Consumer behavior

Consumer behavior refers to the behavior of the buyer in relation to the sale of goods. The behavior during the purchase of goods, from the purchase planning and purchase transaction, completing the purchase, which always has contractual nature, to need to purchase behaviors, is highly variable. The consumer behavior among merchants that may appear on the solicitation process and / or long negotiations and possibly also in shops, differs sometimes significantly from the consumer behavior of non-traders, state institutions, often on the basis of tenders decide, or whether they are consumers with very different patterns of behavior. More generally however, one can characterize the notion of consumer behavior so as to include all individual actions that can be observed in connection with the purchase or consumption of economic goods.

Types of behavior

As an example, we will highlight three players in the market. Consumers in the sense of end users, the company within the meaning of producers, and major public organizations. Each of these actors can now take on the roles buyer or seller, so there may be 9 different types of behavior between the participants. The table abstracts these relationships:

In general, the marketing research focuses on the two types Business-to-Consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B), ie the consumption behavior of individuals or small groups and transactions between companies within the meaning of buyers and suppliers.

The consumer behavior of organizations is investigated under the concept of Organizational Buying Behaviour. It is typical of the buying behavior of organizations that often several people are involved in the decision-making process.

Scientific influences

Analysis, explanation, prediction and influencing the behavior of market participants is a central task of marketing in general.

Many science intertwine in this topic. There are separate areas of research which are responsible for the collection and empirical modeling and other then bring them to the application. In addition to the general research areas, psychology, sociology and anthropology have a supporting role. A specialized domain is the market psychology; according Salcher (1995) it is the applied science of “the analysis that leads beyond the mere description of behavior addition to the explanation of causes and to detect only partially conscious wishes, ideas and needs.”

Consumers or purchasing decisions are seen from a psychological point of view, in the decision theory. Through these attempts are the questions of where, when, how and why to clarify the purchasing decisions.

The customer purchasing behavior of large – and retail trade is specifically analyzed in the Study of commerce, especially in their more recent branch of trading psychology.

Translated and adapted from Wikipedia.