Marketing Behavior, Research Paper Example

Introduction

The most important person in any organization is the customer. The customer is the target of the business and without him or her, the business has no essence. That is why it is important for an organization to satisfy its customers. Companies may want to study and research on the customer’s buying behavior so that they can be able to know how to strategize. The marketers try to understand how customers respond to various marketing efforts that the company might use because this could enable it to have a better competitive advantage. In this project we are trying to study the customers of Continental Clothing Company because if we are successful, the company will have an advantage over other companies in terms of major forces in buyer environment, produce products having considered the buyer’s characteristics and the buying decision process which increases customer satisfaction.

Company Background Information

Continental (2009) is a clothing company which has its main offices based in Germany and London. It has been in business since 1994 but it recently expanded its operations to New York and Los Angeles by setting up showrooms. During the same year, there was more expansion as distribution centers were establishment in Southern California and Jersey. The company has mainly majored in wholesale selling of own designed and manufactured clothing. The direct market for its products has been to the imprintables industry and having been the innovators of the wholesale baby doll t-shirt in Europe, the company has with no doubt been leading in design and innovation. It has also been the company’s focus to produce garments that are of high quality, class and those that are styled for specific occasions and people.

The target market for the Continental company can therefore be audiences in the areas of: fashion, sports, athletics, corporate settings and music. The company’s products are engineered specifically for certain type of market especially those that deal in the same line of business.

Global Vision

The company has now extended its services to the US and Europe not leaving out both sides of the Atlantic. Some of the services offered to customers are mainly merchandizing and warehousing. An illustration on some of the things it would do attain its global vision are: using international network of offices to import clothes and helping the companies in the fashion industry while still managing to save some cost and time for these companies. It also gives a hand in planning promotion campaigns worldwide.

Mission Statement and Mission

Continental clothing initiated change of those brands that have been dominant to an industry that is multi-billion. The overall effect has been the positive change in environmental practices and business ethics in one of the industries which damages the environment most often.

The company’s vision is to see people wear garments that have been produced by an industry which is built upon principles that are fundamental of socially positive supply chain management and sustainable production.

The mission is as stated by the company is “ to turn our customers, our competitors customers, from all industry sectors, onto the products and services that we offer now and will continue to develop in future.”

Corporate Values

The company has values that reflect its high profile on corporate social responsibility and these are: Service, integrity, sustainable product, innovation and quality.

Previous Consumer Research Findings

Research has shown that most customers of Continental company are mainly from Germany, London, New York and Los Angeles, which brings about the aspect of difference in preferences and behavior. There are different types of consumer buying behavior based on degree of buyers’ involvement and degree differences among brands:

Complex Buying Behavior

Here, the behavior is characterized by high consumer involvement in a purchase and perceived differences among the brands offered by Continental Company is more when a product is expensive, risky purchased infrequently and highly expressive. The consumer has much to learn about the product category. The buyer will pass through a learning process, fast developing beliefs about the product and then attitudes before making a thoughtful choice. Marketers of high involvement products must understand the information gathering and evaluation behavior of high involvement customers. They should also be able to differentiate their brand feature.

Dissonance Reducing Buying Behavior

It is characterized in situations where there is high involvement but few perceived differences among brands, the goods are expensive, infrequent or risky. The buyers may shop around simply to know what is available and are likely to buy relatively quickly which means that they could have either responded to the good price or to purchase convenience. After the purchase, the consumer may experience post-purchase dissonance (after-sale discomfort) when they notice certain disadvantages of the garments purchased or some which they did not purchase. To counter such dissonance, the marketer should provide evidence and support to help consumers feel good about their choices.

Habitual Buying Behavior

This occurs in situations where there is low consumer involvement and few significant perceived brand differences. It is for low cost and frequently purchased product. The consumer doesn’t pass through the usual belief attitude behavior sequence they do not search extensively for information about a brand, evaluate brand characteristics or even make weighing decision about which brand to buy instead they receive information and create brand familiarity rather than brand conviction because buyers of low involvement products aren’t highly commuted to any brand. Marketers of such brands normally use price and sales promotion to stimulate product trial. They can only raise consumer involvement from low to high level and they aren’t likely to propel customers into highly involved behavior.

Variety Seeking Buying Behavior

Here, there is low involvement by the customer but significant perceived brand differences. Customers often switch from one brand to another without much evaluation and then evaluate the brand when using it. Switching occurs for variety sake rather than because of dissatisfaction. The market leader will try to encourage habitual buying behavior by dominating in market and running frequent reminder advertising challenger firms will encourage variety seeking by offering special deals, low prices and advertising that presents reasons for trying something new.

External Factors Analysis

These are the factors that are brought about by the surrounding of the customer which are:

Cultural Factors

The marketers need to understand the role plated by buyers’ culture, sub culture and the social class.

Culture

These are set of basic values, perception, wants and behaviors learnt by a member of society from family and other important institutions. Marketers are always trying to spot cultural shifts in order to discover products that might be wanted.

Sub-Culture

Each culture contains smaller sub-cultures for instance, groups of people with shared value system based on common life experiences and situations. They include nationality, religions, ratio groups and geographic regions. Many sub-cultures make up important market segments and marketers often design products and marketing programs tailored to their needs.

Social Class

Are societies relatively permanent and order divisions in a society whose members share similar values interests and behavior? Social class is not determined by a single factor but measured as combination of income, education, wealth and other valuables.

Social classes may be fixed in some societies while in others they keep shifting kept many for members are interested in social class because people within a given social class try to travel similar buying behavior social classes show distinct products and brand preferences on areas i.e. fashion in dressing e.t.c.

Social Factors

Social factors i.e. consumer reference groups, family and social roles and status influence consumer behavior.

Reference Groups

The reference groups serve as direct or indirect points of comparison or reference in forming a person’s attitude or behavior. People often are influenced by reference groups to which they do not belong. Marketers try to identify target groups of their target met as they expose a person to new behavior influence person’s attitude and self conference and which may confirm and which may affect the person’s product and brand choices marketers try to identify opinion leaders for their products and direct meting effort towards them.

Opinion leader; it’s a person within a reference group who because of their special skills and knowledge. Personality or other characteristics exact influence on others.

Family

The family is the most important consumer buying organization in a society marketers are increased in roles and influence of husband, wife and children on purchase of different products and services buying roles change with evolving consumer lifestyle and marketers must research specific markets in their targets. They should know who makes decision in the family individually or whether they make joint decisions.

Roles and Status 

A person belongs to many groups   eg. Family, clubs, organizations and this position in every group can be defined in terms of role and status.

Internal Factors Analysis

These are the factors that directly affect a customer in regard to customer what opened. the internal decisions are also said to be influenced by personal characteristics i.e. buyers age and lifestyle stage occupation, economic situation, lifestyle, personality, self consent.

Age and Lifestyle

People change goods and services they buy over their lifetime, taste in food clothes and recreation are often age related. Buying is also shaped by family life cycle i.e. the stages through which families might pass as they mature overtime, marketers often define their target markets in terms of lifecycle stage and develop appropriate products and marketing plans for each stage. Different stages include unmarried couples, couples marrying later in life, childless couples single parents and extended parents e.t.c

Occupation

A person’s occupation affects the goods and services they buy from marketers trying to identify occupation groups that have an above average interest in their products and services.

Economic Situation

A person’s economic situation will affect product choice for example, disposable income, savings and interest rate. If economic indicators point to a recession marketers can take steps to redesign, repossession and re-price their products

Lifestyle

It is a person’s pattern of living as expressed in his activities, interest and opinion people coming down the same sub-culture, social class, and occupation may have quite different lifestyle. Lifestyle goes beyond goes beyond person’s social clan or personality and brings out a person whole pattern of acting and interacting in the world.

Personality and Self Concept

Each person has a distinct personality which influences their you. Personality refers to a person’s unique or distinguished psychological characteristics that lead to relative consistent it his or her own environment its described in terms of traits i.e self confidence, dominance, sociability, autonomy, defensiveness adaptability and aggressiveness.

Personality can be useful in analyzing consumer behavior for certain products and brand choices. Marketers also use self concept (self image). People’s possessions contribute to or reflect their identity and thus in order to understand consumer behavior the marketer must first understand the relationship between consumer, self concept and position.

Psychological Factors

A person’s buying choices are influenced by four major psychological factors. Namely:-

• Motivation

Psychological needs arises from the need of recognition, esteem or belonging most of this needs will not be strong enough to motivate the person to act at a given point in time they become a motive. A need becomes a motive when it is aroused to a sufficient level of intensity, pressing enough to direct the person to seek satisfaction of the need. Marketers seeking a deeper understanding of consumer behavior should use motivation as a useful tool than this.

• Perception

It is the process by which people select, organize and interpret information to from a meaningful picture of the word. People from different perceptions of the same stimulus because of three perception processes i.e. selective attention, selective distortion and selective retention.

Selective attention is the tendency of people to scream out most of information to which they are exposed. This means that meters have to work especially to attract the customer’s attention.

Selective distortion is the tendency of people to interfere information in a way that will support what they already believe. This means that marketers must try to understand the mindset of and how this will affect interpretation of adverts and sale promotions.

Selective retention is the tendency of people retaining only information that support their attitude and forget all other information they have learned.

It is because of selective exposure, distortion and retention that marketers have to work hard to get their messages through. This explains why marketers use so much drama and repetition sending messages to their market.

• Learning

It’s the changes in an individual arising from experience, learning theorist said that most of human behavior is learned and which occurs through interplay of drives, stimuli, responses and reinforcement. The practical significance o learning theory for marketers is that they can build up demand for a product by associating it with strong drives, using motivating uses and providing positive reinforcement.

• Beliefs and Attitude

A belief is a descriptive thought that a person holds about something. Beliefs may be based on real knowledge, opinion or forth and may or may not carry an emotional charge. Marketers are interested in belief that people formulate about specific products and services because this beliefs make up product and brand images that affect buying behavior. If some of believes are wrong and prevent purchase, the marketer will want to lodge a campaign to correct them.

Attitude describes a person’s consistently favorable or unfavorable evaluations, evaluations feelings and tendency towards or away from them. attitudes are difficult to change thus a company should usually try to fit it’s products into existing attitude rather attempt to change attitude.

Consumer Problem Identification and Consequences

The buyer decision process consists of 5 steps:

• Need Recognition

I need to attend a friend’s music concert this week end and I have just realized that I have nothing to wear. This is now the problem which has been identified. This would only mean that I need an extra outfit.

• Information Search

This is where the next question arises what kind of outfit is needed and which shops in town sell would best fit my occasion? I could scout for the best shops from newspapers or from a friend. I check the stress around town around town and I spot three different outfits in three stores.

• Evaluation of the Alternatives

I analyze the three outfits looking at the tiniest detail about each of them in order to choose the one that suits me most. The attributes speak for themselves here.

• Purchase Decision

At this stage I buy the outfit still considering the attitude of people towards Continental company since it’s my choice and I start worrying incase the actual price is lower that the price I bought it for.

• Post Purchase Decision

I could suffer from cognitive dissonance if my friend attends the concert with a better looking outfit which she bought at a cheaper price in another shop or due to any other reason. However, I could get so many compliments by those in the concert and I get more satisfaction from the outfit. This makes Continental company the only place to shop and I will tell most of my friends about it.

The consequence of my problem has resulted to a sale increment for Continental company, more sales opportunity if I was satisfied by the product and a decrease if I did not like their product.

Marketing Strategy Proposition

As the marketing manager of Continental company, one of the things i would do to avoid any complaints would be:

• Offer a small discount just to make sure that if we are offering the exact same product with a competitor, I will always seem cheaper. This will make customers to always prefer my company because it seems cheaper.
• Advertise with the idea of passing information that prices have dropped. E.g. “extremely low prices at Continental-hurry hurry while stocks last!!!”
• Avoid poor quality products and services so as not to give room for any quality-based complain from the customer
• Make the customers my advertising agents. This can only be done if I ensure that the customer is totally satisfied. This makes it easier for them to tell other people hence advertise in a very natural way with no related costs.
• Maintain good relations with the customers such that even if he buys a shirt and he notices a problem when he gets home, he will not go telling other people but will instead come for correction and everything else goes back to normal.
• Always have in mind that the customer is the most important person in my organization and inform all the employees.

Works Cited

Continental Clothing Company Limited UK (2009). Retrieved on December 3, 2009 from http://www.continentalclothing.com/