A large number of factors influence our behaviour. Kotler and Armstrong (2008) classify these as:
Psychological (motivation, perception, learning, beliefs and attitudes)
Personal (age and life-cycle stage, occupation, economic circumstances, lifestyle, personality and self concept)
Social (reference groups, family, roles and status)
Cultural (culture, subculture, social class system).
Below you will see Figure 1, which adapts the above factors to a health behaviour context, providing a model which also explicitly emphasises, together with cultural factors, other features such as the economic environment as an element of the wider social context.
Source: Hastings (2007)
Figure 1 The wider determinants of health behaviour
As you can see, the immediate environment approximates to Kotler's social factors. Many studies of both commercial and social marketing emphasise the influence of family, friends and others on our decisions. Peer group pressure is an important influence and may be negative or positive.
Figure 1 illustrates an approach known as social-cognitive theory which is based on the proposition that our behaviour is determined by both personal and environmental factors.
The consumer decision process helps you understand the steps people go through when they are deciding whether and what to buy. Many different factors can influence the outcomes of purchasing decisions. Some of these factors are specific to the buying situation: what exactly you are buying and for what occasion. Other factors are specific to each person: an individual’s background, preferences, personality, motivations, and economic status. Because no two people are exactly alike, it is difficult to predict how the tangled web of influencing factors will ultimately shape a final purchasing decision. For marketers, an understanding of these factors provides a more complete view into the mind of the customer. As you learn more about what influences decisions for your particular target segment, product category, brand, and competitive set, you can use these influencing factors to your advantage. What you say to customers, the words you use, the people who say them, the images they evoke—all of these things can link back to that web of influencing factors at work in a purchaser’s mind. Great marketing uses those connections powerfully and effectively to win the minds and hearts of customers. The specific things you’ll learn in this section include:
- Describe situational factors that influence what and when consumers buy:
- Buying situation
- Market offerings
- Describe personal factors that influence what and when consumers buy:
- Demographics (age, economic status, etc.)
- Life stage
- Lifestyle
- Describe psychological factors that influence what and when consumers buy:
- Motivation and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as it pertains to marketing
- Perception, learning, belief
- Describe social factors that influence what and when consumers buy
- Culture, subculture, social class, family, reference groups
- Culture and marketing in different countries
- Situational Factors pertain to the consumer’s level of involvement in a buying task and the market offerings that are available
- Personal Factors are individual characteristics and traits such as age, life stage, economic situation, and personality
- Psychological Factors relate to the consumer’s motivation, learning, socialization, attitudes, and beliefs
- Social Factors pertain to the influence of culture, social class, family, and reference groups
This is not ideal from the customer’s point of view, but it does happen. For example, suppose you are a student on a campus in a small town many miles from another marketplace. Your campus and town have only one bookstore. You need a textbook for class tomorrow; only one particular book will do, and only that bookstore carries it. Amazon and other online retailers have the book at a lower price, but they can't get the book to you overnight, so you're stuck. In this case the limitation on alternative market offerings has a clear influence on your purchase behavior.
As you saw in the smartphone example, when the extent of market offerings increases, the complexity of the problem-solving process and the consumers’ need for information also increase. A wider selection of market offerings is better from the customers' perspective, because it allows them to tailor their purchases to their specific needs. However, lots of choices may also confuse and frustrate the consumer, such that less-than-optimal choices are made. Marketers can find opportunities in either scenario—a crowded competitive set and a complex decision for the consumer, or a narrow competitive set with limited choices and a simpler decision for the consumer. In a crowded field, the marketer's challenge is to make compelling offerings and useful information prominent in the consumer's processes for gathering information and evaluating alternatives. In a narrow field with limited choices, effective marketing can help the consumer feel good about the choice they had to make. A good experience with the product during and after purchase is a recipe for brand loyalty. In addition to situational factors, there are also individual traits and characteristics that can shape purchasing decisions. These include things like demographics, life stage, lifestyle, and personality. Demographics are an important set of factors that marketers should not overlook when trying to understand and respond to consumers. Demographics include variables such as age, gender, income level, educational attainment, and marital status. Each of these can have a strong influence on consumer behavior.Historically, marketers have made much of generational differences—focusing on the best ways of reaching different cohorts such as Baby Boomers, Generation Xers, Millennials, and so on. Many of the distinctions between these groups are related to the groups' ages and related needs at any given point. For example, as Baby Boomers head into their retirement years, marketers target them with messages about prescription drugs and other health care products, insurance, home and financial security—all issues of growing concern for people as they age. Generational differences can also be factors in they ways people use media and where they go for information to inform their consumer choices. A 2013 study found that Millennial moms (birth years 1981–1997) were online "followers" of 22.5 brands, on average, while Generation X moms (birth years 1965–1980) followed just 13.7 brands online. Understanding differences like these can be essential to developing the right marketing mix whenever age is an identifying factor in market segmentation.
Gender is also a defining characteristic for many consumers, as is the marketing that targets them. You have only to watch TV ads during an NFL game and the TV ads during the women-oriented talk show The View to see how the different needs and wants of men and women are translated into marketing messages and imagery.
- Activities and interests (e.g., hunter; fitness enthusiast; fashionista; foodie; lawyer; musician; pet lover; farmer; traveler; reader; homebody; crafter, etc.)
- Opinions about oneself and the world (e.g., politically conservative; feminist; activist; entrepreneur; independent thinker; do-gooder; early adopter; technophobe; populist; explorer, etc.)
Marketers are often attracted to lifestyle as a segmentation schema because it helps reveal a deeper, more vivid picture of consumers and what makes them tick. As marketers try to create strong emotional connections between the brands they promote and the consumers they serve, they are selling more than product features. They are selling a sensibility, an attitude, a set of values they hope will resonate strongly with the target segments they want to reach.. . . lifestyle patterns combines the virtues of demographics with the richness and dimensionality of psychological characteristics . . . Lifestyle is used to segment the marketplace because it provides the broad, everyday view of consumers lifestyle segmentation and can generate identifiable whole persons rather than isolated fragments.
Where personality does come into play more prominently is in the notion of brand personality. Brand managers strive to cultivate strong, distinctive, recognizable personalities for the brands they promote. The personality gives dimension to the brand, opening the door for consumers to connect with the brand emotionally and identify its personality as consistent with their own values and self-identity. In this case there is a blurry line between the use of lifestyle and personality to understand and appeal to target customers. If you run down a list of super-brands, though, it is easy to recognize the power of brand personality at work: Apple, Coca-Cola, Walt Disney, Star Wars, Google, and Nike, to name a few.
When we talk about psychological factors that influence consumer decisions, we are referring to the workings of the mind or psyche: motivation, learning and socialization, attitudes and beliefs.
Safety and security are second in Maslow’s hierarchy. Safety and security needs imply a continued fulfillment of physiological needs, as well as the absence of the threat of physical harm. Safety and security encompass both physical and financial security, because financial security is linked to a person's ability to have her physiological needs met. Health and physical well-being and protection from accidents are also associated with this level of need. This is considered an extension of the more basic needs.
Love and belonging are third in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Love encompasses the needs for belonging, friendship, human intimacy, and family. They involve a person’s interaction with others and the need to feel accepted by social groups, large or small.
Self-esteem is the fourth level. Self-esteem includes the need to feel good about oneself, to be respected and valued by others, and to have a positive self-image.
Self-actualization is the fifth and highest level in Maslow’s needs hierarchy. Also described as "self-fulfillment," this is the need humans feel to reach their full potential and to accomplish all that they can with their talents and abilities. Different people may express this need in very different ways: for one person, self-actualization might involve musical or artistic pursuits, for another, it's parenting, and for a third the focus might be athletics. At different points in their lives, individuals may express this need through different pursuits.
In his work, Maslow asserts that these five levels of needs operate on an unconscious level. In other words, people may not even be aware that they are concentrating on one particular level of need or an assortment of needs. Maslow's theory suggests that lower levels of need must be met before an individual can focus on higher-level needs. At the same time, a person may experience several different needs simultaneously. How an individual is motivated to act depends on the importance of each need. When we think about Maslow’s needs hierarchy in the context of marketing and segmentation, we might use the hierarchy to help identify a common level of needs for a given segment. Effective and powerful marketing may operate at any level of Maslow's hierarchy. Consider the following examples:- In-N-Out Burger's freeway billboards featuring a giant, 3-D cheeseburger (physiological needs)
- Procter & Gamble's "Thank You Mom" ad campaign featuring dedicated parents of Olympic athletes and their loving relationships (love & belonging)
- The U.S. Army's famous "Be All You Can Be" slogan and advertising campaigns encouraging young adults to join the army (self-actualization), shown in the following video.
Learning is an experience and practice that actually brings about changes in behavior. For example, in order to learn to play tennis, you might learn about the rules of the game and the skills tennis players need. You would practice the skills and participate in tennis games to gain experience. Learning can also take place without actually participating in the physical experience. You can learn about something conceptually, too. In other words, you could learn to play tennis by observing experts and reading about it without actually doing it. This is called nonexperiential learning.
Reinforcement is the process of having your learning validated through rewards or punishments, which confirm that what you learned was correct. Over time, reinforcement can shape strong patterns of behavior. Suppose a consumer's first car purchase is a Subaru. He loves the car and finds it to be safe, reliable, energy efficient, and a great value for the money. Each positive experience with his car rewards him and reinforces what he has learned about Subarus: they are great cars. When he decides to replace the car, positive reinforcement will almost certainly lead him to consider a Subaru again. Reinforcement can work in positive or negative ways, with consumers experiencing rewards or punishments that influence their decisions.
Socialization is the process by which people develop knowledge and skills that make them more or less able members of their society. Socialized behaviors are learned and modified throughout a person's lifetime. This social learning approach stresses "socialization agents" (i.e., other people), who transmit cognitive and behavioral patterns to the learner. These people can be anyone: a parent, friend, celebrity spokesperson, teacher, role model, etc. In the case of socialization in consumer behavior, this takes place in the course of the person's interaction with other people in various social settings. Socialization agents may include any person, organization, or information source that comes into contact with the consumer.
Consumers acquire this information from other individuals through the processes of modeling, reinforcement, and social interaction. Modeling involves imitation of the agent's behavior. For example, a teenager may acquire a brand-name preference for Adidas from friends and teammates. Marketers can take advantage of this idea by employing product spokespeople who have strong credibility with their target consumers, as in the case of NBA star LeBron James for Nike. As noted above, reinforcement involves either a reward or a punishment mechanism used by the agent. When a colleague compliments a coworker on her outfit, it conveys a rewarding message about the type of clothing to wear to work. Marketers may use reinforcement by providing good product performance, excellent post-purchase services, or some similar rewarding experience. Social interaction may include a combination of modeling and reinforcement in a variety of social settings. These variables can influence learning by having an impact on the relationship between the consumer and other people.
Attitudes and beliefs represent another psychological factor that influences consumer behavior. A belief is a conviction a person holds about something, such as "dark chocolate is bitter," or "dark chocolate is delicious," or "dark chocolate is good for baking." An attitude is a consistent view of something that encompasses the belief as well as an emotional feeling and a related behavior. For example, an attitude toward dark chocolate may be expressed as a belief ("dark chocolate is delicious"), a feeling ("dark chocolate makes me happy"), and a behavior ("I eat dark chocolate every afternoon as a pick-me-up"). People have beliefs and attitudes about all sorts of things: food, family, politics, places, holidays, religion, brands, and so on. Beliefs and attitudes may be positive, negative, or neutral, and they may be based on opinion or fact. It is important for marketers to understand how beliefs and attitudes affect consumer behavior and decision making. If an incorrect or detrimental belief exists among the general population or a target audience, marketing efforts may be needed to change people's minds. For example, in 1993, rumors erupted and spread widely about a syringe allegedly being found inside a can of Diet Pepsi. The entire incident turned out to be a hoax, but PepsiCo responded not only with strong immediate public statements but also with videos and a public relations campaign to quell the rumors and reassure consumers that Pepsi products are safe. Beliefs and attitudes do not always translate into behaviors: in some situations customers may choose to do something despite their personal views. Suppose a consumer likes pizza but doesn't like Pizza Hut. In a social setting where everyone else wants to go to Pizza Hut for dinner, this person might go along with the group rather than dining alone or skipping dinner. When consumer attitudes present a major stumbling block, marketers have two choices: either they can change consumers' attitudes to conform with their product, or they can change the product to match attitudes. Often it is easier to change the product than to change consumers' attitudes. Attitudes can be very difficult to change, chiefly because they are intertwined with a pattern of beliefs, emotions, and behaviors. Changing the attitude requires changing the whole pattern. As a rule, it is easier for marketing to align with existing attitudes rather than trying to alter them. However, marketers may look for opportunities to reshape or create new attitudes in moments when consumers may be more open-minded, as with a product redesign or a new product introduction.Just how powerful are consumer attitudes and beliefs? Are they so powerful that they can fool consumers during a taste test? Watch the following video to see the power of consumer attitudes in action as a journalist conducts a taste test to see whether people's brand-loyal attitudes can overrule the reality of what they are tasting.
Read a transcript for the video "Heinz and Packaging."
Social factors represent another important set of influences on consumer behavior. Specifically, these are the effects of people and groups influencing one another through culture and subculture, social class, reference groups, and family. A person's culture is represented by a large group of people with a similar heritage. Culture exerts a strong influence on a person's needs and wants because it is through culture that we learn how to live, what to value, and how to conduct ourselves in society. The American culture, which is a subset of the Western (European) culture, will be the primary focus of this discussion, although other societies in other parts of the world have their own cultures with accompanying traditions and values.Traditional American culture values include freedom, hard work, achievement, security, self-reliance, community involvement, and the like. Marketing strategies targeted to people with a common cultural heritage might demonstrate how a product or service reinforces these traditional values. There are three components of culture that members of that culture share: beliefs, values, and customs. As discussed in the prior section, a belief is a proposition that reflects a person's particular knowledge or opinion of something. Values are general statements that guide behavior and influence beliefs. The function of a value system is to help people choose between alternatives in everyday life and prioritize choices that are most important to them personally.
An expensive example of a massive cultural blunder was Wal-Mart's short-lived foray into Germany. In 2006, the retailer pulled out of Germany after opening eighty-five stores in six years. The company expected success in Germany using the formula that works well in the U.S.: streamlined supply chain, low-priced products sold in big stores with wide selection and long operating hours. What Wal-Mart didn't account for was the strong cultural preference in Germany for several things that directly oppose the Wal-Mart model. Germans prefer small and medium-sized retailers grounded in local communities. They have a cultural suspicion of low prices, which create concern about quality. German law includes significant restrictions on retail establishments' operating hours and many labor protections, and these laws are viewed, in part, as important in protecting the German quality of life. Due in large part to these cultural disconnects, Wal-Mart was unable to sustain successful operations.
Subcultures are cohesive groups that exist within a larger culture. Subcultures develop around communities that share common values, beliefs, and experiences. They may be based on a variety of different unifying factors. For example, subcultures exist around the following:- Geography: Southerners, Texans, Californians, New Englanders, midwesterners, etc.
- Ethnicity: Latinos, Asian Americans, African Americans, etc.
- Religion: Catholics, Jews, Mormons, Baptists, Muslims, etc.
- Nationality: Italians, Koreans, Hungarians, Japanese, Ethiopians, etc.
- Occupation: military, technology worker, state department, clergy, educator, etc.
A noted example of effective marketing to a subculture is Ford Motor Company's approach to serving the African American community. Ford invests in advertising campaigns that specifically target the black community and celebrate its diversity. Ford supports a number of scholarship and community-building programs at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Through public relations activities, Ford maintains a presence at significant events, such as the Essence Festival and the BET Awards.
The following video shows how a shopping mall managed to save itself by catering and marketing to the Latino subculture.Read a transcript of the video "Demise of the Mall and Reinvention".
Some manifestation of social class is present in virtually every society. It's determined by a combination of factors including family background, wealth, income, education, occupation, power, and prestige. Like culture, it affects consumer behavior by shaping individuals' perceptions of their needs and wants. People in the same social class tend to have similar attitudes, live in similar neighborhoods, attend the same schools, have similar tastes in fashion, and shop at the same types of stores. In some nations, the social class system is quite rigid, and people are strongly encouraged to stay within their own class for friendships, marriage, career, and other life decisions. In other countries, such as the United States, social class is more permeable, and people can move between classes more easily based on their circumstances, behaviors, and life choices. Social class mobility is an important value in mainstream American culture and is part of our collective belief system about what makes the nation great. In the U.S., the most common social classification system is illustrated in the figure below.Upper Class makes up 1% of the population. Characteristics of the upper class include
- Heirs, celebrities, top corporate executives
- $500,000+ income
- Elite education is common
- Managers, professionals
- $100,000+ income
- Highly educated, college and graduate degrees are likely
- Skilled contractors, craftspeople, artisans, semi-professionals, autonomy in work environment is common
- $35,000 to $75,000 income
- Some college, training, secondary education is likely
- Clerical, blue- and pink-collar workers, job security is often a problem.
- $16,000 to $30,000 income
- High School Education
- Poorly paid positions and/or reliance on government assistance
- Some high school education
Source: Thompson, W. & Hickey, J. (2005). Society in Focus. Boston, MA: Pearson, Allyn & Bacon.
For marketers, social class may be a useful factor to consider in segmentation and targeting. It provides helpful context about how consumers view themselves and their peer groups, their expectations, life experiences, income levels, and the kinds of challenges they face. For example, if a marketer wishes to target efforts toward the upper classes, they should realize that, first, this is a very small proportion of the population, and second, the market offering must be designed to meet their high expectations in terms of quality, service, and atmosphere. Having enough money is a persistent concern for people in the lower, working, and lower middle classes, so price sensitivity and value for the money are important for products targeting these groups. Consumer behavior can be influenced by the groups a person comes into contact with, through friendship, face-to-face interaction, and even indirect contact. Marketers often call these reference groups. A reference group may be either a formal or informal group. Examples include churches, clubs, schools, online social networks, play groups, professional groups, and even a group of friends and acquaintances. Individuals may be influenced by the groups of which they are members. They may also be influenced by aspirational groups–a reference group a person hopes to belong to one day, such as young boys hoping to grow up and become Major League Soccer (MLS) players.
- Role expectations: Reference groups prescribe a role or way of behaving based on the situation and one's position in that situation. For example, as a student, you are expected to behave in a certain basic way under certain conditions when interacting with a reference group at school.
- Conformity: Conformity the way we modify out behavior in order to fit in with group norms. Norms are "normal" behavioral expectations that are considered appropriate within the group. To illustrate, in a school lecture setting, you might conform to the group norm of raising your hand to make a comment or question, rather than shouting out to the teacher.
- Group communications through opinion leaders: As consumers, we are constantly seeking out the advice of knowledgeable friends or acquaintances who can provide information, give advice, or even make the decision for us. In some product categories, there are professional opinion leaders who are easy to identify, such as auto mechanics, beauticians, stock brokers, or physicians. In a school setting, an opinion leader might be a favorite teacher who does a good job explaining the material, a popular administrator who communicates well with students and parents, or a well-liked fellow student who is willing to assist when peers ask for help–or all of these individuals.
- Word-of-mouth influence: Consumers are influenced by the things they hear other people say. This is "word-of-mouth" communication. It happens every time you ask someone for a recommendation or an opinion about a product or service, and every time someone volunteers an opinion. Do you know a good dentist? Where should we go for lunch? Have you heard that new song from . . . ? Not surprisingly, research consistently shows that word-of-mouth information from people they know is more credible than advertising and marketing messages. Word-of-mouth influence in the school reference group example might include students discussing which Spanish instructor is better, or where to shop for a dress to wear to the homecoming dance.
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Page 2
Up to this point, our discussion about decision making has focused on individual consumers (B2C). Next we will shift attention to the decision making of businesses and other organizations when they are considering what to buy (B2B). While many of the same principles apply in business-to-business purchasing decisions, there are important differences that warrant discussion. The specific things you’ll learn in this section include:
- Explain the B2B purchasing decision process
- Describe factors influencing B2B purchasing decisions
- Differentiate between B2C and B2B purchasing decisions
- Who will take part in the buying process?
- What criteria does each person use to evaluate prospective suppliers?
- What level of influence does each member of the process have?
- What interpersonal, psychological, or other factors about the decision team might influence this buying process?
- How well do the individuals work together as a group?
- Who makes the final decision to buy?
The straight rebuy is the simplest situation: the organization reorders a good or service without any modifications. These transactions are usually routine and may handled entirely by the purchasing department because the initial selection of the product and supplier already took place. With the modified rebuy, the buyer wants to reorder a product but with some modification to the product specifications, prices, or other aspects of the order. In this situation, a purchasing agent may be involved in negotiating the terms for the new order, and several other participants who will use the product may participate in the buying decision.
The buying situation is a new task when an organization considers buying a product for the first time. The number of participants and the amount of information sought tend to increase with the cost and risks associated with the transaction. For marketers, the new task is the best opportunity for winning new business because there is no need to displace another supplier (which would be the case for the rebuy situations).
For sales opportunities that are new tasks, there may be an opportunity for a solution sale (sometimes called system selling). In these opportunities, the buyer may be interested in a provider that offers a complete package or solution for the business problem, rather than individual components that address separate aspects of the problem. Providers win these opportunities by being the company that has both the vision and the capability to provide combination of products, technologies, and services that address the problem–and to make everything work together smoothly. Solution sales are particularly common in the technology industry.
B2B purchasing decisions include levels of complexity that are unique to organizations and the environments in which they operate. The organizational decision process frequently spans a long period of time, which creates a significant lag between the marketer's initial contact with the customer and the purchasing decision. In some situations, organizational buying can move very quickly, but it is more likely to be slow. When personnel change, go on leave, or get reassigned to other projects, the decision process can take even longer as new players and new priorities or requirements are introduced. Since a variety of factors can enter the picture during the longer decision cycles of B2B transactions, the marketer's ability to monitor and adjust to these changes is critical. Organizational buying decisions frequently involve a range of complex technical dimensions. These could be complex technical specifications of the physical products, or complex technical specifications associated with services, timing, and terms of delivery and payment. Purchases need to fit into the broader supply chain an organization uses to operate and produce its own products, and the payment schedule needs to align with the organization's budget and fiscal plans. For example, a purchasing agent for Volvo automobiles must consider a number of technical factors before ordering a radio to be installed in a new vehicle model. The electronic system, the acoustics of the interior, and the shape of the dashboard are a few of these considerations. Because every organization is unique, it is nearly impossible to group them into precise categories with regard to dynamics of buying decisions. Each organization has a characteristic way of functioning, as well as a personality and unique culture. Each organization has its own business philosophy that guides its actions in resolving conflicts, handling uncertainty and risk, searching for solutions, and adapting to change. Marketing and sales staff need to learn about each customer or prospect and how to work with them to effectively navigate the product selection process. Because organizations are made up of individual people, many of the same influencing factors discussed earlier in this module apply in B2B settings: situational, personal, psychological, and social factors. At the same time, B2B purchasing decisions are influenced by a variety of factors that are unique to organizations, the people they employ, and the broader business environment.
Marketers can participate in this stage by maintaining well-designed Web sites with useful information and case studies, working with opinion leaders to make advantageous information available, using content marketing strategies to make credible information available in sources the buyer is likely to consult, and publishing case studies about customers using your products successfully. Consultative selling (also called personal selling) plays a major role as marketers or sales personnel learn more about the organization's goals, priorities, and product specifications and provide helpful information to the buyer about the offerings under consideration.
During the next stage of the process, qualified suppliers are invited to submit proposals. Depending on the nature of the purchase, some suppliers send only a catalog or a sales representative. More complex purchases typically require submission of a detailed proposal outlining what the provider can offer to address the buyer's needs, along with product specifications, timing, and pricing. Proposal development requires extensive research, skilled writing, and presentation. For very large, complex purchasing decisions, such as the solution sale described above, the delivery of a proposal could be comparable to a complete marketing strategy targeting an individual customer. Organizations that respond to many proposals typically have a dedicated proposal-writing team working closely with sales and marketing personnel to deliver compelling, well-crafted proposals. At this stage, the buyer screens the proposals and makes a choice. A significant part of this selection involves evaluating the vendors under consideration. The selection process involves thorough review of the proposals submitted, as well as consideration of vendor capabilities, reputation, customer references, warranties, and so on. Proposals may be scored by different decision makers using a common set of criteria. Often the selection process narrows down vendors to a short list of highest-scoring proposals. Then the short-listed vendors are invited to meet with the buyer(s) virtually or in person to discuss the proposal and address any questions, concerns, or gaps. At this stage, the buy may attempt to negotiate final, advantageous terms with each of the short-listed vendors. Negotiation points may cover product quantity, specifications, pricing, timing, delivery, and other terms of sale. Ultimately the decision makers finalize their selection and communicate it internally and to the vendors who submitted proposals. Consultative selling and related marketing support are important during this stage. While there may be procurement rules limiting contact with buyers during the selection process, it can be helpful to check in periodically with key contacts and offer any additional information that may be helpful during the selection process. This phase is an opportunity for companies to demonstrate their responsiveness to buyers and their needs. Being attentive during this stage can set a positive tone for how you will conduct future business. The buyer now writes the final order with the chosen supplier, listing the technical specifications, the quantity needed, the warranty, and so on. At this stage, the supplier typically works closely with the buyer to manage inventories and deliver on agreement terms. In this final stage, the buyer reviews the supplier's performance and provides feedback. This may be a very simple or a very complex process, and it may be initiated by either party, or both. The performance review may lead to changes in how the organizations work together to improve efficiency, quality, customer satisfaction, or other aspects of the relationship. From a marketing perspective this stage provides essential information about how well the product is meeting customer needs and how to improve delivery in order to strengthen customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. Happy, successful customers may be great candidates for published case studies, testimonials, and references for future customers. Dissatisfied customers provide an excellent opportunity to learn what isn't working, demonstrate your responsiveness, and improve. As noted above, the complete eight-stage buying process describe here applies to new tasks, which typically require more complex, involved purchasing decisions. For rebuys and routine purchases, organizations use abridged versions of the process. Some stages may be bypassed completely when a supplier has already been selected. Organizations may also use e-procurement processes, in which an approved supplier has been selected to provide a variety of standard goods at pre-negotiated prices. For example, an organization may negotiate an e-procurement agreement with Staples that allows employees to order office supplies directly from the company using an approval workflow in the ordering system. These systems help simplify the buying process for routine purchases, while still allowing appropriate levels of approvals and cost controls for the buyer.CC licensed content, Shared previously
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