Amelie Teran

Chapter #5

This chapter focuses on examining the customers, segments, and target markets. Marketing
Strategy is about understanding the customers and satisfying their needs, and then creating a
marketing plan that can complete this. Throughout time, the way in which marketing decisions are
made have changed. Before, marketers offered products to customers and managed to find ways
to make them purchase those products. Today, marketers focus on market segmentation.
Marketers focus on examining the customer and their wants and needs and find a way to sell them
products and services that satisfies those needs. However, this could increase the level of concern
about customer’s privacy.

In order to have a good marketing strategy, the buying behavior of consumers should be fully
understood. And this is not an easy task since it is unpredictable and irrational. This means that
their buying behavior can change from one day to another; it is not constant. However, this effort
is significant since it provides important and valuable information that will be used in the long run.
Today, ethnography is used to understand consumers because it provides cultural phenomena
such as communication and personal interests. Thanks to the increasing advances in technology,
social media has helped marketers to gain cultural insights about consumers. This understanding
helps not just the design of the product, but the price, distribution, and promotion of the product
or service.

The consumer buying process has five stages of activities that consumers may do when deciding to
purchase a product or service. The first stage is the need recognition. The second stage is the
information search. The third is the evaluation of alternatives. The fourth is the purchase decision
and the fifth is the post-purchase evaluation. It is important to mention that consumers may not
always follow these stages; they may skip a step. Marketers may have a hard time with customers
that are loyal to a brand since they would have to convince them to stop that tradition and make
them look to your offer. Consumers also consider where they are going to make the purchase, this
means that hey focus on the price and availability at different places.

The first step of the consumer buying process is the need recognition, which is when customers
realize they have a need that should be met. This happens when consumers find out that their
current level of satisfaction is not enough. There are different kinds of needs. The first one is about
internal stimuli, which includes things such as being hungry or exhausted. The second one is about
external stimuli, which includes influencers, advertisement, and interacting with others such as
family, friends, and salespersons. It is important to mention that external stimuli can have an
influence on internal stimuli. Needs are not necessities, since it depends on the perspective of
each individual. A need is when the current level of satisfaction does not meet their desired level.
While a want is the desire for a specific product or service that will satisfy the need. Understanding
these needs is what helps the firm to segment the market and elaborate marketing plans that will
transform their needs into wants. The main point about this is to make customers want your
product because it will better fulfill their needs than other competitors. Demand is not the same
as a want; it is when customers can make the purchase of the specific product or service. And not
all needs are wants, these are called unsought products. For these products, the marketer should
educate the customer to understand the need.

After, when customers already recognized that they have a need, they may want to look for
additional information if done correctly. The information search can be passive or active. When it
is passive, the customer is attentive and receptive to the information, while when it is active, the
customer looks for the information purposely. This additional information can come from
different sources, such as internal sources, personal sources, and external sources. Internal
sources include their personal beliefs, or past experiences. Personal sources include advices from
family and friends. External sources include information from the internet, magazines, newspaper,
and salespersons. Consumers base their amount of time and effort spent on the information
search by the degree of risk of the purchase; they will always try to reduce these risks. Also, the
amount of experience the consumer has plays an important role. And finally, the amount of time
and money it will take consumers to look for this additional information.

When the consumer has already analyzed the additional information, he or she will begin to
narrow the list of suitable alternatives to choose from; this list is called evoked set. The next step is
about evaluating the alternatives. The consumer transforms the need into a want. This is the
hardest step for marketers since there is different criteria that influence the purchase of buyers.
Customers have different perspectives when talking about the importance of this criteria.
Marketers should seek to be part of the evokes set, to understand the consumer’s importance
among these criteria, and create marketing programs that change the consumer’s idea about a
product.

Once the consumer has already evaluated all the alternatives in the evoked set, the consumer may
proceed to have a purchase intention. The purchase intention refers to when a customer has the
intention to purchase a good or service, but there can appear factors that can prevent the actual
purchase from happening. The marketer should seek to reduce these risks, so the purchase stage
becomes easy for the customer. The marketer’s key purpose in this step is to provide product
availability and possession utility. After the purchase decision is made, it comes the post-purchase
evaluation, which is when customers evaluate their expectation level and performance toward the
product or service purchased. In this step, consumers may experience delight, satisfaction,
dissatisfaction, and cognitive dissonance. And this is what will dictate the connection between the
buying process and the relationships in the long term.

All consumers are different; therefore, their decisions may vary. There are certain factors that
affect the consumer buying process. These factors include decision-making complexity, individual
influences, social influences, and situational influences. The decision-making complexity is when
the buying process changes for each consumer, and for different scenarios. There are tasks that
are high in complexity, which will make consumers spend more time and even money to ensure
that they are making the right decision. And others that are low in complexity, which take less
effort and time for consumers. The individual influences include some demographic factors such as
age, life cycle, occupation, and economic status.