Factors influencing Consumer Buying behaviour

Definition : Consumer buying behaviour is the sum total of a consumer's attitudes, preferences, intentions and decisions regarding the consumer's behaviour in the marketplace when purchasing a product or service. The study of consumer behaviour draws upon social science disciplines of anthropology, psychology, sociology, and economics.

Meaning :  Irrespective of the age, education, language & culture consumers behave the same way when they find themselves in a similar situation.

It is the study to know “why the consumers behave the way they do?”

They always resist when some buyer pushes them to buy something, they always try show that they know about a new product/gadget even if they don’t know, they always bargain for a better price.

2 real life examples:

1. A classic case is Dettol vs Savlon. When Dettol is applied on injured area of body, it gives a burning sensation, due to the chemicals it contains. People has a perception that if it burns it is working well on the injury and it will heal.

Whereas when Savlon is applied it does not give a burning sensation, people think that it is not healing and it’s a bad product. Scientists have proven that there is no correlation between burning sensation and healing and savlon is effective, still people don’t buy Savlon.

2. Colour of toilet soap: When a certain company in india tried to launch a soap 10 years ago with the brand name of Ganga soap, they were thinking about the colour of the soap.

They conducted market research on the topic after extensive research they made the soap color as white but it failed in the market they wanter the product to compete with Lifebuoy.

After that they again did a survey with the shop owners, retailers about what is reason for people avoiding the soap. Shopowners said people wanted the red soap over this. They always look for the big red coloured soap when they come to shop to buy soap.

There is no relation between red colour of the soap and the usability of the soap. But Red colour is associated with Hospital, Ambulance, first aid and ambulance.

Hence common man has a perception that the red soap might be good to their skin, when they use the soap they felt secure, disinfected and clean.