Personal Factors Affecting Buyer’s Behavior
Consumer behavior is also affected by internal factors such as personal & inter-personal factors. Each individual has his own set of unique needs, motives, perceptions, attitudes, learning and self concepts, to buying decisions. Individual purchase decisions are driven by the needs, motives, perceptions, attitudes, learning’s and self-concept. They have been discussed here:
- Needs and Motives: A need is necessary for a person to live a healthy life. need is different than want, a deficiency of need is a dysfunction or death. Needs can be physical needs or psychological needs. Physical needs involve water, food and shelter while the examples of social need are self -esteem. Want is something that is desired. Every person has unlimited wants, but his/ her resources are limited. Thus, people cannot have everything they want and must look for the most affordable alternatives.
A need is an imbalance between the consumer’s actual and desired states. This imbalance needs to be corrected A marketer does the job of creating an imbalance. Marketing makes the need felt and motivates the person to correct this imbalance. The action taken to bring the condition in equilibrium the ultimate goal of a marketer. This action leads to person’s buying decision.
- Perceptions: The word “perception” is derived from Latin words perceptio, percipio, which mean “receiving, collecting, action of taking possession. Perceptions is what a person attributes the incoming stimuli gathered through five sense of hearing, sight, touch, smell, and taste. Perception is the process of attaining awareness and is dependent on the senses. Perception also involves a person’s understanding which depends upon his / her Psyche; i.e. imagination, conscience, intellect, memory.
Perception is widely used in management science. In consumer behavior, perception plays a very important role in driving the purchasing decisions at personal level. - Attitudes: An attitude is a hypothetical construct. Attitude represents the degree of like or dislike of a person for an item/ idea/ information/event. Attitudes may be positive or negative views of a person, place, thing, or event. Attitudes affect the perception. The purchasing decisions are strongly based upon the current attitude about a product/ service / brand/ shop/ sales person. The marker’s job is to create favorable attitude, which positively affect the brand preferences. Marketers need to determine the consumer attitude towards their products.
- Learning: Consumer learning is a process by which the consumer acquire the purchase and consumption knowledge and this experience affects the future purchases.
Self Concept: A person’s multifaceted picture about himself or herself plays a very important role in the consumer behavior. The self-concept is an outcome of personal and interpersonal influences and they affect the buying behavior of a person.
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