UNDERSTANDING BUYER’S BEHAVIOUR

Group No 3

A8- Bharanidharan Giridharan

A12- Harinder Singh
A28- Praveen Arora
A31- Randolph Ivo Vaz
A50- Vinod Mathews
 UNDERSTANDING BUYERS BEHAVIOUR

1. To carry out the assignment of trying to understand buyer’s decisions and their
behavior governing the same, the group selected Shoes as their product of choice.
2. The group selected three people who had purchased shoes recently and hence
remembered the circumstances surrounding the same. Discussions were carried out
with each customer and they were further questioned based on their initial replies to
arrive at the various conclusions desired.
3. The group surveyed two women and a man regarding the survey .The group was
divided into two sub teams to survey the participants and one person carried out the
research into the theoretical parts of buyers behavior.
4. Details of the survey have been systematically covered in the following paragraphs
along with the other questions asked in the assignment: -
a. What were the triggers of purchase?

Ans. A Trigger is an event that causes a buyer to have a clear need, which
usually converts into a sense of purpose and urgency in their buying process. In
our case all three respondents had different triggers leading to their purchase.
The sole man surveyed (Volunteer 1) had slipped on his boot which he said was
already 4 years old and he was considering getting a new one for some time ,
and he had decided to finally resolve the issue by buying a new boot for his next
birthday which was also approaching in a month’s time. One of the
girls(Volunteer 2) had candidly admitted that she was feeling slightly sad and
had decided to purchase something online , some sort of therapy she said which
never failed to make her happy most of the time she said. She surveyed the
various popular online sites spending as much as an hour researching before she
decided to use the Online site ‘Jabong’. The third lady( Volunteer 3) had the
course group photo coming and felt that shoes available with her was not formal
enough , hence had decided to buy herself a flat heel pair to go with her formal
pants, which she found was available in the local mall in a sale. Further
classifying the triggers they can be put under broad classifications such as
 (i) Need based trigger
(ii) Emotional trigger
(iii) Discount sale / Need based trigger
(b)What were the stages in the purchase processes?

Ans. The standard stages as taught theoretically in the classroom is followed

by all buyers in some form or the other . The chart shows the basic process :-

Each of the participants reviewed had carried out the same in different forms
from the problem recognition which was a trigger too , to research either the
local shops nearby ( volunteer 1&3) shortlisted a few shops based on feedback
from friends and then went in for the purchase. Volunteer 2 had surfed the
various online sites looking for the shoe she liked ,to the discounted costs
available .

( c) Inputs at each of these stages were basically the types of shoes available,
quality , material used , internet reviews, online comparison sites , inputs from
friends ,discounts hence the cost involved and the time for delivery in the case
of online purchase.

(d)Who played what kinds of role in each stage? In the second volunteer all
decisions taken were by herself and no one else was involved in the process of
 purchase, In the case of the other two both friends and local shoe store keeper
played important roles in finalising the shoe.

(e) The time taken for Volunteer two was about One hour for the whole process
. she was not very sure of the exact timings. Volunteer 1 and 3 took about half
an hour to research the product and about two and half hours to visit Indore and
finalise their choice in the Mall there.

5.Implications for marketing research. Detailed discussions with the 3 volunteers

brought out a fact that the germination of the thought or the realisation of the need to
purchase any product maybe due to an internal or externally driven factor ,internal
factors such as even mood swings . Any product with adequate exposure in the online
media has a chance to sell well. Customers have become very tech savvy , using the
internet to make informative choices .