Factors Affecting consumer Behavior

Consumer behavior refers to the selection, purchase and consumption of goods and services for the pleasure of their wants. There are dissimilar processes complicated in the consumer behavior. Initially the consumer tries to find what commodities he would like to consume, then he selects only those commodities that promise greater utility. After selecting the commodities, the consumer makes an evaluation of the ready money which he can spend. Lastly, the consumer analyzes the prevailing prices of commodities and takes the decision about the commodities he should consume. Meanwhile, there are assorted other factors influencing the purchases of consumer such as social, cultural, personal and psychological. The explanation of these factors is given below.

1. Cultural Factors

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Consumer behavior is deeply influenced by cultural factors such as: buyer culture, subculture, and group class.

Factors Affecting consumer Behavior

• Culture

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Basically, culture is the part of every community and is the foremost cause of someone wants and behavior. The sway of culture on buying behavior varies from country to country therefore marketers have to be very truthful in analyzing the culture of dissimilar groups, regions or even countries.

• Subculture

Each culture contains dissimilar subcultures such as religions, nationalities, geographic regions, racial groups etc. Marketers can use these groups by segmenting the market into assorted small portions. For example marketers can make products according to the needs of a singular geographic group.

• Social Class

Every community possesses some form of group class which is foremost to the marketers because the buying behavior of citizen in a given group class is similar. In this way marketing activities could be tailored according to dissimilar group classes. Here we should note that group class is not only determined by revenue but there are assorted other factors as well such as: wealth, education, career etc.

2. Social Factors

Social factors also impact the buying behavior of consumers. The foremost group factors are: reference groups, family, role and status.

• Reference Groups

Reference groups have inherent in forming a someone attitude or behavior. The impact of reference groups varies across products and brands. For example if the product is illustrated such as dress, shoes, car etc then the sway of reference groups will be high. Reference groups also comprise thought leader (a someone who influences other because of his special skill, knowledge or other characteristics).

• Family

Buyer behavior is strongly influenced by the member of a family. Therefore marketers are trying to find the roles and sway of the husband, wife and children. If the buying decision of a singular product is influenced by wife then the marketers will try to target the women in their advertisement. Here we should note that buying roles convert with convert in consumer lifestyles.

• Roles and Status

Each someone possesses dissimilar roles and status in the community depending upon the groups, clubs, family, club etc. To which he belongs. For example a woman is working in an club as finance manager. Now she is playing two roles, one of finance manager and other of mother. Therefore her buying decisions will be influenced by her role and status.

3. Personal Factors

Personal factors can also sway the consumer behavior. Some of the foremost personal factors that sway the buying behavior are: lifestyle, economic situation, occupation, age, personality and self concept.

• Age

Age and life-cycle have inherent impact on the consumer buying behavior. It is determined that the consumers convert the purchase of goods and services with the duct of time. House life-cycle consists of dissimilar stages such young singles, married couples, unmarried couples etc which help marketers to make accepted products for each stage.

• Occupation

The career of a someone has important impact on his buying behavior. For example a marketing manager of an club will try to purchase business suits, whereas a low level employee in the same club will purchase rugged work clothes.

• Economic Situation

Consumer economic situation has great sway on his buying behavior. If the revenue and savings of a buyer is high then he will purchase more expensive products. On the other hand, a someone with low revenue and savings will purchase cheap products.

• Lifestyle

Lifestyle of customers is other import factor affecting the consumer buying behavior. Lifestyle refers to the way a someone lives in a community and is expressed by the things in his/her surroundings. It is determined by buyer interests, opinions, activities etc and shapes his whole pattern of acting and interacting in the world.

• Personality

Personality changes from someone to person, time to time and place to place. Therefore it can greatly sway the buying behavior of customers. Actually, Personality is not what one wears; rather it is the totality of behavior of a man in dissimilar circumstances. It has dissimilar characteristics such as: dominance, aggressiveness, self-confidence etc which can be useful to resolve the consumer behavior for singular product or service.

4. Psychological Factors

There are four foremost psychological factors affecting the consumer buying behavior. These are: perception, motivation, learning, beliefs and attitudes.

• Motivation

The level of motivation also affects the buying behavior of customers. Every someone has dissimilar needs such as physiological needs, biological needs, group needs etc. The nature of the needs is that, some of them are most pressing while others are least pressing. Therefore a need becomes a motive when it is more pressing to direct the someone to seek satisfaction.

• Perception

Selecting, organizing and interpreting data in a way to yield a meaningful sense of the world is called perception. There are three dissimilar perceptual processes which are selective attention, selective distortion and selective retention. In case of selective attention, marketers try to attract the buyer attention. Whereas, in case of selective distortion, customers try to interpret the data in a way that will sustain what the customers already believe. Similarly, in case of selective retention, marketers try to sustain data that supports their beliefs.

• Beliefs and Attitudes

Customer possesses definite reliance and attitude towards assorted products. Since such beliefs and attitudes make up brand image and sway consumer buying behavior therefore marketers are curious in them. Marketers can convert the beliefs and attitudes of customers by launching special campaigns in this regard.

Factors Affecting consumer Behavior

aid Mind, Behavior and How to Be excellent

I have been conducting assistance training courses throughout Thailand in hotels, hospitals, education institutions and retail businesses for many years. Often, I have received questions from supervision and owners of how to make employees have more assistance mind, how to make staff have good behavior in servicing guests or how to make citizen be able to deliver perfect service.

My answers have never been short, however, in brief, I wish to say that assistance excellence could be proceeded with a well-thought straight through procedure, perfect implementation and sufficient monitoring and corollary up.

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In this article, I like to touch first on "service mind" and "service behavior" for a clear and good understanding, because they are the core of assistance foundation.

aid Mind, Behavior and How to Be excellent

I believe some citizen are born to be assistance minded and many citizen are trained to be. For the "born to be" ones, these citizen just like to serve, to help, to make others feel comfortable and they will be very happy when others are happy. They are the citizen who have "mind" to "service", that's why they are "service minded people". This type of assistance is purely from a good heart. However, the citizen who have a mind to assistance may not all the time come with the "right behavior".

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"Service behavior" is the right and relevant behavior in the field. Many citizen do not have good behavior because they lack of life institution in their manner and lack of experience. Therefore, training is very prominent to make citizen understand what kind of "service behaviors" are unbelievable for guests. Most of citizen who have" assistance mind" have no question to accept the right "service behavior". However, some of the assistance minded citizen are not that fast in adapting the behaviors that are unbelievable in this generation. Let's take a hospital as an example! We all know that hospitals right now would like to be more international and want to upgrade their services, so good "service behaviors" are demandingly unbelievable especially from many high profile patients.

As mentioned above, I have conducted assistance training policy for many hospitals. Many staff and nurses love to help patient, but they may not legitimately speak nicely, and some of their manners are not good at all. They are truly there to help, but not be there to give good service. From my active training research, many citizen in most hospitals believe that "help and service" are separated. So, by training nursing people, I have to focus on manufacture them understand that - to truly help a patient, their assistance must be a kind of spiritual service. I mean that the assistance must come with the right behavior because the right behavior has a great impact to the patient's mind, relax and confidence.

In a short conclusion: To train citizen to be "service minded", the educator must be very sharp and use spiritual motivation techniques and also to emphasize at all times that the training is for their own improvement first. Because if the staff are not good, no way that the organization is going to be good. With confident and motivating training sessions, employees may moderately start to convert and come to be more a "service minded" person. Repetitive behaviors will convert citizen minds in most cases.

Finally, I like to add the prominent thing that; most staff are very motivated and wishes to assistance with the right behavior after the training session. But do you know the theorize why many employees lose their motivation to behave rightly day after day or even hour by hour.

I will tell you here: We train staff how to greet guest properly with smile and treat citizen with respect. But their supervision hardly smiles and approximately never greets staff first! Many times supervision not even responds to employees greeting. Moreover, most of the times, supervision never treat employees with respect. So, if the managers cannot or/ and are not willing to do, how the managers expect their staff to consistently do it. This fact is all the time the "number one" assistance failure at most associates I know. It is so easy for managers to watch other and criticism others! Why the managers never think what the staff wants out of them; legitimately all staff want a role model, want spiritual keep from their managers. That means managers must be a good example, not just a good commentator.

In my next article, I will start giving the reader bit by bit idea of how to achieve assistance excellence in an organization.

© Nate-tra Dhevabanchachai, normal Manager, Salaya Pavilion Hotel and Training Center, Mahidol University International College (www.salayapavilion) and Honorary Director of Mai-Bs (Thailand) firm Limited, a hotel and resort consulting and training firm http://mai-bs.com

aid Mind, Behavior and How to Be excellent