Ch. 6 - Consumer Decision Making

In order for the product to be successfully marketed, businesses need to recognize consumer behavior. According to MKTG 5 consumer behavior is “processes a consumer uses to make purchase decisions, as well as to use and dispose of purchased goods or services; also includes factors that influence purchase decisions and product use.” It basically means that Consumer behavior is the study of when, why, how, and where people do or do not buy product. The five stages of consumer behavior are: problem recognition (perceiving a need), information search (seeking value), alternative evaluation (assessing value), purchase decision (buying value), and post-purchase behavior (value in consumption or use).

It is well understood by Apple consumers that they (anyone who owns an iPod of any generation) can go out and buy an mp3 player for a portion of the price that an iPod cost, but why people purchase Apple products that cost higher price than other manufactures? The first stage of consumer decision making process is consumers recognizing something that they want and don't have. Basically Apple has been successful to charge consumers with hundreds of dollars for their products because they have successfully marketed their product to us (consumers). They have built their image on the bases of high price equals to higher quality products, and they have also gained consumer’s blind trust no matter what products they produce there is always a large segment of people willing to spend money.

After recognizing a need or want of consumers, they will then search for information seeking a good value. For Apple Inc. information inquiries are external and internal. External information is the advertisement and other consumer’s recommendation, fortunately Apple has a well developed reputation and this is mainly because consumers have a positive experience with the pervious products. For internal information, Apple consumers are very loyal. Many people upgrade their iPhones as soon as the next generation is out, example can be seen recently for release of iPhone 5, and people lined up several days before the release to get the product as soon as possible.

Third step is Evaluation of alternatives, after getting reasonable information; the consumer is now ready to make a decision, With Apple being very popular and in a position of being on top in the markets of electronic, their product are viewed as one of a kind knocking off the alternatives when it comes to purchasing a computer, or any other gadgets.

Next in the process is purchase. Fortunately for Apple, people are purchasing a lot of their products.

The last step is Post purchase behavior. This step determines whether the consumer was satisfied or dissatisfied. When a consumer purchases a product, they have high expectation that might encourage them to purchase products in future. When that expectation is not upheld, it means that consumer was not completely satisfied with the product and you as the company may have potentially loss a loyal customer. So far Apple has been extremely successful in following this tradition. Every time new product is released Apple get awfully high sales and this is result of consumer satisfaction.