Page 144 - DMGT551_RETAIL_BUSINESS_ENVIRONMENT

Unit 7: The Customers and the Retail Business: Knowing Your Customers

values and customs, which serve to regulate the consumer behavior of members of a particular Notes
society. The important thing is values are deeply embedded in your psyche and living. Your
purchase behavior is invariably influenced by your faith in those values.
Again culture consists of material and non-material components. While material components
are the physical or tangible substances which people have been changed and used over a period
of time. It describes your behavior in various aspects of consumption in purchasing every article
necessary for your living. It can be your choice in automobiles, perfumes, dress and anything.

Non-material components include are the words you use, the ideas, customs and value you
share and the habits you follow. For all these you have nurtured fixed and variable images in
your mind. You may stick to your fixed ideas about purchase of shirts of a particular brand and
for pants, you may not have fixed ideas and therefore you keep on searching different styles and
brands in the market. If you have faith in the values of buying indigenously manufactured
goods, you will of course go for buying every article with a “made in your country” print on it.
Non -material components in culture mean beliefs and values that refer to accumulated feelings
and priorities which you have assigned to things.
Interests and activities: While you buy anything, unknowingly your behavior goes through
five stages:
1. Awareness
2. Interest
3. Evaluation
4. Trial
5. Adoption
At first you become aware of a specific product and related services. But in the first part of your
purchase behavior your interest is not sufficiently aroused. You are simply aware of the product.
But fresh stimuli keep on coming to motivate your interest. Those keep on coming in the shape
of advertisement or sales calls by the particular company. You just can not help your interest
levels because with stimuli from outside, your interest simply keeps on growing. As your
interest is sufficiently aroused, you would not go straight for a purchase rather you delve into
further information about the product. Then based on the information you receive, you begin
evaluating about the prevailing brands, their features, prices, service, and warranty of the
specific product. In the next stage you may not go for straight-forward buy of the product.
You may accept it with a condition for your use of three to six months. Many products drop out
of usage in the last part of purchase behavior because those fail to satisfy your ultimate satisfaction
level. You might discard it because in comparison to the earlier product, the present one may cut
a sorry figure. Then at length based on your satisfaction from the use, it becomes a part and
parcel of your daily life. The last stage is called adoption.

The companies seek relevant information to influence your purchase decision all through the
five stages. The information is collected through surveys and research.
Demographics: Demographics is again a study by dividing the population as per sex, age, income
and other related characteristics. The data about the above mentioned five factors may not be
same for the entire population. There we need to utilize information for every group of
individuals. Knowing their tastes and usage patterns is vital because it helps the manufactures
design products as per the information.
Media Patterns: For knowing about the new products, consumers have always trusted media as
a trustworthy source of information. Manufacturers and marketers always innovate or design a
product as per the choices of a particular class of consumers. They judge your age, social status,
group and other related characteristics and manufacture a product. Again they prepare a message

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