BIC 3032 Case Study Sample 2023
1. Introduction
Customer behaviour is the process of analysing the factors that control the buying decision of individual customers in order to satisfy the customer’s own demands and needs. It is very crucial to analyse the psychological thinking of the customers while purchasing any products or getting any services because it controls customer retention of any business organisation. This essay would like to elaborate on the concept of consumer behaviour with a contrast of retailers’ impacts and cultural differences. The main aim of this essay is to discuss the impact of retailers on customer behaviour and also to evaluate how different cultural differences influence purchasing behaviour of customers.
2. Body
The study of psychological pattern of consumer behaviour is one of the most crucial parts of the business management system. As mentioned by do Vale et al. (2016), consumers are the skeleton structure of any market or for any business organisation. Therefore, in order to retain the customers or to improve customer satisfaction level, it is very important to understand psychological consequences of customers.
[Refer to appendix 1]
According to the view of Lehmann et al. (2017), consumer behaviour is highly influenced by four factors, which are good quality products, best servicing system, fair prices, and also easy availability of the products. As mentioned by Shamout, (2016), it is the basic function of every organisation or even the retailers to understand the motive of the decision that hunts the consumer to buy any products. Along with this, it also helps to know the reason behind the rejection of any products or services.
Different theories have been drawn with respect to consumer behaviour knowledge and it mainly illustrates that consumer behaviour is strictly controlled by their intention. However, as argued by Harris et al. (2016), this intention again depends on the outcome that the consumer would get after purchasing the products or getting the services. Hence, as per the view of Stankevich (2017), it can be stated that consumers act as the rational actors, while their behaviour or the intention is developed based on the best interest rate and the entire process ultimately controls the decision-making process. Retailers used to analyse this behavioural pattern of the consumers and utilised this in the advertising process to attract consumers.
[Refer to appendix 2]
The theory of Reasoned Action on consumer behaviour demonstrates that the decision-making process of any consumer is highly controlled by the pre-existing attitudes of them. As mentioned by Thangasamy and Patikar (2014), this theory provides a good lesson for every retailer to attract the consumer easily by providing the best positive outcome via their products or services.
In the beginning, the detailed study of consumer behaviour in contrast to the literature, it can be easily observed that retailers play an important role in determining the buying pattern. As mentioned by Spence and Velasco (2018), retailers need to advertise or to represent their products in appropriate manner for the consumer to make decisions of buying any products or for getting the services easily. For example, as mentioned by AlMarshedi et al. (2017), it is the responsibility of the retailers to create a variety of shops with a diverse range of products to attract customers.
In such aspects, the advertising technique plays a vital role in order to manipulate the consumers. For example, in today’s mobile app based society, sensory advertising/marketing is very much important to boost the brand awareness and to enhance the sale capacity. For example, in case of Starbucks, the world’s largest chain coffee shop has used the sensory branding technique to attract many customers (Starbucks.com, 2020). The soothing interior with the carefully selected music, precisely for customers has helped the customers to make good memories and this has forced them to revisit the cafe again and again.
On the other hand, in case of Coca Cola advertising, it can be noticed that the brand has used happiness as the emotional power to manipulate the viewers strategically, similarly, the Nike’s has used “Just Do It”, as the leadership campaign message for triggering the cultural leadership attitude. As mentioned by Nayeem (2012), this kind of emotional advertising by the retailers of this famous brand has also attracted many consumers. However, some brand also uses social media platform for targeting their customers based on understanding their choices. As mentioned by Lehmann et al. (2017), many websites used to track the browsing pattern and based on this, they used to show different items on the social media pages. For example, in 2010, IBM has developed software that has the capacity to understand the browsing style by using phone information or the purchasing pattern (Magloff, 2020). As argued by Shamout (2016), retailers used all these to attract the customers and to manipulate their decision making process.
Diversification of products directly meets one of the four factors as mentioned earlier about the easy availability of products. As argued by Nayeem (2012), the consumers easily get a variety of products and this would help to make the buying decision. Along with this, it would leave a positive impact over the consumer mind which would motivate them to go shop again. As commented by do Vale et al. (2016), in the case of an online shopping system, the retailers used to study the search pattern of the consumers and this would help them to recommend similar kinds of products to the consumers easily.
Another most important thing the retailers used to perform in order to attract more customers is the announcement of discount vouchers or the sale offer. As mentioned by Lehmann et al. (2017), this discount scheme or the sales offer used to put a great impact on consumer buying behaviour. Most of the retailers used to provide discounts or the scheme for getting free items or even some coupons that enhances the interest of the customers. It can be observed that some online retailers and also offline retailers used to provide bonus points while purchasing any products from their stores or from the site.
The layout of the retail shops controls the psychological background of the customers. As mentioned by Lehmann et al. (2017), the suiting atmosphere within the shop, the light music helps to make the customer calm and thus assists them to focus solely on the buying pattern. Along with this, the proper distribution of the products with a diverse range of different products helps the consumer to select their desired items easily. As mentioned by Shamout (2016), this formula also suits the online business sites where it is important to design the website in a customer-friendly pattern.
[Refer to appendix 3]
Despite all these, loyalty, trust and the best quality are some of the most important factors of retailers that influence the buying nature of consumers. As mentioned by Harris et al. (2016), if the consumer gets the best services with fair prices and also finds loyalty with the service, they would prefer to visit the shop repeatedly. Hence, this is the major factor of retailers which controls the consumer buying pattern easily.
Like the retailers, the key cultural difference also controls the consumer behavioural pattern and thus it is important for every retailer to study the details of culture. As mentioned by AlMarshedi et al. (2017), culture is one of the most powerful forces that help to control the behaviour of the human and it easily gets transmitted from one level to another with the same cultural concepts and also with the same value type. Individualism and collectivism are two main cultural factors that control the buying behaviour of the consumer while purchasing any products. As commented by Spence and Velasco (2018), individualism means independent influence of person without the impact of any group interest level. On the other hand, as argued by Wanick et al. (2018), collectivism refers to influence of an entire group over any single person. Both these factors highly control the consumer buying pattern that even varies from one region to another. For example, buying pattern of the citizens of Canada, the US (individualism) greatly varies from the people of China, Korea (collectivism).
[Refer to appendix 4]
Another major important cultural difference can be easily studied on the basis of horizontal and vertical cultural lines. As mentioned by Nayeem (2012), the horizontal culture used to see the people as equal whereas vertical culture used to observe the people as the hierarchical system. This cultural concept also controls decision-making process of customers. For example, the people of Israel believe inequality whereas the people of Japan preferred the strong hierarchical system in their culture that influenced them to make any purchasing behaviour.
Similarly, another major cultural difference is the promotion-focused and the prevention-focused that controls consumers’ movement to make decisions regarding the buying pattern. As mentioned by Stankevich (2017), promotion-focused culture mainly drives the consumer towards their dreams and thus it is also called as “gain-frame”. On the other hand, the prevention-focused culture blocks path of positivity and thus the consumer mainly focuses on the negative outcomes that are losses. This is also called the “loss-frame” that prevents the consumers from buying any products from any new stores and thus, in this case, trusts and loyalty plays the major role for controlling consumer behaviour.
3. Conclusion
The entire essay has briefly described consumer behaviour and the impact of retailers as well as the cultural differences on the decision-making process of consumers. The entire productivity of the organisation or retailers highly depends on consumer behaviour and based on this aspect essay has been successfully highlighted all the required factors for motivating consumer behaviour. The essay has discussed the different role of retailers, like providing discounts, coupons, bonus gifts and many more to provoke the consumer to visit the shop. Similarly, it has also critically analysed the cultural differences that strongly control the psychological factors of consumers and thus it is important to know for understanding the consumer behavioural pattern.
Reference list
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Starbucks.com, 2020, About us. [online]. Available at: https://www.starbucks.com/ Accessed 5th June, 2020.
Thangasamy, E. & Patikar, G., 2014. Factors Influencing Consumer Buying Behaviour: A Case Study. Global Journal of Management And Business Research, 14(5) 1.
Wanick, V., Stallwood, J., Ranchhod, A. & Wills, G., 2018. Can visual familiarity influence attitudes towards brands? An exploratory study of advergame design and cross-cultural consumer behaviour. Entertainment Computing, 27, pp.194-208.
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