Page 72 - DMGT408DMGT203_Marketing Management

Unit 3: Consumer Markets and Consumer Buying Behaviour

Notes
Figure 3.2: Five Stage Model Buyer Decision Process
Needs Recognition & Problem Awareness

Information Search

Evaluation of Alternatives

Purchase

Post-purchase Evaluation

Stage of Need Recognition and Problem Awareness

A buying process starts when a consumer recognizes that there is a substantial discrepancy
between his current state of satisfaction and expectations in a consumption situation. Need is an
internal state of felt deprivation. A consumer must have a countless set of needs but he becomes
aware about few of them when a feels devoid of certain experiences of product or service, whose
existence would have otherwise made him satisfied. This explanation assumes that consumers
always become aware of their needs through internal process of realization of deprivation. But
in reality, the marketer can make the consumer aware about a particular need through
communication or the social environment may make him aware about a particular need.

Example: Needs related to basic instincts like hunger, sex, thirst, are the needs that have
the capacity of self-arousal. Whereas social needs like ownership of products and services related
to social class belongingness and status are aroused by the individual customer’s socialization
process. Through marketing communication program marketers expose consumers to new
products and services for the satisfaction of some latent hidden need.
A need can be activated through internal or external stimuli. The basic needs of a common man
rise to a particular level and become a drive and he knows from his previous experience how to
satisfy these needs like hunger, thirst, sex, etc. This is a case of internal stimulus. A need can also
be aroused by an external stimulus such as the sight of new product in a shop while purchasing
other usual products. There is a two-fold significance of need arousal stage to a marketer:

The marketer must identify the drive that might actually or potentially connect with the
product class or brand and make the buyer feel that the product can satisfy his needs.
He should also recognize that the need levels for the product fluctuate over time and are
triggered by different cues. The marketer can arrange cues to conform better to the natural
rhythms and timing of need arousal.

So mere existence of a need does not initiate a decision making process. When this need is
backed up by goal directed behaviour, it is called a motive. Motives are more dynamic and
kinetic compared to needs, which are static in nature. Motives bring both propensity to search
for information and propensity to spend energy to acquire that information.

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