Oct
14
The Consumer Decision Process
Posted by: jfung | October 14, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Nearly all consumer-discretionary spending is made to satisfy psychological needs. Yes, some things are purchases for their functional needs, but consumers will often upgrade their purchase of a functional good into a psychological one. In the example of Goretex given in the textbook, there is more than one provider of goretex clothing, but consumers will still factor in brands, color, and general look. Maybe some celebrity wore a particular style. I want to walk through my “consumer decision process on a few things I bought in the past year.
1. Laptop-Yes, I recognized a need (was using an old Toshiba laptop that was roughly 5 or 6 years old…it was pretty heavy, especially dragging it out from Ladner everyday). Functionally, my new laptop is much faster and looks considerably better. I consider myself to be a relatively practical person. Unlike some people I know, I don’t buy things for just for fun (when I say for fun, I don’t actually mean for fun, but more like for no apparent reason). I had decided to buy what I considered to be a reasonable model (another Toshiba) on boxing day. Functionally, it was all I needed, and should have been relatively dependable. Yeah, it didn’t have a built in mic or anything, but it would work “for school” purposes. I had to meet my psychological needs in this case too. There is no way I wanted to be seen using an Acer, HP, or Gateway. It seems to send the wrong message, for whatever reason. Macbook Pro’s look good, but the price is too high for what I use it for, plus I’d have an adjustment period switching.
My internal search for information? Well I really only knew of some brands and that Intel has 90 something percent market share in the chip market. There are some star ratings on these chips too. AMD is the other portion. Brands? Toshiba, Sony, HP, Dell, Acer, Gateway, Leveno (or something), Asus…
External? Checked consumer reports, but most of the models in Canada have slightly different product numbers than in the States where most of these reviews are. Other people? Well, my parents have always been Sony people.
Cost/Benefit? I saw the time put into researching as worth it, a few hours here in there is worthwhile for purchases of this size in my books. Risk? Well, I wanted a dependable reputation in the brand. That would be performance risk. Could also be financial risk too. I consider this to be a shopping good.
The Evoked set? A Toshiba and a Sony. I actually bought the Toshiba, but my dad brought home a Sony with 1 touch web access and Blu-ray. Really didn’t need blu-ray and HDMI, but I kept the Sony. Both alternatives had the same Intel duo core 2 chip and Windows 7, but the Sony cost more.
Didn’t see that in the text (ie someone buys product for you and convinces you to keep it)
