Consumer Behavior in Australia and Global Context

This reflective essay discusses consumer behavior in Australia and global context, focusing on customer loyalty and the impact of online business. It explores the role of marketing specialists and provides recommendations for organizations.

Running head: CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction
The main and objective of this reflective essay will be to discuss sabot the consumer
behavior in context of Australia as well as global context according to my point of view. The
set of readings which has biggest impact on me on understanding of the customer loyalty in
marketing will be discussed along with the viewpoint of myself. The current procedures of
the marketing specialists will be discussed along with the process which they can follow in a
different way will be discussed in this essay. It will reflect on my readings which has changed
and what I can do as a marketing specialist on future perspective of the business.
Consumer Behavior
Consumer behavior, according to me, is the study of the way or procedures by which
the individual customers, group of people or companies choose, purchase, use and deal with
the ideas, goods and services in order to satisfy the basic needs and wants of them. In one
word, it can be sad that it refers to the set of actions taken in the marketplace by the
consumers and the basic motives for those set of actions taken. I have found that the term
consumer behavior has gained a huge popularity in the marketplace globally in the world of
business as well as in marketing, as the consumers are being provided with various kind of
choices in the range of products and services by the organizations. I think that consumer
behavior is an art by which the people or the targeted customers behave to take a decision
about the purchase of a particular product or service. I belief that it is very much important as
well as essential to understand the behavior of the consumers to see their reactions towards a
particular product or service so that it will help the organizations to strategize their marketing
plans accordingly (Murphy and Dweck 2016). This will also help the organizations to
increase the market share of themselves. I have found in the researches that the Australian
people like to visit the normal retail outlets and grocery stores in Thursday evenings. Both

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men and women visit the supermarkets, but women prefer to visit the retail stores more than
men in the Australian society. Consumer behavior varies from place to place not only in
Australia, but throughout the whole world. I have also found that the homemakers are the
largest segment who used to purchase from the general retail outlets. The crowd is less in the
weekends than the weekdays in case of both grocery shopping as swell as general retail
shopping. But I have found from the researches and the studies that the consumers have to
face many complications during their decision making processes from the external forces, but
theories and models has been developed in order to minimize these complications
(Griskevicius and Kenrick 2013).
Impact of Customer Loyalty
According to me, the use of the evidence-based approaches is comparatively a recent
phenomenon while purchasing the products from the marketplace. Before the mid-20th
century, the organizations who are promoting their products and services paid little attention
on the consumer behavior and customer loyalty on individual basis, rather than the strategies
focused more on the mass as a whole. This included impersonal campaigns which
aggressively tried to convince the customers to make the purchases, and they are less focused
on the customer satisfaction part. From the early 1950s, the organizations began to recognize
the advantages of selling the products and the services to the customers. It helped the
companies to create and retain customer loyalty towards the brand. It can be said that the
consumer behavior theories are natural extensions of human behavior theories. The cognitive
approach helps to describe the observed behavior or action to intrapersonal understanding.
Here the individual consumer is viewed as an information processor. Cognitive approach is
utilized in many of the consumer behavior theories and it is categorized into two parts,
namely Prescriptive Model and Analytical Model, which can be again segregated into four
sub-parts, namely Consumer Decision Model, Theory of Buyer Behavior, Theory of

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Reasoned Action and Theory of Planned Behavior. Cognitive approach can be termed as the
buying tendency of the consumers towards a particular product or a service in spite of
presence of other brands of that particular product or service (Seiler 2013). Another model is
there, which is known as Howard and Sheth Model, who introduced the theory of Buyer
Behavior, which helps to explain the consumer behavior in the decision making process in
context of the brand selection of the consumers, within the pressure of restricted scopes and
inadequate information regarding the product or the service. The organizations are using the
different concepts of customer loyalty in innovative ways, which, according to me, will
attract more people and will help the people to buy among the various range of products and
services according to the behavior of the consumers. Every supplier focuses to create as well
as retain the loyal customers who will help the organizations to enjoy the profit earning of the
companies. Customer loyalty helps to measure the success of the organizations to retain a
long term relationship with them (Aigbavboa and Thwala 2013).
Changes in Consumer Behavior
The science related to the consumer behavior is continuously developing, which is
distinguished by contiguous change as well as refinement. Though there are theories and
models to define the behavior of the consumers in the marketplace, the ultimate decisions
will be taken at that particular moment when the consumers will go and decide to buy a
particular product or service among the brands available in the marketplace. I think it is based
on the information and converting ability, which occurs by evaluating the external evidences
of behaviours of the consumers and then allow the customers to make preferable choices for
the product or service that they desire to purchase according to their needs and requirements.
All the behaviour of the consumers depends on the marketing activities as well as the brand
knowledge followed by the organizations. According to me, all the advertising as well as
promotional activities are related to the improvement of brand awareness among the

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consumers, which helps to promote their buying behaviours and purposes and allow them to
make valuable decisions regarding their purchase of product or service (Vinerean et al 2013).
Online business has changed the behaviour of the consumers a lot, in every aspects of the
marketplace where a particular organization sale its product or service. People nowadays
have a lot of option available around them, which includes me as well, on the online
platforms of the organizations or some online buying portals from where the consumers can
choose the products according to their tastes and preferences. Most of the people are tech-
savvy in this modern world, and the percentage of smartphone users in the country of
Australia is around 70%. So, I think that the behaviour of the consumers has shifted to virtual
mode from physical mode, as the products can only be seen in the online platforms until and
unless it is getting delivered to the ultimate consumers (Zhang 2015).
Role of Marketing Specialists
I believe that like the other parts of the world, people in Australia are still working to
come out from the aftershocks of what happened in 2007 – 08, which can be termed as the
Global Financial Crisis, or GFC. The marketing specialists, like in the other mature market
economies in the world, are concerned with the broader implications of the buying power and
consumer behaviour and customer loyalty. The faithfulness among the consumers is a new
phenomenon, and not that old-fashioned standard consumer behaviour. The business
operations are not as usual as the earlier days. Faithful or loyal consumers can be termed as
those people who are going through a process of change. Some of these changes are
deliberate, while the others are a slow but steady shift, which is changing with the tide of
change of the sentiment of the people. I think that they feel concerned about the existing state
of affairs, they have a sense within themselves that they want things to alter as well as
recognizing that they can have some influence in changing them. The ethnical interests as

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well as the behaviours of faithful consumers differs broadly. For example, the online retail
market size of the country of Australia is near about 80%, or equivalent to around 7.4% of the
traditional bricks and mortar retail sector. The online sales have increased by up to 10%
(Xiang, Magnini and Fesenmaier 2015). So, it can be said that the behaviour of the customers
has shifted from offline to online mode, and accordingly the tastes as well as references has
also changed drastically.
Recommendations
According to my research and studies as a marketing specialist, I have observed that
eople are buying from the online portals from their laptops or smartphones. Web rooming and
online purchases from mobile devices are increasing day by day. The decision negotiator
includes the various features as well as attributes of the services delivered by an organization,
which affect the behaviours and attitudes of the consumers, which helps to assure the
fulfilment of the potentiality of the brand and also assuring higher level of satisfaction to the
consumers. One such can be seen in the case study. For example, the company of Airbnb
showed that various services are offered by the company, which included the services of
accommodation services, flight services and others. The services that are conveyed to the
customers whose attractiveness have made accessible for viewing to the customers in a
company managed website as well as through social media platforms, which has facilitated
the social media marketing and promotional activities to raise awareness among the
customers. The customers will be able to know about the different features about what the
company is offering to the customers so that it will also help the organization to know about
the different aspects of consumer behaviour towards availing the services of Airbnb
(Cantallops and Salvi 2014). According to me, the buyers developed a good amount of
decision mediators from the advertisements of the organizations as a whole. This actually
helps them to choose a particular band of product or service, just to understand whether that

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brand has enough potentiality to fulfil the requirements or not. The behavioural modelling
helped to estimate the purchases made by consumers as well as allowing the brand of product
or service to deliver customer loyalty programs, which will allow to monitor the spending
structures or patterns with more clarity. The models or theories of consumer behaviours have
also been applied in the field of mobile marketing, which I think has helped in explaining the
rationality of choice; and also to make choices for the specific products or services based on
the needs and requirements of the customers in the marketplace according to various terms
and conditions related to information about that brand of product or service. I have studied
and found that the people of Australia has a substantial amount of liquid assets, a high
standard of living, and a population who has a high demand for different types of product and
service available in the marketplace. The people out there has now shifted their consumption
of qualities which are of superior quality, as well as the presence in the social media
platforms has also changed the structure of behaviours of the consumers. According to me,
this has actually helped the organizations, as they now have the ability to measure the buying
pattern of the consumers, and can manufacture the products or design the services
accordingly, so that it will help to attract new people towards that brand as well as retaining
the old consumers of that brand (Goh, Heng and Lin 2013).
Conclusion
My point of view from the above discussed essay is that the consumer behavior
structure has changed overall after the development of technology and innovation of social
media platforms. And online presence of the brands. And this changes have impacted the
global market tremendously. The more number of available brands of a particular product or
service will automatically confuse the consumer as they have to select from more number of
brands, which are less few years back. This can be good as well as bad for the organizations
as they can have more number of customers within a specified period of time and on the other

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hand, they continuously are to innovate and develop their products and services to compete
and sustain in this competitive world.

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References
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