Various Purchases

Questions: 1. Identify the store and the day and time you made your observation. 2. Analyze the behaviors you observed to determine how consumers progressed through the consumer behavior process while in different aisles. 3. Assess how consumers determine value for their various purchases. This can be addressed with at least two (2) specific consumer examples or by combining all the consumers you observed. 4. Pick two specific consumers that seemed to be very different from each other. Contrast how these two (2) consumers progressed through the consumer perception process. Answers: 1. Identify the store and the day and time you made your observation In order to complete my assignment I chose to visit the grocery store chain Spencers. Spencers is a popular grocery chain in my area and almost all of my grocery shopping takes place here. I decided to study two Aisles in this store one was that of bakery products and other was the aisle that contained fruits so as to understand how the consumer behaviour varies for different products. Further, I realized that consumers have a different approach and outlook on different time and different days so keeping this in mind I decided to make a twice visit to the store in different hours of time, for the first one I went on Thursday which is a weekday at around 3:00 Pm, so at this hour of time the no. of shoppers in the store was very limited and then I again visited the store at around 6:00 Pm when the store was all packed at this time people were getting off from work and stopped at the store for the shopping the daily essentials as well as other important stuff. 2. Analyze the behaviors you observed to determine how consumers progressed through the consumer behaviour process while in different aisles. For the Consumer behaviour analysis I decided to observe 6 customers in total. I divided them into groups of three each; while consumer A-B-C were the customers observed in the bakery aisle , consumers D, E and F were observed in the Fruits aisle. The details of these customers have been provided in the appendix. The purchase decision comprises of consumer behaviour process which is made up of stages that include: recognition of need, information search, and evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision, and post-purchase behavior. This experiment started with the consumers recognition of the need to purchase bakery products and fruits. At the store the consumers had different choice or options for both the fruits as well as the bakery products so I saw consumers making a thorough research by asking the store personnels about the products or by themselves reading and understanding the ingredients and usage. Based on the price, value, familiarity and their understanding the consumers make their decision to purchase products. After making their purchase decisions, these consumers showed different post-purchase behaviors.This included some of them immediately picking up the product and then leaving that particular aisle. And others check out all the other alternatives available even though not changing their mind. 3. Assess how consumers determine value for their various purchases. This can be addressed with at least two (2) specific consumer examples or by combining all the consumers you observed. Customer Values are the subjective judgement of consumer about the benefits that they receive from the purchase of product or service. The mathematical formulation of it is as follows: perceived value of consumer Benefits-cost. While anythingthat consumer desires and gets when he purchases a product is a benefit; Cost is something that has to be given up by the consumer in exchange of benefits that they get. It is also important to consider that consumers weighting their options in the store are looking for necessities or the high involvement products. Thus, the choice of any form of product becomes evident in the purchasing behaviour. Any deviation from the product quality or the desired expectation can lead to switching in the brand being used and thus, it is important that post purchase behaviour is studied at all times. A long lasting relationship between a customer and marketer is made only when there is a strong customer value. Value is determined only by the things that the customer is expecting and how they perceive the transaction to be. Emotions play a major role in the expectation as well as their perceptions. The value of a purchase is different for each and every consumer base because of the presence of the emotional elements in the behaviour. Often, the choice for a product is affected by the emotions i.e. a certain brand may create an influence of choice leading to people opting for that brand again and again. Most brands thrive on this value. While in the grocery store some of the selected consumers showed a routine response for the low involvement products such as coke and other daily routine products because these products had a limited value for these products the similar product had a very high value among the teenage group of individuals which included individuals B and F who were highly involved with such products. They were trying to understand all the alternatives present, apart from this the fruit had a high involvement among the health conscious section of people which included individuals C and D who were actively browsing through the section and were touching and feeling the smell of the products and were then purchasing it. 4. Pick two specific consumers that seemed to be very different from each other. Contrast how these two (2) consumers progressed through the consumer perception process. The consumer perception is a 4 stage process starting from Sensation, then attention, then interpretation and then retention (Cross, 2013). This process would be explained by me by taking the example of two customers present in the grocery store that I visited. The first consumer under selection was an inertial type consumer who continued on to his selective brand of choice and purchased it. His choice was unaffected by the availability or positioning of the brand product on the shelf space. The second consumer was a choice maker and he moved across products to finally make a quantitative choice based on his likes and needs. At this stage, it is important to understand that the consumers can be in different stages of purchase cycle and some may also be early bloomers, who experiment with other brands. Thus, they are the customers who make switch most easily. In most cases, the consumers are preferential towards a particular brand and their choice is revolving around it. References Bagdare, S., Jain, R. (2013). Measuring retail customer experience. International Journal of Retail Distribution Management. Cross, V. (2013). The Stages of Perception in Marketing. https://smallbusiness.chron.com/. Henson, S., Traill, B. (2008). Measuring Perceived Performance of the Food System and Consumer Food-Related Welfare. Journal of Agricultural Economics. Joung, H.-M. (2014). Fast-fashion consumers post-purchase behaviours. International Journal of Retail Distribution Management. 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