Understanding Customers: A Key to Success in Business Development

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of customer behavior within the context of business development. It covers contemporary perspectives on consumption, individual decision-making processes, and the importance of perceptual processes in understanding individual consumers. The essay also explores the role of customers in society, including the influence of word-of-mouth, reference groups, and cultural factors. Furthermore, it discusses future trends in customer behavior, such as the emphasis on safety and hygiene, the increasing openness of customers to express their experiences, and the preference for digital information gathering. The essay concludes that understanding customer behavior is crucial for business success, as customers are dynamic and easily influenced by external factors, necessitating a focus on providing quality products at competitive prices.

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
Customers in society....................................................................................................................5
Future trends in customer behaviour...........................................................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
References........................................................................................................................................7

Introduction
Customer is the individual who purchase products from the market and it is essential for
every organisation to understand the customer behaviour within the market. Customers control
the experience they want because they research, explore and share the marketing information
(Taghizadeh, Rahman and Hossain, 2018). One of the basic requirements of customer is to get
personal interaction with buyer in the market and secondly, they did not like to wait for longer
period of time to purchase their needy products. There are various kinds of customers like new
customers, free customers, bargain customers, informed customers, impulse customers and many
others. The following essay covers contemporary perception on consumption, individual decision
making and involvement, importance of perceptual processes in understanding individual
customers, customer in society and future trends in customer behaviour.
Main Body
Contemporary perspectives on consumption
Contemporary perspectives are the occurring needs of customers at present time which
further means to understand customer’s needs and wants at recent time and how their doubts and
issues will be get mitigated. In context of tourism industry, most of the customers need to book
their accommodation services on the spot and try to focus on gaining high experience (Wang,
2021). They visit official sites of the hotels and book their services. The biggest contemporary
perception for consuming the services of tourism industry is that customers always think about
the quality of services. They are also focused to visit those restaurants and hotels only which are
having proper cleaning and hygiene factor. Customers of tourism industry need to gain high level
of services where they want that their issues and doubts will be heard properly by the employees.
Customers are also get attracted to those tourism services which they can get on discounts
because customers are price sensitive and they can switch to those hotels and restaurants which
can offer good quality of food products and other hotel services in lower prices (Kaur and et. al.,
2021). Today most of the customers are expressive in nature and they express their experience of
consuming any products and services openly in front of others. In case they did not like the
quality of their products and services then they complain about the issue to the company of seller
and in case they satisfied with the quality then they provide good reviews to the hotel and

become their loyal customer by purchasing same or others services from similar hotel
(Kamasastry, 2020).
Individual decision making and involvement
It is essential to identify the process of customer buying behaviour within the market and
there are five stages of customer buying behaviour which are mentioned below-
 Identification of need- At the initial stage customer identifies what they actually need
and what they want to purchase from seller (Qazzafi, 2019). For example, a customer
wants to attend a business meeting in another country. Hence, the identification of issues
and need like they want accommodation services for single individual for a particular
period of time is identification of need.
 Collecting information- Then customers collect information that which seller is selling
appropriate quality of products and services within low prices (Lynch and Barnes, 2020).
For example, customer visits various sites of hotel within that location where he/she want
to reach to analyse the services and prices.
 Evaluating information- This is the stage where customers compare each option and
analyse their pros and corns and eliminate those options which are having more corns.
 Purchase decision- This is the stage where customer finally decide to purchase that
option which satisfy their needs and which comes under their budget.
 Post purchase decision- This is the last stage of customer purchasing process where
customer will decide whether they like or dislike the product by providing feedback to
seller (Bartosik-Purgat, 2018).
Importance of perceptual processes in understanding individual consumers
Customer buying behaviour process plays a very important role in understanding
individual consumers within the market. In context of tourism industry, when customers visit
travelling sites to identify the services and prices of hotels and restaurants than it will give a
proper idea that what kind of services and products are expected by more percentage of
customers in market (Lăzăroiu and et. al., 2020). This will further help to identify customers
demand for tourism services within the market. Secondly, when customers collect information
than it will help to analyse that which factors influences the customers most to attract their
attention toward specific product or services within the market. Evaluation of products and
services by customers will help to analyse the specific factors which are liked and disliked by

customers about the specific product and services within the market. in context of tourism
companies, in case their customers refuse to buy their services than they must analyse the reason
and factors which are not meeting them customers demands within the market (Singh, Vishnoi
and Bagga, 2018). At the end post purchase decision will further help to analyse the customer
experience by using a particular services of any tourism company. The last stage of purchasing
decision process by a individual customer helps to analyse what all changes a company can do to
satisfy their customers and influence them to become their loyal customers for longer period of
time. Today’s customers are educated, hence they are well aware about their rights and they
know how to buy any product or services from market place without getting exploited by the
seller (Hoang and Nguyen, 2021).
Customers in society
Today most of the customers are getting influence by the word of mouth which means
they believe whatever they heard about a specific product and services within the market (Mehta,
Lalwani and Ping, 2018). family members and close friends plays an important role to influence
a individual to buy the products or services from specific company because they share their good
experience with them and influence them to use similar services from similar company to gain
high experience at once in a life. A reference groups helps to share a person’s attitude and
behaviour (Moliner, Monferrer-Tirado and Estrada-Guillén, 2018). In context of hotels and
restaurants, customers get attracted toward those specific hotels and restaurant which are having
huge number of customer base because they believe that when more customers are prefer to buy
products from specific hotel than it is sure that the services provided by the hotel is good enough
to satisfy their needs and wants. Hence, they also prefer to buy the same hotel services where
more customers are arriving. Cultural factor also plays a very important role in influencing
customers to buy a specific hotel services (Ting and et. al., 2019). Most of the customers are very
concern about their culture and traditional values hence; they prefer to visit those hotels and
restaurants where their employees respect their culture and they feel friendly and satisfied with
the services and food items which match their culture.
Future trends in customer behaviour
There are various current and future trends of customer behaviour within the travel and tourism
industry and few of them are mentioned below-

 Safety and hygiene trend- Most of the customers in tourism industry prefer to buy those
hotel services which offer their appropriate hygienic factors and appropriate safety
measures of their luggage (Jílková and Králová, 2021). Hotels having least chances of
theft or loss of luggage will always attract more customers. After COVID pandemic
customers are more concern about their health and they need to travel and stay at those
places which maintain their cleanliness.
 Customers are happy to openly express their experience- Customers are also aware
about their rights as a customer’s which help them to avoid to get exploited by the sellers
in the market (Maheshwari, Gautam and Jaggi, 2021). In context of tourism industry,
their customers are openly expressing their experience to staff members as well as to
other customers of the hotel by reviewing their services on their website and provide
them feedback.
 Prefer to search digitally- Most of the customers are prefer to search the products and
services which they want on digital platforms such as through laptops, company’s
website, advertisements on social media and many others. In context of tourism
customers, they prefer to book their hotels and restaurants through the website of
company after comparing their reviews and packages offered with other hotel review and
packages which they offer (Wong and Wei, 2018).
Conclusion
From the above information it is concluded that customer behaviour is dynamic in nature
which get influence easily with the external factors. Customers are prefer to buy quality products
in low prices and in case they found any other company who offer them similar kind of product
in lower prices as compared to other company then they quickly switch to that company. There
are five stages in customer buying behaviour process where they need to identify their needs,
collect information about products and services, evaluate their collected information to eliminate
those information which are useless, making a proper purchase decision and then review the
product or services to analyse whether they continue to purchase same product and services or
not. Reference groups play an important role in influencing customer buying behaviour within
the market. Customers prefer to buy those products and service more which is preferred by their
family members and close friends.

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