Consumer Behaviour and Insight: Stages of Decision-Making Journey, B2C vs B2B, Market Research, and Marketer's Influence

This report discusses the importance of understanding consumer behaviour and decision-making journey, the differences between B2C and B2B decision-making, various market research methods, and how marketers can influence the decision-making process. It also includes examples from Unilever and other sources.

Customer behaviour
and insight

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
TASK - 1..........................................................................................................................................3
P1. Explaining the stages of the consumer decision-making journey for a given
product/service............................................................................................................................3
P2. Explain why it is essential for marketers to map a path to purchase and understand
consumer decision-making..........................................................................................................4
TASK - 2..........................................................................................................................................5
P3. Compare and contrast the key variation of the decision-making process in the context of
B2C and B2B..............................................................................................................................5
P4. Measure the various approaches to market research and methods of research used for
understanding the decision-making process in both Business to Consumer and Business to
Business contexts........................................................................................................................6
TASK - 3..........................................................................................................................................7
P5. Measure how marketers can influence the various stages of the decision-making process
of B2C and B2B, giving specific examples................................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
The organisation needs to enhance the customer experience which can help them to
achieve better results in the market (Bozkurt, Gligor and Babin, 2020). The report aims to
analyse about understanding the consumer behaviour and use various logistics in order to attain
maximum customer satisfaction. On the other hand, in this report the main focus of this report is
to evaluate the customer decision making journey. The organisation can provide the essential
goods and services to the customers. Along with that, there are various differences which could
be arise in the decision making process. For further instance, there are different stages which is
been analysed in the decision making process.
TASK - 1
P1. Explaining the stages of the consumer decision-making journey for a given
product/service
Consumer decision making process has various stages the company can identify the
relevant stages which can help them to focus on quality of their products and services (Eybers
and Mayet, 2020). The stages of decision making process is been described below:
 Need recognition – This is the stage in which the consumers can identify what are their
needs. The organisation can enhance the quality of their products which will help to
attract the new audience and significantly influence the customer decision in an effective
manner. Unilever is focusing on enhancing the overall quality of their products which
will help them to attract new audience.
 Information search – This is the stage in which the customers search about the products
or service. This will satisfy their needs or not. Unilever focuses on providing the products
which are beneficial for the customers. They can use it in an effective manner in their day
to day activities.
 Evaluation of alternatives – There are various alternatives which could be search by the
individual. Unilever has the diversified portfolio in which the customers can choose the
change of products and services.
 Purchase decision – This is the stage in which the customer purchase the products or
service by analysing very factor. Unilever focuses in providing the great quality products.
This will help them to enhance the overall sales in the market.

 Post purchase decision – In this stage the customer has doubts about their products or
services which they have purchased from the organisation. Unilever takes the customer
feedbacks in order to improve their services and products. The company also solve
various problems of the customers after purchasing the products.
P2. Explain why it is essential for marketers to map a path to purchase and understand
consumer decision-making.
The marketers are required to map a customers journey path due to following reasons -
 Providing good experience – The requirements of customers are being evaluated with
the help of customer journey map this enables customers in experiencing good experience
(Fahey, 2020). Hence, as per the requirements of customers Unilever makes the required
product available to its targeted customers. By getting the desired products customer
satisfaction level improves and they turns into repeated customers.
 Achieving organisational objectives – The organisations are able to fulfil the needs and
wants of customers this is who they are able to seek of lot of customers. The one of the
main objective of Unilever is to enhance its customers base. When the customer base of
company is huge then they will achieve economies of scale and will be able to make
products offers to its customers at low prices.
 Brand positioning – The Unilever is able to move in the directions where they can
satisfy customers wants, thus results in enhancing their brand value in front of its
prospective customers. The image of Unilever keeps on improving in front of customers
and positive image is being created.
 Enhancing sales – The choices of customers are determined which helps organisations in
making more sales. When the customers get products as per the demand then they will be
able to grab attention of most of the customers. With the help of effective research team
the Unilever is able to make sales of its products effectively and keeps on enhancing its
sales volume.

TASK - 2
P3. Compare and contrast the key variation of the decision-making process in the context of
B2C and B2B.
It is seen that all the business organisation are different from one another (Fahey, 2020).
There is need of analysing the difference and selecting the best available decisions making
process for them. There is need of working in such a manner that best results are being gained
properly. In business to business (B2B) that products are being sold by the business
organisations to the businesses. It is necessary to note that in business to customers (B2C) the
products are being provided to the customers. The difference among them is explained below:
Business to business Business to customer's
The business organisation analyses the needs
and wants of the other businesses and provide
them products accordingly. The decisions are
being taken as per the requirement of the
businesses (Slagmulder and Devoldere, 2018).
The decision-making process is designed as per
the requirement of the customers. The business
organisation takes the decisions to attract more
and more customers. This is necessary to
manage the work as per the desired needs and
wants of customers.
In businesses to businesses the size of audience
is small, as other businesses are the only
customer.
The customer base available in Business to
consumer is large as they are serving
customers available in whole market.
The businesses to businesses organisations
mainly focuses on generating sales. They does
not make focuses on brand value as they are
self centric.
The main focus of business to consumer is to
build brand value of its company. With the
positive image of organisation they are able to
survive in market for long run.
The businesses to businesses organisations
have to maintain a long term relationship with
each other, which makes this a long term
purchasing cycle.
The businesses to consumer organisations do
not have to make random purchases which
makes this process short cycle. The customers
keeps on switching products as per their
requirements.

P4. Measure the various approaches to market research and methods of research used for
understanding the decision-making process in both Business to Consumer and Business
to Business contexts.
The needs, wants and requirements of customer could only be evaluated with the help of
effective Market research with is being prepared by the organisation (Hanafizadeh, Barkhordari
Firouzabadi and Vu, 2021). After going through the research process its is possible to understand
the decision making process of customer at the time of making purchase. Different customers
have different taste and preferences so as per it they made purchase of different products. It is
difficult for organisation to understand demand of individual customers thus, they make use of
research. The research can be primary and secondary, both kind of research is used in order to
evaluate decision making process of customer.
The primary research is considered as fresh research because the data is being collected
by the organisation for the first time. The instruments though which primary research is
conducted is questionnaire, interview, case study and so on. From a particular zone or area
random samples are being selected for conducting research. Here, samples are considered as the
individuals who are selected for conducting research. Through out this process directly
interaction among customers and organisations are made which makes the research process more
accurate. In Business to business the researcher directly visits their place and have questions
regarding the products manufactured by them. Along with this they take suggestions what kind
of improvement can be made by them. The organisation even ask about the most demand
products among the customers, as they are the resellers and interact with customers directly. In
case of Business to customer the organisations prepares questionnaire or conduct online surveys
which are to be filled by customers. After filling the questionnaire it made easy for organisation
to evaluate the opinion and decision making process of customers, which helps in pitching
products to them.
The other type of research is Secondary research, which is collected from the already
published journals, books, newspapers or through any other source. The organisations are able to
save lot of time cost and efforts through out this research process because data is already
published. The businesses to business model is getting benefit in understanding the competitors
strategies with the help of secondary data. The competitors analysis is crucial for understanding
competitors strategies and taking necessary actions to beat them. The secondary data also helps

in understanding rules and regulations framed by government, along with legal formalities
imposed by legislative bodies. The previous data helps organisation in evaluating its balance
sheet and profit and loss statement.
TASK - 3
P5. Measure how marketers can influence the various stages of the decision-making process
of B2C and B2B, giving specific examples.
The customer goes to certain steps before deciding either they want to make purchase or
not. Starting from the initial stages marketers want to attract its customers base thus they take
actions to ensure customer can be attracted (Liu, Hu and Qu, 2022).
The marketers are capable to influencing the decision making process of customers with
the help of using some strategies, which are being stated below -
 Marketers can study customer behaviour – The marketers are capable to evaluating
the need and wants to customers by evaluating their behaviour. The markets produces the
products which is being desired by customers. This is how the services provided by
organisations helps customer in enhancing their experience as they are getting products
which they want. The customer feels satisfied when they get good quality of products at
reasonable prices along with some uniqueness within it. Thus organisation are involved
in putting efforts in direction though which customer can feel satisfied and can retain
with the organisation for longer duration of time. The customer will also turned into loyal
and repeated customers if marketers are capable to influence them.
 Providing best services to customers – Once the customer had make purchase from the
organisation then some issue may arise within the product. Here, the customer faces
difficulty and want it to get back to its normal positions (MONISHA, 2019). In this
situation when the customers are provided with the after sales services by the
organisation, customers will feel satisfied. The customer even turns into repeated and
loyal customers when they are getting effective services facilities. Even customer choses
some of the brand due to the service facility provided by them.
 Target right set of customers – The companies does not produce same kind of products,
the portfolio of individual organisation comprises of certain products. The products
produced by organisations in not targeting single group of customers. Different products

are being produced for different group of customers. Some customers belongs to higher
income group and prefer to purchase premium quality of goods. Where as, some of the
customers can not afford high quality of products this is why form they low quality of
products are produced. This is why, organisations launches different products with
different brand to seek attention of all customers.
CONCLUSION
From the above report, it is concluded that markets need to understand consumer
behaviour so that their requirements not be evaluated. It behaviour of customer gives an idea to
its customer that which kind of products they need to produce. With the help of customer
decision making journey it makes easy for organisations to analyse buying pattern or behaviour
of customer. The organisations are able to make enhancement in its sales and revenue, along
with enhancing brand value. The business to business model is a model under with one business
sells its product to other business unit, where as business to customer model is under which
customer can directly sell its products to customers. With the help of primary and secondary data
markets performs research which helps organisation in evaluating the market trend and customer
behaviour. The marketers are capable of influencing behaviour of customer by following some
strategies.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Bozkurt, S., Gligor, D.M. and Babin, B.J., 2020. The role of perceived firm social media
interactivity in facilitating customer engagement behaviors. European Journal of
Marketing.
Eybers, S. and Mayet, R., 2020, May. From data to insight: a case study on data analytics in the
furniture manufacturing industry. In International conference on integrated science (pp.
392-405). Springer, Cham.
Fahey, L., 2020. An Insight Culture: The Role of Leaders. In The Insight Discipline: Crafting
New Marketplace Understanding that Makes a Difference. Emerald Publishing Limited.
Fahey, L., 2020. The Insight Discipline. In The Insight Discipline: Crafting New Marketplace
Understanding that Makes a Difference. Emerald Publishing Limited.
Hanafizadeh, P., Barkhordari Firouzabadi, M. and Vu, K.M., 2021. Insight monetization
intermediary platform using recommender systems. Electronic Markets, 31(2), pp.269-
293.
Liu, J., Hu, B. and Qu, H., 2022. Exploring the Moderating Role of Employee Entitlement:
Insight into the Social Support Paradox. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research,
p.10963480221112368.
MONISHA, M.A., 2019. CUSTOMERS INSIGHT ON SERVICE QUALITY TOWARDS
RETAILING. RETAILING: TRENDS IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM, p.293.'
Slagmulder, R. and Devoldere, B., 2018. Transforming under deep uncertainty: A strategic
perspective on risk management. Business Horizons, 61(5), pp.733-743.