Business Management: Most Important Factors that Influence Buyer Behavior (Essay Sample)

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Business management
Business management refers to a key management disciplines that allows producers of goods and services to interpret desires, needs, and wants of the consumer and exceed or match their target consumer wants for the business to achieve super profit. This paper answers the 1st and 2nd question where it discusses important factors influencing buyer behavior, younger age group customers and older age group customers, and place part of the marketing mix.
Most important factors that influence buyer behavior
Consumer buying behavior refers to the ultimate acts and process of buying and using a product. There are many characteristics, factors, and specificities that influences an individual in the decision making processes, purchasing behavior, the retailers he goes to, shopping habits, and the brands he buys (Pinjutarat 62). The decision to purchase a commodity by the consumer or buyer results from every one of the above factors. The consumer behavior to buy is therefore influenced by major factors such as personal, cultural, psychological, and social.
Personal
The personal factors entails variables like age and lifestyle stage, economic circumstances, self-concept and personality, occupation, lifestyle which includes such factors as opinions, activities, demographics and interests. Personal factors also includes the economic situation where the buying behavior depends on the savings and incomes. When the savings and incomes of the consumer is high, one purchase more and even expensive products. In contrary, when consumer incomes becomes low, one buys less and inexpensive products.
Cultural
Culture is part of every society and it influences a person’s needs and wants. The buying behavior influenced by culture varies from one country to another. Different groups, countries, and regions have different cultures. An individual will be taught common behaviors, values and preferences to their own culture by the cultural environment, families, friends, and society and hence influenced by them. For a brand, a distributor should take into considerations cultural factors inherent to each situation and market so that to adapt its products and marketing strategy. This is important for the behavior, perception, expectations and habits of consumers.
For example, it’s common in the west, to invite and welcome friends, relatives and colleagues at home for a dinner or a drink. In Japan, on the other hand, inviting someone like a friend or a colleague at home for a dinner or supper does not usually fit into their local customs. Japanese prefer this form of outing with colleagues and friends to be taking place in a restaurant.
Psychological factors
The psychological influence to consumer purchasing behavior includes the perception where the buyer interprets, selects, and organizes the information he receives from the seller of a commodity in order to understand the product and make sense. Additionally, motivation drives the buyer or consumer to develop the purchasing behavior. It’s the expression of a want that becomes very much pressing to the consumer or buyer leading him to purchase the product.
Learning also influences a person to buy. Through learning, one acquire experience and therefore changes a person’s behavior as one gets more experience and information. For example, if after taking bread one develops a negative feeling and experience, he will associate state the discomfort state with the bread and learn that he should not be taking bread and therefore will never buy milk anymore. Contrary, when one gets positive feeling with the product, he will have the desire to buy it more.
Social factors
These are factors that describes the outside influences of others on their purchase decisions directly or indirectly. Social factors involves groups such as member groups, reference groups and spiritual groups. A person’s membership group is the group that one belongs and therefore influences him. They are related to leisure, social origin, residential place and age.
Reference groups provide one with some points of comparison more or less on the lifestyle, consumer habits, behavior, and the desires of the consumers. They influence the image an individual have on the product as well as on his behavior.
Younger Age Group Customers and Older Age Group Customers
At younger age group and older age group such as 19 and 72 respectively, the consumer doesn’t buy the same services or products. The lifecycle and age have a great impact on the buying behavior of consumer since one’s lifestyle, habits, values, hobbies, activities, and environment evolve throughout a person’s life. For example, a new product brand in the market plays an important role in the decision for a 24 years old consumer than a 67 years old consumer. Additionally, one can change his diet from unhealthy diet or products such as fast and ready meals to a very healthy diet and a low cholesterol diet to avoid many health problems that may arise during his mid-life ages. This therefore, influences the buying behavior of the consumer at different ages.
The life cycle of an individual in a family will also influence the person’s values, lifestyles, and the buying behavior depending on whether one is single, in a relationship, and is married with kids as well as where someone lives such as big city country side, and small town. According to Stroud, Dick, and Kim Walker. Marketing to the Ageing Consumer: The Secrets to Building an Age-Friendly Business, lifestyle influences consumer purchasing behavior and decisions. For example a healthy and balance diet consumer at his old age group, will go for organic products and look for specific stores where he can buy sports shoes, and clothes for doing some jogging regularly to become more fit.
Place Part of the Marketing Mix
Place refers to the point of sale where customer buys a product, provider or supplier where the goods and services...