What should I buy...?

This week’s lesson was about the buying decision process, the perceived risk model, Gestalt psychology and again about perception.

We started with a group activity. The task was to draw a word picture of a typical Over 50 year old. Almost all groups drew a man. Our group used words like “glasses”, “grandchildren” or “The Beatles”.  These words came to our mind, because we thought about people we know; how they behave, what they like or what they do.

The first theory we talked about was Kotler’s Buyer Decision Process.  This process is divided into five steps:

1.      Need recognition (I am hungry, I want to eat a chocolate bar)

2.      Information search (Which chocolate bars are there? How much do they cost? Are there any specialties?)

3.      Evaluation of alternatives (Shall I buy Snickers or Mars or Wispa or…? Which is the best/cheapest?)

4.       Purchase Decision (I will buy Wispa!)

5.      Post-purchase Behaviour (Good one, I will buy it again! / Bad one, Snickers would have been better…)

This model applies to purchase decisions for products which are expensive (a car or a house), new technologies or a new purchase for the buyer or for gifts. Otherwise you will skip step 2 & 3.  More about the buyer decision process can you read on this page.

The Buyer Behaviour is highly influenced by ones attitude towards risk. This perceived risk can be definied as: A functional or psychosocial risk a consumer feels he/she is taking when purchasing a product. Perception of risk is subjective and varies from person to person. Laurent & Kapferer (1985) defined six different kind of risks:

-          Financial (Can I afford the purchase)

-          Time (How long does it take to buy this product? How much effort is needed?)

-          Performance (Is it working?)

-          Ego (Makes the item me cool? Is it building self-esteem?)

-          Physical (Can the product hurt me?)

-          Social (What do my friends think about my purchase?)

In the following activity we should discuss the different risks for a 21-year old and a 46-year old, when they buy 1. a car, 2. a mobile phone or 3. underwear for their partner.  Buying a car for a 21-year old for example has a high financial and social risk, because he normally doesn’t have a lot of money and it’s important to him, what his friends think about it. But the financial and social risk for a 46-year old is just medium. Probably he has more money and it is less important what his friends think about the car, because it is more important to him that the car is safe and has enough space for children. This shows that people have a different attitude towards risk, depending on their expectations and wishes.

The second step in the perception process is attention. To grab the attention of the customers and potential buyers is an important aspect, when we talk about the design of advertisement. For example can you use pretty & famous people presenting your product, huge posters, repetition or contrasts. 

We then talked about the perceptual set. This can be defined as a predisposition to perceive something in relation to prior perceptual experiences. In other words, the perceptual set is an internal rule book for everyone that helps us to interpret things we perceive. 

Another point we discussed in class was Gestalt psychology. One of the founders, Max Wertheimer, said about this theory: “There are wholes, the behaviour of which is not determined by that of their individual elements, but where the part-processes are themselves determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole. It is the hope of Gestalt theory to determine the nature of such wholes.”  It is based on the four following rules:

1.      Figure & Ground (The main object is in the foreground, the background does not get closer attention)

2.      Grouping (We group items together which have similar characteristics)

3.      Closure (We see incomplete pictures, e.g. the mind fills the gaps in an incomplete picture)

4.      Stimulus Ambiguity (We see a form or an item, but need the context to interpret it)

In the following video you can see some pictures as examples for Gestalt psychology:

Here you can find out more about Gestalt psychology, its founders and the Gestalt laws. 

The last thing we talked about was perceptual maps. A perceptual maps shows two dimensions (for example high/low price and High/low quality) and you can see where on this map your product is and also the perception of other products in a particular market. These maps show how the consumers see a brand regarding its quality or other dimensions. Moreover, it can help a seller to develop a marketing strategy.

Anyway, that’s it for today. I hope you learned something and I hope you will also read the next posts;-)

Best wishes from Bucks

Rebecca