Situational influences affect consumer behavior to a great extent. The marketers
ID: 373567 • Letter: S
Question
Situational influences affect consumer behavior to a great extent. The marketers can develop appropriate strategies once they identify the situational influences that may affect the purchase. The main situational influences can be physical, social, time factors, purchasing reason and buyer’s mood. The physical factors include the physical environment that includes light, music, noise etc that can affect the purchase. The customers dining in a restaurant with pleasant atmosphere may want to stay in the place for more time and may order more food items enjoying the situation. Another factor is the social factor where a purchase can be influenced by the accompanying person. If a friend opposes your purchase decision and suggest another product your decision changes. Time is an important factor because when the customer is in a hurry he may pick the product without spending much time and when the customer has enough time he or she does enough searching to find better product. Purchase reason may affect consumer behavior as the reason may differ according to situations. Sometimes we purchase the product for our use and sometimes as a gift. The behavior would not be the same in each situation and the product difference varies accordingly. A customer’s mood at the time of interaction may affect the purchase. There is significant difference when customer purchase in a happy mood and in a sad mood. A person with illness can differ in behavior when comparing with a healthy person.
I can tell situation when my father was diagnosed with high blood sugar level. The doctor insisted to include food with less sugar and more fiber content. After analyzing the situation we have organized his diet and changed our purchase behavior of buying food products with more sugar content. We included food like Oats and more vegetables in the diet and fruits with less sugar. Before we used to buy more fast food items and we made a limit on consuming fast food. In this situation the decision making was based on the problem identified and how to reduce its effects. In such cases the consumer itself understands the solutions and the marketer only needs to convince the customer that their product is the best in that product category. The problem recognition has high relevance on consumer decision making process when it is related to safety and has changed the entire buying behavior related to food items in this case.
Explanation / Answer
How do situational influences affect consumer behavior? And identify something recently that triggered problem recognition: what was the problem and in analyzing what you did to resolve it, what does it reveal about the application and relevance of the consumer decision-making process?