Understanding Consumer Purchasing Behavior

If someone wants to know what factors are responsible for organizations to increase their profits, the answer lies within the following statement;

“ Profits are determined by sales, and sales are determined by consumers’ actions”

Higher Profit is what every other organization ultimately aims for. But only wishing and desiring about higher profits is not something that can get you there. You have to strategize your steps so that you can find out what the consumer wants. You may take assistance from website localization services if you want to create an online presence for your business. Or you can avail the services of gaming translation services if you are looking to localize your mobile gaming applications. Nonetheless, it’s your choice in the end. But you have to understand how the market works, and especially your target market. 

A functional or lucrative market is one where the consumer’s willingness to buy is exceptional.  But what makes a consumer willing to purchase a product or service? Let’s take a look at the buying process of consumers in order to ascertain how an organization can amp up its selling game.

The Buying Process of Consumers  

Let’s take a deeper look at the stages that a consumer goes through when he plans to purchase andy product or service;

1. Pre-Purchase Stage

People often confuse the term consumer behavior, hence, relate it to when people actually buy things. However, there is a pre-purchase stage that occurs before the customer commits to the act of trading money with the goods he selects for himself. 

In this pre-purchase stage, the consumer fathoms a lot of factors. The initial factor is how urgently the consumer needs that product or service to fulfill his or her need. Secondly, the time frame will also determine the purchase decision of the consumer. Meanwhile, the other factor is if the consumer is planning to purchase that product for the first time or if it’s his second or third time. This will determine how much time he will take to buy that product.  

Let’s specify the steps within the pre-purchase stage;

• The first step is customer awareness. The consumer needs to identify what his need is, and which products are in his awareness ambit that can satisfy that need. For instance, if a business is looking to expand its gaming business into another foreign market. It needs to be aware of the Mobile app localization services in the market. Only then it can be purchased. 
• The second step is to gather data and information about that product as to how it can satisfy your needs.
• The third step is to analyze the information collected and make a comparative analysis of the options available to you.  For example, if we consider some popular gaming translation services. For the third step in the pre-purchasing stage, you will have to find information about the leading services in the world, and then analyze the performance of some top app localization services.
  

2. Purchasing Stage 

Once the consumer goes through the steps of the pre-purchase stage, then comes the purchase stage. 

So after completing the comparative analysis of the information pertaining to the products, the customer decides that he wants to buy the particular product. But before he makes the physical purchase, there’s a slight pause in which the customer thinks whether he should even make the purchase or just save his money. This is not a necessity but appears only when the cost is considered very high.  

Nonetheless, after the decision is made, there needs to be a physical transaction, where money is exchanged for the goods purchased. Only then the purchasing stage would be fulfilled.

3. Post Purchasing Stage

Initially, organizations did not give much attention to the post-purchasing stage. As long as the consumer was purchasing their product, the rest never mattered. But since the evolution of customer services, marketers have started to pay more attention to the post-purchasing stage. 

The aim in the post purchasing stage is to see whether the consumer’s need was satisfied or not, with the product that was bought. Because a product’s success is not established if the consumer refuses to repurchase that product. Another important thing in the post-purchase stage is that the customer immediately starts to question his purchase decision. Asking himself whether he made the right decision or not. 

This may seem like a small thing, but cumulatively this poses a threat to the organization. Hence, one has to be careful in this scenario and ensure that the customer was satisfied with the product. This is why a lot of people ask for a customer’s feedback after a product is purchased. It helps it identify the crucial areas that need to be focused upon, and also highlights the positives that can be further capitalized by the company.  

Conclusion

Consumer purchasing behavior is very complicated and multifarious. It requires a lot of research on the part of marketers to understand the motives to why someone buys a product, repurchases it, or refuses to ever use the product again. 

One needs a proper understanding of the needs and wants of the consumers. However, it’s important to realize that demographics play a huge role in how people purchase. A person belonging to a conservative religious middle-class family and society will have a completely different purchasing behavior from a liberal bourgeois living in European countries. Hence, marketers have to fathom all of these factors and then create products. 

However, if you are planning to localize your business for another region, make sure to avail assistance from website localization services.  They will conduct in-depth research on the target market and will ensure your product or services succeeds in that audience.  

Originally posted 2021-09-28 16:34:18.