Current Trends that Affect Consumer Life Around the World

Current Trends that Affect Consumer Life Around the World

Introduction

Consumer behavior is defined as a mental process of decision as well as physical activity. The act of buying is not only a stage in a series of mental and physical activities that takes place during a certain period. The study of consumer behavior is embedded in a host of domains in social and behavioral sciences, such as history, economics, sociology, psychology, and anthropology, with reflection on management, marketing, and social psychology. This differs considerably across country boundaries, given that consumer behavior is subject to economic, cultural and societal influences. It helps to identify the degree of consumer thoughtfulness in decision processes it is also crucial for competent and valuable marketing as well as communication efforts concerned with international operations. The consumer behavior is affected by different changing trends and these trends are altered and modified as per the different issues and factors.

Consumer Behavior

Consumer behavior is essentially the attitudes, intentions, decisions, and actions of individuals as everyday consumers in the marketplace. Some of the activities preceding the actual purchase, others however, are later. But as all virtue is to influence the adoption of products and services, will be considered as part of the behavior of interest (Armijo et al, 2009). Knowledge of consumer behavior is an essential tool for success of marketing activities, throughout history many disciplines and several authors have tried to explain human behavior by giving the main cause of this one specific aspect or another. In economic theory, consumption is the process by using the results of production to meet specific needs (Ajzen, 2001). Consumer behavior is methodologically based on the theory of marginal utility. The consumer buys goods and services to meet their needs and gaining utility from that product. Consequently, the utility is pleasure or satisfaction that consumers receive from buying goods and services. All people are able to compare the satisfaction derived from a variety of activities and products, and to prefer one kind of another. These preferences are "pure", as it does not depend on income and prices. 'Pure' preferences are not yet real consumer choice. Desire is a choice, of the individual - the buyer when his preferences lead to actual purchase on the market. However, the choice, unlike desires, limited income, and prices (Schiffman & Kanuk, 2004). The study of consumer behavior is also sometimes extremely complex because of the multitude of variables involved and their tendency to interact with each other and influence each other. To cope with the complexity consumer behavior there are different consumer behavior models. The models serve to organize our ideas concerning consumers in a consistent whole, to identify relevant variables, to discover its fundamental characteristics and to specify them as variables are interrelated.

Stages of Purchase Decision-Making Process

The analysis of the stages of the buying decision, allows a better understanding of consumer buying behavior (Solomon, 2008). These stages are as follows:

Need Recognition & Problem Awareness

The process commence when an individual ...