Evaluation of Decision Making Process in Buying a Family Car

This report evaluates the decision making process of the Bradford family in buying their first family car. It discusses the level of involvement, consumer decision making process, need recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, and purchase decision. Recommendations for effective decision making are also provided.

Running head: MARKETING
Marketing
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Executive summary
The purpose of this report is to evaluate the decision making process of the Bradford family and
find out their preferences while making decision. This reports talks about a case study involving
the Bradford’s family wanting to buy their first family car. In this report, the level of
involvement, consumer decision making process, need recognition, information search,
evaluation of alternatives and purchase decision of the Bradford family will be discussed. Along
with this, recommendations in order to make effective decisions will also be provided in this
report.

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Introduction
Mr and Mrs Branford want a reliable mean of transport in order to aid their movement and
hence is planning to get a family car. They are looking for a budget family car in order to take
them to work as well as at school. The aim of the report is to understand the factor that impose
impact on their decision making process. While the family falls under full nest II tier (Lawson
1991), their young son will influence their decision making criterion to a good extent (Calvert
2008).
1.1. Involvement Level
Being their first car, the couple desires the car to be comfortable as well as perfect.
Considering the fact that they will have a good numberof criterions to meet, heir buying
behaviour will be highly complex. They will conduct deep investigation in order to identify their
preferred model from a range of given models and thus the involvement level will be high
(Bojanic and Warnick 2012).
2. THE CONSUMER DECISION MAKING PROCESS
The mentioned process is complex and involves recognition of needs and taking action
on the basis of the recognition.

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2.1. Recognition of Need
In the mentioned stage the mentioned family has gained the awareness of their desired
state in comparison with the actual condition (Pride and Ferrell 2007). They decided to buy car
after cancellation of their local bus service. The two chief criteria recognized by the family
includes safety of their sun and restricted budget. Other risks are discussed in the following table
Financial Risk undecided budget
Physical Risk Safety of their son

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Time Risk time needed for searching and fixing of the car
Social Risk  Social reputation
 Cultural mainstream
Performance Risk Concernsrelated to reliability, safety, fuel economy,
maintenance, technology and others
Table 1: Decision making risks
2.2. Information Search
2.2.1. internal versus external search
Bradfords focused on cars with limited but most desired features. This helped them to
eliminate the options that lack the features. Extensive effort was required due to the complexity
of the decision making process(Hauser et al. 2009). After both verbal and theoretical research,
the family shortlisted Toyota, Mazda, Nissan, Hyundai and Honda. The chosen cars are
affordable as per their middle class status. Children are considered to have a huge amount of
influence during household purchase (Foxman et.al 1989).
2.3. Evaluation Of Alternatives
2.3.1. Awareness set and consideration set
Purchase decision is affected by a series of factors that involves sex-role, spouse, culture
and socioeconomic status. The models are evaluated on the basis of attribute scale that benefits
the consumers. While Mrs Branford is considering social status, Mr. Bradford is giving
importance to maintenance of culture. The family will use attribute based evaluation process in

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order to narrow down their choices and help them in selecting model for their purchasing
decision.
Figure 2: Consumer decision process
2.4. Purchase Decision
Considering the fact that both male and female partner have equal say in the middle class
society, Bradfords will take a joint decision (Kim and Lee 1988). Along with this, social class
and the closeness of mothers to their children will also affect the decision making (Besemer and
Dennison 2018). The following table demonstrates the decision making units of the family.
Decision making units

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Initiator Mr. and Mrs. Bradford
Influencer Friends and Family
Decision maker Mr. and Mrs. Bradford
Buyer Mr. and Mrs. Bradford
User Whole family
Table 2: Decision-making unit for the Bradford’s family
High involvement and investment is need for effective decision making (Albarasin 2013).
In the following table, an evaluation criterion for compensatory rule has been performed.
Evaluation
criteria
Mazda Honda Toyota Nissan Hyundai Important
score
Price 5 3 3 4 2 4
Fuel
Economy
3 4 5 4 3 3
Ride and
Handling
5 5 5 2 5 2
Safety 3 3 4 3 5 5
Resale
Value
1 3 1 3 1 1

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Table 3: Important score for compensatory rule evaluation
Source(Chan, 2016)
Mazda = 4(5)+3(3)+2(5)+5(3)+1(1)=55
Honda = 52
Toyota = 58
Nissan = 50
Hyundai = 53
According to the compensatory rule, Toyota is the best choice for the Bradford’s family
2.5. Post Purchase
This factor depends on the satisfaction level of Mr. And Mrs. Branford after purchasing
the car. It also enables the family to gain first time experience of the performance of the car and
make decision on the basis of their expectation (Kotler and Armstrong 2008). In this stage the
common theories are the attribute theory as well ascognitive dissonance are ordinary at this
stage(Singh and Nayak 2016).
3. CONCLUSION
Consumers possess a good number of requirements of which they are unsure and this is
the reason for the decision making process. Being a complex process, during family decision
making conflicts may arise. Considering the fact that Bradford family falls under nest II, they
experience less number conflicts compared to others. It has been seen in this report that the

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couple has chosen Toyota after disposing all the available options for disposal. In the long run,
the Toyota car is expected to cater the requirement of the family and ensure limited physical,
time as well as financial risk. This decision will also fill the want-got-gap.
4. RECOMMENDATIONS
In order to ensure more effective decision making in the future, recommendations have been
discussed in the following paragraph.
 First of all, Branfords requires accessing both their hedonic as well as utilitarian values
during making effective decisions.
 Secondly, car dealers requireto guarantee their customers about the reliability and
capability of the cars to meet the requirement of fuel consumption that can financially
suit them.
 Car dealers should incorporate insurance packages on their cars, as this will enable the
consumers to perform less work and looking for insurances deals after purchasing the car.
 Car dealers needs to record real life testimonials of their satisfied customers in order to
let other consumers be acquainted with their level of satisfaction.
Overall, various internal as well as external factors like extra care facilities, different
information provided by car dealers, contributes in making car purchasing behaviour of the
consumers.

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