DECISION MAKING & PLANNING STUDY

Decision Making & Planning Study

Decision Making & Planning Study

Introduction

With the dynamic environment, undoubtedly, each firm attempts to study and understand the consumer behavior due to businesses stay in business by attracting and retaining customers (Arnould, Price & Zinkhan, 2002, p6). As the basic consumer decision-making unit, family are most frequently examined by many marketers because decision making by family differs in many ways from decisions made by an individuals. According to Hawkins, Best, and Coney, the term of family decision making is the process by which decisions that directly or indirectly involve two or more family members are made (Hawkins, Best & Coney, 1998, p195). Generally, different motivations and different family life cycles will cause different decision making process. Meanwhile, with the dissimilar decision making process, the different members of family would play various roles and directly influence the result of decision. Following, along the progress of decision-making process, the different roles will be examined respectively.

The brief background of the family

Each existing family have to hang about in a distinct stage of family life cycle (FLC) in particular period (Murphy & Staples, 1979, p12-22). Generally, FLC involves five stages that consist of bachelorhood, honeymooners, parenthood, postparenthood, and dissolution (Schiffman & Kanuk, 2004, p358). As for this family in this case of study, it is nuclear family which stays in the stage of parenthood. There are three persons in the family. One is father, a common worker, his interesting is travel. One is mother, a typical housewife without working, her interesting is shopping and making outdoor party with friends. One is son, one seventeen year-old student of high school, his interesting is sport and journey, and his dream is traveling throughout the whole the world.

The roles in the different stages

No one can deny that there are many roles for members of family in the decision making process, such as initiator, information gatherer, gate keeper, decider, influencer, buyer, payer, user etc. In fact, family decisions making allows different members to become involved at different stages of the process (Hawkins, Best & Coney, 1998, p197). With this study, different roles in each stage of decision making process will be played by one member or multi-members.

The role in the stage of problem recognition

Problem recognition is the first stage in the consumer decision-making process. It is based on the interaction between two main components: the desired state and the actual state (Bruner & Pomazal, 1986, p44). This is to say, discrepancy between the current station and the desired station tends to create emerging needs, which may trigger the ideas of purchase. According to Kassarjian and Robertson, the member who suggests the idea of purchase is initiator (Kassarjian & Robertson, 1981, p322).

As for this family, father usually seems like a leader although mother sometimes dominates the family activities. With the booming of economic situation of the family and growing up of his son, father recognizes that his family lacks a station wagon of Toyota. The main reasons involves: (1) the entire members ...