and understanding consumer satisfaction and buying process for increasing demand (Berry& Kunkel, 1970, pp. 25).

Discussion

Different type of consumer decision making models have been provided by various researchers to develop better understanding of the consumer decision making process. Few authors are of the view point that the mode of consumer decision making is nothing but a copy of the phenomenon itself and has been used to present with the building block or variables (Engel et.al, 1995, pp. 143). Other authors describe such models as a graphical presentation of the idea in terms of flow charts of different behavioural processes involved in the decision making. Cognitive Experiential Self theory is one of the popular theories regarding consumer decision making and suggest that the consumer decision making is dependent up two different processing modes, one is the rational and analytical processing mode and the other one is emotion or affect driven experiential mode (Epstein et al, 1996, pp. 390; Shiv and Fedodkhin, 1999, pp. 278; Krauss et.al, 2004, pp.801; Schul and Mayo, 2003, pp.93). Researchers have come up with different elements with respect to the consumer decision making process that are namely cognitive decision making which involves the step of problem recognition or need identification, in formation research, evaluation of available alternatives, selection or choice and evaluation of the outcome or result of the decision making process. (Solomon, 1996). There are few others who have added few more additional stage to the decision making process in order to mark importance of some other activities involved in the process like the stage when the consumer deliberately excludes some of the alternative options or excluding such product from the alternatives that have never been consumed or used by the consumer (Du Plessis & Rousseau, ...