Understanding Customers: Contemporary Perspectives, Decision-Making, Perceptual Processes, and Future Trends

This report discusses the modern perspectives over consumption, individual decision-making and involvement, importance of perceptual processes in understanding individual consumers, consumers behaviour in society, and future trends in consumer behaviour.

UNDERSTANDING
CUSTOMERS

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Contemporary perspectives on consumption...............................................................................3
Individual Decision-Making and Involvement............................................................................4
Importance of perceptual processes in understanding individual consumers..............................4
Consumers in society (groups and social processes)...................................................................5
Future trends in consumer behaviour...........................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
Consumer behaviour refers to the study in which the individual customers, groups and
organizations with all the activities related to purchase, use, disposal of goods and service. It
helps in distinguishing to whom to target, how to target, when to reach, and what message will
be given in approaching towards the targets' audience. The behaviour of consumer is
multidimensional which is caused by the following ways' psychology, sociology, social
psychology, cultural anthropology. It is based upon the consumer's emotions, attitudes and
preferences which affect buying behaviour (Thøgersen, 2021)
This report will discuss the modern perspectives over consumption along with mention
the individual decision-making and involvement of customers into contemporary perception in
tourism sector. Apart from this, the study will also illustrate the importance of perceptual
processes in order to understand the general behaviour of the consumers specifically in business
management and tourism industry. Furthermore, it will also discuss the consumers' behaviour in
the society and future trends in consumer behaviour.
MAIN BODY
Contemporary perspectives on consumption
According to the contemporary perspectives over consumptions, the modern change has
take place after the introduction of the pandemic which has made drastic impact.
 Choosing a close destination : After the pandemic peoples are more aware about
travelling across, and more focused in following useful safety measures. Peoples choices
have become changed, and few of them prefer to go outside to their nearest destination.
They chose budget friendly destinations which follows the strict guidelines (Opute, Irene
and Iwu, 2020)
 Fear of travelling in groups : After the crisis people are feared of travelling in groups,
and they choose to travel individually with freedom. Group travels can also cause the
chances of risk. The group travelling creates a diverse effect on the tourism sector.
 Purchasing power of the peoples : After economic crisis, people adopt the various
methods like savings, spending money to the right place only, changing the travelling
strategies. Their purchasing power has decreased due to the economy crisis, they are
conscious about making investment only at the right place only.

 Restoration practices : Tourists started taking precaution towards eating healthy food by
avoiding eating the exotic meals which is unusual for their health purposes (Jiang and
Yu, 2019) Mostly peoples started to prepare their own food rather than eating in the
restaurant.
 Environmental awareness : Tourist are also conscious about the environmental factors,
peoples has concluded that they want to travel in future with more ecological,
responsible, wandering ways. These words draw the future aim for greener tourism.
Individual Decision-Making and Involvement
Consumer involvement is the process which motivates the consumer in making the
purchase, the importance of the consumer is to identify product or service, and their consumption
methods and behaviour. In decision-making there are different levels of involvements such as
low (habitual decisions), medium (simple decisions), high (lengthy decisions) The importance of
the product or service to the person impacts the level of involvements. Some factors that
influence the tourist decision in travelling.
 Personal Factors : An individual's nature is based on how, when, where he wants to
travel. The decisions are made by individuals himself. The economic condition depends
upon the individual in which how they plan their trip, expenses and the final decision is
made of visiting or not visiting the place.
 Tourism Destination : It is major decision-making factor which is based on tourist
behaviour, if the destination provides all the facilities like electricity, water, clean
surroundings, proper hygiene, it makes easier for them in choosing the right destination.
 Education of Tourist : If the individual is educated and have the knowledge of places, it
is beneficial for the tourist to easily selecting the destinations, and they have the huge
amount of choices (Klein and Sharma, 2022)
Importance of perceptual processes in understanding individual consumers
The perceptual process is consisted of the steps which individual follows and identify and
responds to stimuli from the environment. This process includes five steps :

1. Exposure to stimuli : This includes the five body sensor receptors such as sight, sound,
smell, texture, taste. Each of them can be utilized by the business for communicating the
message to the consumer.
2. The sensory receptors : The major five sensory receptors are present in all over the
body and each one work as the channel for communication. It highly influences, and act
as making sense of the content approaching from the environment. In the context of
tourism, from the perceptual process the taste is more suitable in which people can easily
make judgments in selecting the suitable restaurant which based upon the taste and it also
creates the difference between the people loving a restaurant or hating it.
3. Attention stage : The attention is make when the person stay and provides the mental
processing capacity towards the external stimulus by the product or brand. Attention
work as when the individual pay attention to the message according to the attitudes,
beliefs and needs (Elchlepp, Monsell and Lavric, 2021)
4. Interpretation : In this stage the people make sense of what they have previously
experienced. The interpretation work as the things which related to something and recalls
the memory.
5. Response : It is the way of reacting to the exposed to stimuli. The response work as how
the individual react towards the various stimuli.
There are some factors which affects the consumer behaviour :
 Psychological factors : this refers to affecting the consumer's ability in understanding
the communications. Psychologically, drive makes individual to do something if they are
not in their desired state they have to work in whatever the existence situation remains.
 Social factors : The behaviour of the consumer purchase if affected by their relatives,
friends or social backgrounds. Individual from the high class make the purchase on
luxurious items whereas the middle and lower class pay only on the necessary
requirements.
Consumers in society (groups and social processes)
Society means where the people make purchase on buying new goods, which locates the
higher value on owning things. In the society there are variety of products were the consumer has
the different roles of purchasing the products and services which also influence the buying

behaviour in the society. It is difficult for the individual to live in separation, they prefer groups,
and the members of the group perform in the certain manner (Giulianotti and Numerato, 2018)
The behaviour is mutually affected and the mutual state is the core of social life. The social life
is impossible without interactions, whereas social processes are the forms of social interaction
which occurs repeatedly. It means those ways where the people and groups interact with each
other and builds the social relationships. The various forms of social interactions are cooperation,
conflict, competition and accommodation.
Future trends in consumer behaviour
Future trends in the tourism basically called as the upcoming tourism trends, the mixture
of trends are linked up with general changes in consumer behaviour. Inside the tourism, number
of various developments has made changes in the consumer behaviour and business process. The
pandemic has increased peoples attention towards the hygiene, safety, use of cashless payments.
The changes which takes place in consumer behaviour as future trends are :
 Safety and hygiene : After the effect of Covid-19 in airlines, cruise, hotels, and
restaurants the safety and hygiene measures are useful. There are numerous of future
trends in relation with it which has started cleaning, social distancing, sanitization and
mask facility. According to the situation it has spread the fear among the people who
travelling across, the safety and hygiene measures has make people believe it is safe.
 Growth of cashless payments : The use of online payments has increased and helped
many customers to make the payments hassle free without carrying their debit or credit
card. With pandemic, this process has increased the great demand and it also helped the
tourism sector the cashless payments booking of hotels are done easily. Online payments
modes like G pay and apple pay has taken this further to the next level (Pihkola, and
et.al., 2018)
 Consumers expect multiple payment options : After the drastic change, consumers
prefer to shop online rather than moving out to make a purchase. They expect various
types of payment mode from the online retailers, as time Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) is
also taking growth position in the industry.

CONCLUSION
From the above report it has been discussed the consumer behaviour which refers to the
study in which the individual customers, groups and organizations with all activities related to
purchase, use, disposal of goods and service. It has been also discussed about the modern
perspectives over consumption and individual decision-making and involvement which shows
the importance of consumer in identifying the product or service. Further it has been identified
about the importance of perceptual processes in understanding individual consumers, consumers
behaviour in society. At last, it has been concluded about the future trends in consumer
behaviour.

REFERENCES
Books and journals-
Thøgersen, J., 2021. Consumer behavior and climate change: Consumers need considerable
assistance. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences. 42. pp.9-14.
Opute, A. P., Irene, B. N. and Iwu, C. G., 2020. Tourism service and digital technologies: A
value creation perspective. African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure. 9(2).
pp.1-18.
Jiang, L. and Yu, L., 2019. Consumption of a literary tourism place: a perspective of
embodiment. Tourism Geographies.
Klein, A. and Sharma, V. M., 2022. Consumer decision-making styles, involvement, and the
intention to participate in online group buying. Journal of Retailing and Consumer
Services. 64. p.102808.
Elchlepp, H., Monsell, S. and Lavric, A., 2021. How task set and task switching modulate
perceptual processes: is recognition of facial emotion an exception?. Journal of
Cognition. 4(1).
Giulianotti, R. and Numerato, D., 2018. Global sport and consumer culture: An
introduction. Journal of consumer culture. 18(2). pp.229-240.
Pihkola, H., and et.al., 2018. Evaluating the energy consumption of mobile data transfer—from
technology development to consumer behaviour and life cycle
thinking. Sustainability. 10(7). p.2494.
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