Buyer Behaviour

Understand how your consumer behaves if the first step in developing your marketing strategies

Target Audience

The target audience is mainly household decision maker, middle class people, low income earner.

Market segmentation

Market segmentation is when customers or prospects are split up into different groups sharing a similar or comparable need, want or interest. (McDonald & Dunbar, 2004)

Types of market segmentation

• Demographic segmentation

As mentioned above, segmentation is divided in group based on variables. It can be divided into variables such as gender, age, occupation, ethnicity and income.

• Behavioral segmentation

It consists of variables such as the frequency of purchase, the brand usage, the loyalty. The buying purchase of a consumer is affected by his/her attitudes towards the products.

• Psychographic segmentation

The psychographic segmentation is when the population is divided according to people lifestyle, their social class, their activities, and their personality.

• Geographic segmentation

Geographical segmentation consists of dividing the market according to its geography. For example, in Mauritius the population can be divided into districts or into EA (enumeration area), that is the smallest units in the country.

Factors affecting a consumer purchase decision

The four principal factors that can affect a purchase decision of a consumer are:

• Cultural factors

Culture is a belief of human behavior that includes customs, values, traditions and the behavior of the society. (Jesal Shethna, 2016)

The values, religion and tradition of a customer can play a big role on his purchasing decision.

• Social factors

The social factors can be the family, the social status, among others that can have an impact on the buyer purchase decision.

For example, a manager of a company, will be more inclined to buy a car of brand BMW or Audi as for an assistant, the brand March or Toyota may be more affordable.

•Personal factors

The age, occupation, lifestyle, personality of a consumer tends to influence the consumer behavior.

For example, the consumer of MIL, its age group tends to be more likely over 30. A 19 years old consumer will be more interested in buying chocolate rather than butter.

•Psychological factors

It consists of the attitude and belief of a consumer. It also consists of the experience and perception of the consumer towards the good. If a consumer has a good experience with a product, he will keep on buying it.

The buyer process

According to Kotler and Keller in 2011, the consumer buying behavior is the process that a consumer goes through about making a decision about buying a product so that he can satisfy their needs and wants. (John Dudovskiy, 2013)

• Problem recognition

Before deciding what to buy a customer must first analyse what he needs or wants.

• Information search

After identifying the problem, one must look for a solution. And here comes, the stage of information search where a customer will try to gather as much information on the product so that he can paint a better picture of the product.

• Evaluation of alternatives

The customers will want to make the best decision, thus he will also search for information on other brand, to be able to make comparisons, which product is of better quality, better price, better benefits.

• Purchase decision

Once, all the options have been considered, the customer will then decide whether or not they will buy the products. A customer can either buy the brand or choose competition, this is where a company makes profits or not, this means that there is something wrong, there is not much information on the brand or the advertising methods are incorrect.

• Purchase

This is the stage where consumer has chosen the brand over its competitors and decides to buy the product.

• Post purchase evaluation

And the last step is the post purchase evaluation, after the purchase has been made, the customer will evaluate the product whether they have been satisfied or not. It is an important part of the process as the consumers will choose to continue to buy the product or not. However, if they had a bad experience with the product, this will be their last purchase and this can create negative advertising.