Understanding Individual Factors Influencing Customer Behavior

This paper discusses the impact of attitude and perception on customer behavior and decision making process. It also sheds light on how marketers can apply this knowledge to conduct successful businesses. The discussion is presented with an intention to work for a sports shoe manufacturing company.

Running head: CUSTOMER BEHAVIOR
Customer Behavior
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

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Introduction
Consumer behaviour refers to the acquisition, consumptions as well as selection of the
goods and services in order to meet their needs and wants (Baker, 2016). There are several
different processes that are involved in the consumer behaviour that deeply influence the buying
behaviour of the customers. Some of the individual factors that influence the behaviour of the
consumers are that of their perception towards the products, the motivators, their needs, their
personality, their learning and involvement and their attitudes. This paper would elaborate on
identifying two individual factors i.e., attitude and perception that influence the customer
behaviours and has an impact on their purchase decision process. It would also shed light on how
those factors must be considered along with the consumer decision making and experiences.
Lastly, the paper would also discuss on how the marketers could apply the understanding of the
individual influence on the consumer decision making in order to conduct their businesses
successfully in the market. It is also to note than the paper discussion below is presented with an
intention to work for a sports shoe manufacturing company.
Discussion
1. Two individual factors that influence the behaviour of the customers
Attitude
It is a psychological process that is related to the emotions of the customers and in this
process, the customers recognising the needs for buying a particular product and then they finds
out the way of solving out their needs by making a purchase decision such as planning whether
or not they should buy the product and then they confirms the information while jotting down a

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plan and then implements it. The attitudes of the customers are considered to be both
advantageous and disadvantageous to the marketers (Keller, 2016). It is defined as the process of
evaluation of a particular product or service that has formed over time. Attitude of the customers
satisfies their personal motive and at the same time, it also influences buying and shopping
behaviour or habits of the consumers. As according to Payne, Frow and Eggert (2017), consumer
attitude is the composite of their behavioural intentions, their feelings and beliefs that they
posses towards a particular object within the marketing context. A consumer can hold both
positive and negative attitude towards a specific product. The one with a positive attitude
towards any product is more likely to buy that product often and this then finally results in the
likelihood of liking and disliking a product. The attitude of the customers are basically comprises
of their beliefs, feelings and behavioural intentions (Dienlin & Trepte, 2015). The term
behavioural intentions refer to the plans of the customers with respect to the services and the
products. It is sometimes a very logical result of the feelings and their beliefs but not always. For
example, when a person personally does not like a particular restaurant but he visits that often as
his friends like to hangout there. Furthermore, beliefs too plays an important role in the process
of consumer decision making experiences as of the fact that it could be either negative or
positive towards a particular product and service (Park & Nicolau, 2015). For example, for some
people tea is a very good mode of relieving tensions and stress, while on the other hand, for some
other group of people tea is not considered to be advantageous for health. However, it is also to
note that the human beliefs are not consistent and they have the tendency to change with time
and according to different situations. Also, customers hold certain feelings towards some of the
brands and products. May of the times, these feelings are dependent on certain beliefs. For

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example, a customer feels uneasy when she thinks about a cheese burst pizza as because of the
fact that they use huge amount of cheese on it which means it has excessive fat.
Consumer behaviour of a person is highly influence by the consumer behaviour of the
other people he is in contact with. The mechanism is more of a sociological than of
psychological (Katsikeas et al., 2016). Therefore, customers get fads, gadgetry, trends, stable
staples, virtual standards and fashion standards. Hence, it can be said that it is a behaviour
driving behaviour where some people engage their systems of values along with their attitudes in
the purchase decision making. Attitude is also considered to be the favourable and unfavourable
emotional feeling or condition of the customers. It is the tendency of reaction to a certain specific
actions and behaviours of them (Lee and Hong, 2016).
How individual attitudes should be considered among with consumer decision making
The attitudes and beliefs of every individual are shaped by his culture. Hence, the culture
of an individual gratifies the different emotional requirements and needs of him and due to this
they attempt to save both their beliefs as well as their cultural values (Zimbardo & Boyd, 2015).
Such type of cultural protection is portrayed in the attitude of a man as consumers. Culture has
great potential to enhance the need of the consumers and might also affect their indulgence of
those needs (Howie et al., 2018). As a major part of the efforts of marketers for convincing the
buyers to buy their products or services, they often make use of cultural representations,
especially in promotional appeals. By this method, culture shapes the manner the purchasers
fulfil their needs. It is very important for the marketers to take into consideration the factors that
influence the buying behaviour of the customers before entering into the market. Understanding
the individual factors that have the potential to affect their behaviour; like that of their attitudes
and behaviours would help them to market their products and services on right time to the right

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customers (Keller, 2016). For example, if the marketer is marketing the products that are Halal,
the markets must first consider the factors that could influence the customers to buy the Halal
products where they could target the particular areas where the Halal foods are sold more.
Perception
Perception too has a major part to play in the process of consumer purchasing decision
process. Customers continuously synthesize every information that they have regarding a certain
company in order to form a decision about whether that firm offers value to them or not. In that
sense, perception is considered to be an approximation of the reality. The businesses all over the
world attempts to affect this perception of the customers through different means such as by
trickery or even by manipulating they but often they present themselves in the best possible light.
One of the best examples of it could be that of the advertisements that often trumpet the
convenience and quality of the services and products with a hope to foster the perception of the
customers of high value that could in turn pay off while increasing the sales. In the field of
marketing, the term perception can be defined as the process through which the customer
identifies, interprets and organises the information in order to create a meaning. An individual
would selectively perceive what he would ultimately classify as one of his needs and wants
(Berman, 2016). It is a psychological variable that is involved in the making of the purchase
decision process which is also known to be as influencing the customer’s behaviour. It is one of
the crucial concepts in the interpreting of the consumer buying process and could also help in
guiding the marketing efforts. It is also to note that one of the key factors that influence the
perception of the customers is exposure (Hudson et al., 2016). The more information that the
customers have about a particular product, the more will be their comfort level while making the
purchase. This results in the businesses to do all they could do to publicize their offerings to the

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customers. In this process, the businesses not only just expose their services and products to the
customers but also make a stand to make their products stand out of the crowd. With the same,
the risk perception of the customers is another factor that the businesses should take into
consideration while trying to encourage the buying behaviours of the customers. It has been
stated by (Linder & Williander, 2017)), that the more risky is the proposition, the more difficult
it would be to get the customers to act. If the consumers are not familiar with a particular brand
of the product, they cannot access the risk that us involved in it and hence, it could be build
poorly and too costly when compared to the substitutes. The businesses could overcome this
phenomenon of hesitancy through means of offering more information about their products and
services to the customers in order to handle the products in the stores or to test them at their
home and also to reduce the risk perception as it is done by the offering of flexible return policy.
How individual attitudes should be considered among with consumer decision making
As described before, perception is defined as the way man interprets the world around
them and makes sense of it in his brain (Rumelhart, 2017). He does so through the stimuli that
influence the different senses of his like that of smell, taste, sight, touch and hearing. The way he
combines all these makes the difference. For example, in a study conducted recently the
consumers were blindfolded and were asked to drink a product (a clear beer) from a new brand.
Most of the candidates said that the product tasted like that of their regular beer but when the
blindfold were came off and when the researchers asked them to drank the beer again and many
of them described the same beer as tasting “watering”. The consumers are bombarded with lots
and lots of messages and advertisements on the televisions, magazines, radio, and internet and
even on the bathroom walls (Hossain, Sultana & Biswas, 2015). Average number of customers is
exposed to near about 3,000 advertisements each day. People now-a-days surf internet every now

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and then and check television and cell phones for text messages simultaneously. Although it is
also to be noted that not all the advertisements makes it into the human brains and the selection
of the information that we see or hear is known to be the selective exposure. The business must
examine the reality in order to change the perception of the customers towards their brand
(Schivinski & Dabrowski, 2016). They must first understand what the people are thinking about
them. They must ask for open-ended feedback and that too without leading questions. In the
current world of modernisation and globalisation, social media is a huge platform for the
businesses and the marketers in order to promote their business as well as to gather customers
from them. The business therefore, must take this into account. Social media provides many
opportunities to listen to the customer’s feedback as most number of people now-a-days makes
use of social media in order to show their positive and negative perspective about the products
and the services that they have experienced at some or the other phases of their life. Furthermore,
the business must try and understand their customers (Roberts et al., 2017). Gathering the
feedbacks provided by them through different medium would enable the business to understand
their customers through analysing the reasons behind their thoughts. It is very important for the
businesses to create opportunities for the conversation and the act upon those feedbacks. For
example, there would be some customers who would like to get more mobile content while the
business is focusing on the desktop content. All of this information should be taken into
consideration by the business before developing an actionable plan in order to give the customers
what they were looking for the business. It is also to be noted by the business that it must explain
its people why they need to work differently and why the perception of the customers are so
important for the business productivity. It is to note that the brand perception of any business

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starts with its people and once they have decided what is needed to get changes, the change
would only take place if the people working their adopts the same as their own.
How marketers can apply understanding of individual influences on consumer
decision making
If the businesses fail to understand their customers and the factors that are affecting their
buying behaviour, they would fail to convince the customers to buy their products or would fail
to meet their demands. Some of the factors could not be observed directly. In that case, a
thorough understanding of the different theories and concepts of the customer behaviours would
help the marketers to predict the buying behaviour of the consumers to a notable extent
(Frederiks, Stenner & Hobman, 2015). Hence, a good understanding of the customer behaviour
to buy a product is very complex and that needs the business men to continuously understand as
well as apply certain theories and concepts for the successful business and marketing. Perception
is referred to as the process through which a person selects, organises and interprets the stimuli
in a coherent as well as meaningful picture of the world. It could also be described as how a
person see the world around him. These include their own personal thoughts, feelings, attitudes,
memory and motivation. In most of the cases, the behaviour that a customer projects in any
situation is alike to the behaviours that she exhibits in any other situations. For the businesses it
is therefore very important to now that the customers make purchase decisions in order to
support their self-concept (Vigneron & Johnson, 2017). The marketers could also make use of
the Weber’s law in order to vary the product prices, qualities, quantities, attribute mixes and
ratios ingredients.
The buyer or the consumer decision making process is the process that is used by the
marketers for identifying and tracking the process of decision making of a buyers journey right

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from the very beginning to the end. It is divided into five different individual stages that are
demonstrated below:
1. The problem recognition- the very first stage in the process is working out for what
the customers actually needs, Customers usually feels like something is missing out
and they need to address them in order to get back to normal. When the marketers
identify and determine when their target demographic is developing these wants and
needs, it is the ideal time for them to advertise those products of their needs to them
(Howie et al., 2018). For example, in our case we identified that the running trainers
of the cities were searching for a new and innovative pair of shoes and hence, we
acknowledge their need of it.
2. Search for information- It is considered to be the stage of search of the whole process.
In the modern days, the platform for searching information about a particular product
by the customers has shifted to making use of Google from the old fashioned way of
shopping around. Also, it is to mention that now-a-days information are not only
gathered on a particular product or thing via general websites but also through the
recommendations and previous experiences that the people might have had with their
various products. At this stage, customers begin to think about the risk management
and they might then tend to jot down the pros and cons of the product in order to
assist themselves in making their decision on the purchasing (Chen, Huang & Petrick,
2016). Customers often do not want to regret after making a purchase decision hence,
it would be better if the marketers put extra time into the managing of the risk
3. Evaluation of the alternatives- at this stage, different questions arise in the mind of
the customers. They start to think that is it the right product for them or do they need

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any different product to fulfil their needs. Once the customers are determined that
would be buying the particular product and that would satisfy their needs effectively,
they then start to seek out for the best deals (Lee, 2015). The read out many reviews
and feedbacks and then compare the product prices with the ones that are considered
to be its substitutes in the market. They then choose the one that they think would
satisfy most of their set parameters. Hence, the business must analyse while
questioning that is there actually any need for the product to introduce in the market?
For example, in my case I would be suggesting to whether there is actually any need
for running shoes among the players and is there any alternative of the same already
present in the market.
4. Purchasing- At this stage, the customers decide on the buying decision depending on
the knowledge that are gathered after analysing what to purchase and from where to
make the purchase that the customers desire (Liao et al., 2017). During this stage, an
individual has either assessed and analysed all the facts and information about a
product that is to be purchased and has come to a final and logical conclusion that is
made based on the emotional connections, motivation, beliefs, demographic and
group influence and by the experiences of others. Advertisements or marketing
campaigns too could influence them well to make an ultimate decision on the
purchase making or it might also be a combination of all of the above mentioned
factors. In our case, we bought some rather nice Asics runners as because we had a
really good experience with them earlier. They were both well priced and the
marketing around the Asics trainers has always related them to being the best
available options for the true athletic trainers. It is also to be mentioned that the

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positioning of the product would also lent it to where they were bought from which
is- a sport shop instead of a shoe shop.
5. The satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the post purchase- It is one of the key stage for
both the company as well as the customer. It is also called as the stage of reviewing.
At this stage, the customers assess that whether the product has delivered the
promises that were promised by the advertisements and the marketing campaigns
(Nadiri, 2016). They analyse whether the product has matched or have exceeded their
expectations. When the customers find that their purchasing decision was right and
the product has indeed matched their expectations and has matched the promised that
were made by the advertisements, they would then potentially become the brand
ambassadors of the product and they then tend to become one of the influencing agent
that encourages and influences other potential customers. It is these customers who
boost the chances of the products being purchased again. With the same, it is also to
mention that the same is also true for the ones that gather negative feedbacks of the
customers. If there is any negative feedback of the customers on the product then
could give a halt to the purchase making of the future customers who would be well
aware of the negative aspects of the products (Xiang et al., 2015). In that case, the
marketers must try their best to give the best product to the customers. It is also true
that the negative feedback is not always destructive for all. For example, after making
a purchase of a cloth of size XL, if the customer gives his feedback that the product is
smaller than the expected size or is bigger than that, it would make the future
customers to be aware of this fact and it would be considered as positive one as
because of the fact that the potential customers will get any idea of the product size

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and then would buy the product either smaller or in bigger in size. In our case, we
would recommend the trainers to a friend and on purchasing our next pair of trainers
would probably make a similar product or brand choice. The satisfaction of ours has
made our company as a brand ambassador for the firm who created the wonderful
trainers of ours.
Conclusion
The purchase decision making process of the customers are really very complex as that
comprises of all the five stages right from the process of recognition of their needs, information
search, evaluation of the available substitutes, purchase making and the post-purchase
evaluation. The perception of the customers towards a particular thing (in this case, any product
or services of a firm) determines their needs to purchase a particular product and then comes the
period of motivation that motivates them for giving it a try. After then comes the question of to
choosing a thing from such a wide range of available options in the market. Here again comes
the importance of the perception of the family members and friends as they play a very important
role part in the decision making. It is from the attitude and perception of the society as well as
their near and dear ones that a customer chooses to buy a particular product from wide range of
present alternatives.

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