Understanding Customers

This report discusses the importance of understanding customers for business growth and success. It covers contemporary practices on consumption, individual decision-making and involvement, customers in society as well as future trends of consumer behaviour. The report also highlights the importance of perceptual process in understanding individual customers.

Understanding
customers

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
TASK...............................................................................................................................................3
Contemporary Perspectives on consumption...............................................................................3
Individual Decision-Making and Involvement............................................................................4
Importance of Perceptual Processes in understanding individual consumers.............................4
Consumers in Society..................................................................................................................5
Future Trends in Consumer Behavior..........................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Understanding customers is important for business because it led business towards growth and
success whether it sell its products and services to directly individual and other businesses. It is
related to understanding customers needs and requirements and provide them products and
services accordingly that provide them better experience with organisation (Abraham, Reimer
and Mehler, 2018). In current competitive business environment, it is important for analyse
current trends of market and customer’s requirement and provide them products accordingly that
enhances overall performance and efficiency of business. In this report tourism and business
management sector is taken into consideration. This essay covers contemporary practices on
consumption, individual decision-making and involvement, customers in society as well as
future trends of consumer behaviour. Along with that, importance of perceptual process in
understanding individual customers.
TASK
Contemporary Perspectives on consumption
Consumption is defined as the use of goods and services by customers that enhances
organizational sales and profitability aspects. There are various consumption values that
influences the consumer behavior and their choices. These values are functional values,
emotional values, social values, conditional values and epistemic values that must be considered
by the organization to understand the consumption level of customers (Appau, Ozanne, and
Klein, 2020). Contemporary perception is defined as the aspect that concentrates on how
behavior of customers are acquire as well as modified through various environmental
consequences such as rewards and punishment. There are various aspects or perceptive are
included in contemporary perspective such as biological perspective that in fluence the decision-
making of consumers, evaluation perspective that concentrates on evaluation of behavior and
mental processes, cognitive perspective that concentrates on the role of thoughts in determining
behavior, humanistic perspective determines the human capacity for the self-fulfillment as well
as the importance of consciousness in the capacity of making decisions and last the
psychoanalytic perspective that influences the unconscious behavior of human. All these
perspectives collectively impact on the consumption of consumers (Chinchanachokchai, and de
Gregorio, 2020). It is important for the tourism and business management sector to analyze the

different perspective of consumers and provide them products accordingly that enhance business
sales, performance level and profitability. The contemporary perspectives enable business to
enhance the consumption as well as analyze consumer’s needs and requirements.
Individual Decision-Making and Involvement
Individual decision-making is defined as the complex process that reflects that how an individual
selects specific course of action among various available alternatives. In this process, individuals
organize as well as interpret their sensory impressions with the objective of give meaning to their
environment. Individual decision-making shows an individual’s needs, capabilities, experiences
regarding the surrounding formal organization and social structure as well as processes
(Chkoniya, Madsen, and Bukhrashvili, 2020). It is quick and cost -effective way to take
decisions because in this decision-making, it is not required to gather others and scheduling
meetings through sending e-mails that saves time constraint as well. There are some advantages
and disadvantages of individual decision-making such as efficient decisions are taken in limited
period of time and individual cannot escape from their responsibilities. It saves time, efforts,
money and energy of an individual because logical and prompt decisions are taken. On the other
hand, individual decision-making, an individual has no complete information that impact on the
efficiency of decisions (Hamilton, and Price, 2019). In the tourism and business management
sector, an individual take decision on the bases of their own interest, views and other aspects as
well as comparing the various alternatives on the bases of reviews on social media platform.
Importance of Perceptual Processes in understanding individual consumers
Perceptual process is defined as the aspect that is related to selecting, organizing as well as
interpreting information (Yarimoglu and Binboga, 2019). It included the perception regarding
the specific stimuli that passes throughout perceptual filters than it is organized in specific
structure and in the last interpreted on the bases of several past experience. As it is the
psychological process that reflects that how we perceive the people as well as objectives around
us and it also impact on the communication on an individual customer. Perceptual process
includes various steps such as exposure to stimuli, the sensory receptors, attention stage,
interpretation and response (Hicks, and Temizel-Sekeryan, 2019). All these stages play important
role in the understanding of individual customer and their consumer behavior. There are various
factors such as personal factor, psychological factors and social factor that impact consumer
behavior and their purchasing decisions. The whole perceptual process enables the organization

to understand customers needs, demands as well as decision-making process. Perceptual process
is important in understanding the human behavior because every person perceive the situation in
different manner and if an individual behave on the basis of perception than organization can
understand their behavior and purchasing decision un changes circumstance. Needs and demands
of various people are can be determined because perception is influenced by their needs (Hwang,
Park, and Kim, 2020). In tourism and business management sector, managers can analyses their
visitors needs and demands and provide them products and services accordingly that enhances
organizational performance and profitability.
Consumers in Society
Consumers play an important part in growth and development of tourism and business
management. The behavior of consumers depends on various factors such as social,
psychological, environmental and all. These consumers play an important part in society by
playing their roles of buying and thereby increasing sales and profits of an organization
(Kietzmann, Paschen, and Treen, 2018). Their decisions of brands, their choices, seasonal
changes, reviewing various products and services and the places from where these products and
services can be availed, all these are very small decisions of consumers affect the profitability
ratios of any business entity. Their purchases can lead to growth and development of a particular
organization in industry. The consumers can even have negative impacts like depletion of natural
resources, ecological imbalances, pollution, degradation of natural air and all and many more.
These are some of the negative impacts on environment (Stankevich, 2017). With the availability
of unlimited choices to these consumers, they hold more power. Consumers spending on goods
and services, results in increase in the production of those goods and services, thus creating
employment in society, providing employment and indirectly leading to increase in GDP of a
country. With the wide range of choices available to consumers, this has even lead to increase in
innovations and creativity also among the people of a society (Kliestikova, and Janoskova,
2017). Wide range of choice has even lead to increase in economic status of a society. The
market has also expanded, so there is a major need for the business organizations to cope up with
contemporary business environment and serve customers accordingly.

Future Trends in Consumer Behavior
With the changing world, there has been a rapid increase in trends and the large reach of internet
to its unlimited audience, has made consumers very choosy with options available to them. There
are a lot of trendy items, places and all that are changing the behavior of customers at present,
resulting in complete change of preferences, choices and options that are available to them (La
Barbera, Verneau, and Coppola, 2019). With the changing scenarios in consumer behavior, there
has been impact on the changing values and traditions of a society. There has been a lot of focus
shift to all materialism and showing off. Consumers now have started buying a lot of stuff that is
not even of use to them. With new technologies going on in market has lead the consumers to be
more aware with their choices and consumer exploitation that was done earlier with them
(Massa, and Bédé, 2018). With advancement of digital technologies and everything digital, there
are a lot of trends that are being followed up. With these changes, even there is a shift from
traditional values to modern values, opening up of all traditions, values, customs from across the
globe (Mahomed, 2017). This opening up of choices across the world has led to an extent of
increase in competition also between all organizations. But this has even resulted in good form
also like customers choice has been widened. This wide range in consumer choice has led to
improvement in the quality of life style, indicating a great future living of a society and thereby
increasing and promoting healthy lifestyle of all consumers.
CONCLUSION
As per the above report, it can be concluded that it is very important for the organisation to
understand the consumer and their needs, demands and requirements and provide them products
and services accordingly the enhances business organisational sales and profitability. Individual
decision-making and involvement is related to taking decisions on the bases of own interest and
preferences. Perceptual process helps organisation to understand individual consumers and their
purchasing decision as well as behaviour. There are various consumers are existed in the society
that plays important role in the growth and development of society. In current business
environment, various future trends that must be considered by the organisation to fulfil needs and
demands of consumers. Organisation needs to conduct survey to identify market trends,

customers needs and requirements and competitors than develop effective strategies that lead all
business operations in right direction and attain business goals and objectives.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Abraham, H., Reimer, B. and Mehler, B., 2018, September. Learning to use in-vehicle
technologies: consumer preferences and effects on understanding. In Proceedings of the
human factors and ergonomics society annual meeting (Vol. 62, No. 1, pp. 1589-1593).
Sage CA: Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications.
Appau, S., Ozanne, J.L. and Klein, J.G., 2020. Understanding difficult consumer transitions: the
in/dividual consumer in permanent liminality. Journal of Consumer Research, 47(2),
pp.167-191.
Chinchanachokchai, S. and de Gregorio, F., 2020. A consumer socialization approach to
understanding advertising avoidance on social media. Journal of Business
Research, 110, pp.474-483.
Chkoniya, V., Madsen, A.O. and Bukhrashvili, P. eds., 2020. Anthropological Approaches to
Understanding Consumption Patterns and Consumer Behavior. IGI global.
Hamilton, R. and Price, L.L., 2019. Consumer journeys: Developing consumer-based
strategy. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 47(2), pp.187-191.
Hicks, A.L. and Temizel-Sekeryan, S., 2019. Understanding the potential environmental benefits
of nanosilver enabled consumer products. NanoImpact, 16, p.100183.
Hwang, J., Park, S. and Kim, I., 2020. Understanding motivated consumer innovativeness in the
context of a robotic restaurant: The moderating role of product knowledge. Journal of
Hospitality and Tourism Management, 44, pp.272-282.
Kietzmann, J., Paschen, J. and Treen, E., 2018. Artificial intelligence in advertising: How
marketers can leverage artificial intelligence along the consumer journey. Journal of
Advertising Research, 58(3), pp.263-267.
Kliestikova, J. and Janoskova, K., 2017. Branding with understanding: how national profile of
consumer influences brand value perception.
La Barbera, F., Verneau, F. and Coppola, A., 2019. Entomophagy: A contribution to the
understanding of consumer intention. Calitatea, 20(S2), pp.329-334.
Mahomed, N., 2017. Understanding consumer adoption of cryptocurrencies (Doctoral
dissertation, University of Pretoria).

Massa, C. and Bédé, S., 2018. A consumer value approach to a holistic understanding of the
winery experience. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal.
Stankevich, A., 2017. Explaining the consumer decision-making process: Critical literature
review. Journal of international business research and marketing, 2(6), pp.7-14.
Yarimoglu, E. and Binboga, G., 2019. Understanding sustainable consumption in an emerging
country: The antecedents and consequences of the ecologically conscious consumer
behavior model. Business Strategy and the Environment, 28(4), pp.642-651.