Marketing assignment help report on: Customer decision process and customer perception
Executive summary:
Intend of this report is to present a customer decision process model with the help of which a consumer’s aspects of buying a product can be known. Further, report highlights external and internal factors which influence that process. Next segment of the report defines the term customer perception and product positioning and also discusses about their difference. Evaluations have been made in terms of Samsung’s galaxy as a product being chosen for the discussion regarding its positioning with comparison to its competitors. Last part of the report proposes some recommendations for the marketers to influence the customer decision-making process strong and to influence the customer perception in this respect.
Introduction;
When people purchase things, they connect in a decision-making process. Research demonstrates that one of the major dilemmas with commerce sites is that they fall short in supporting the customers in this process. The consumer decision-making process is the process that is considered most when someone decides to purchase something (Pellemans, 1971).
Samsung Galaxy being chosen as a brand product for this report’s discussion has been taken into account to present a customer decision-making process.
Customer decision-making process model:
1. Need identification:
The first key step in this process is of course to identify that the buyer needs a new cell phone. However, he/she may have a general idea of which phone he/she would like to buy, but probably the buyer wants to do some research in order to slight down hardly any alternative.
- 2. Information search:
After that, first the buyer goes online to examine manufacturers, resellers, and independent consumer organizations. He/she also asks friends and coworkers for suggestions about different brand’s features, battery life, efficiency and reviews. Afterward, the consumer plans to visit a few stores personally to “kick the tires.” It is the second step of the consumer decision model called as ‘information search’.
- 3. Evaluation of alternatives:
Next, consumer makes an evaluation to compare the alternatives and at last decides to buy. In this context, he/she makes a decision on what seems to be the best option based on different criteria such as design, features, price, and reliability of the supplier. This portion of the report talks about the third and fourth step of this process those are evaluation of alternatives and purchase decision.
- 4. Purchase decision:
Consequently, the fourth step ‘purchase decision is the most important because a product is purchased and possessed at this stage. Finally, consumer picks up a Samsung galaxy phone most liked by him/her.
- 5. Purchase evaluation:
The last and important step of this process is purchase evaluation. Following this, once the buyer has the phone in his/her possession, he/she evaluates whether it lives up to his/her expectations or not. He/she checks its battery life and efficiency first then looks for the quality of the phone. Therefore, the consumer might find that the phone ‘Samsung Galaxy’ is quite competent to do what the manufacturer assured, but if in any case the user interface irritates, the buyer decides not to buy any product of that particular brand (Pellemans, 1971).
A decision-making process like this can be described as five different stages:
Consumer decision-making process
(Source: Guui, 2003)
External and internal influence on process:
Consumers are habitually influenced by the external and internal factors, as they live in a community.
External factors:
In case of talking about the external factors, they are culture, group influence, family and role influence. Moreover, there can be cultural values in relation to consumer behavior is following:
Other oriented value: Collective, youth or age: While targeting the marketing Samsung galaxy basically it looks for the particular group of people using any kind of Samsung’s product so that other people are eventually motivated toward the brand. As the young generation wants to have luxuries gadgets, Samsung galaxy mainly focus on youth or age perspective (Dietrich, 2010).
Environmental oriented values: Performance or status according to the society a consumer lives in. To keep abreast with the new technologies and systems Samsung has recognized the changing norm of people and therefore offers this new galaxy.
Other self oriented factors such as leisure, brand, attraction, information influence, and identical influence, low individual purchase confidence, advertising effect, influence and already existing user in family are the external factors which influence the customer decision making process (Husna, 2008).
Internal factors:
Internal factors are learning, motivation, consumer perception and price sensitiveness. Learning factor is considered on the basis of high and low involvement to learn and know about the material. Accordingly, high involvement reveals that consumers are motivated to learn the material and product information. On the other hand, low involvement states that consumer either has less or zero motivation to learn about the specific brand’s product (Dietrich, 2010). In this case, it is referred to the condition that consumer doesn’t pay attention to the advertisement being presented. Motivational factors in case of a phone are its durability, user friendly and easy reparability. Apart from this, Samsung galaxy is available almost everywhere becomes one of the most influence factors. Moreover, personality and emotions of a consumer are also a part of the internal factors influencing this consumer decision-making process (McGuire, 1976).
Recommendations:
To make the consumer decision model more influenced, a few recommendations have been presented in this segment of the report.
- Product positioning: The marketers of Samsung galaxy can achieve a different brand image with respect to the competition within a market segment. It places their product effectively in the buyer’s mind rather than its competitors.
- Build strong advertising strategy: Samsung can advertise its product more strongly so that consumers can view its visible usage to buy that.
Consumer perception and positioning:
Consumer perception refers to simply a process by which a person chooses, organizes, and then interprets motivation into a significant and coherent picture of the world. Therefore selection, organization and interpretation are considered as the major aspects of consumer perception (Perner, 2010). On the other hand, positioning has come to mean the process by which marketers attempt to craft an image or uniqueness in the minds of their target market for its product, brand, or business (Karadeniz, 2009).
The difference between both is that consumer perception is the sole activity of an individual whilst positioning is a process which is activated by marketers only. Consumers often perceive and judge the quality of the product and on the other hand marketers create the quality for the product to make the product more attractive (Moosmayer & Fuljahn, 2010).
Evaluation of Samsung Galaxy and its competitors’ positioning:
The marketing department of Samsung galaxy always tries to put their products effectively and competently in the consumers mind rather than other competitors. Product positioning is considered to draw an impact on the long term success of the brand. That’s why Samsung galaxy puts a lot of importance in product positioning. Through billboards, banners, posters, road rallies, shopping mall campaign, and other promotional activities the marketers are initiating to build product position in the mind of the consumers. To justify, it has been articulated that Samsung strengthens its positions as world’s largest Smartphone maker. It has shown a growth of 29.1% by a comparison made with its competitors (Harris, 2012)
Alternatively, its competitors such as Apple, Nokia, HTC and others currently occupying the customers’ attention of converged personal computing & entertain market. That is a harsh position to beat for any competition. Instead of competing on price, competitors now compete on innovation, brand image and unique value prepositions. The difference between Samsung and its competitors positioning is that, at a low price it provide the same features and outlook and sound features in comparison to Nokia, Apple, RIM and others (Macmanus, 2012).
Recommendations:
Samsung brand can be suggested to compete with the price war as per the customer’s perception toward price sensitiveness. Moreover, it can make it a premium product at the same price offered currently to be served for the consumers. The best part it can take advantage from apple’s positioning is that it can positioning its phones as a gaming console (Hardy, 2008).
Conclusion:
The entire discussion has been presented for Samsung galaxy product. Firstly, it talked about the five stage customer perception decision making process including customer’s need recognition, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision, etc. Further, it discussed some external and internal factors such, culture family and group influence as external factors and motivation, learning and price as internal factors. Next section of the report defined the customer perception and positioning briefly. At the end, positioning of Samsung galaxy and its competitors such Apple, Nokia and others have been evaluated and accordingly recommendations have been proposed.
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