Impact of Consumer Buying Behavior on Retail Outlets in Lucknow Region
 
Sana Khan1* Prof. A. K. Saxena2
1 Research Scholar, Department of Commerce & Business Management, Integral University, Lucknow, India
2 Professor (Dean of the Department), Department of Commerce and Business Management, Integral University, Lucknow, India
Abstract – The purchasing nature or behavioral attributes of the final buyer are known as Consumer Buying Behavior. There are several aspects, particular features and dimensions to impact a purchaser’s decision to buy something, his or her purchasing nature, habits during buying, preferences for specific brands or retail stores etc. These factors in combination lead to a buying decision. Besides, cultural aspects, social status, membership groups, financial spot in the economy ladder, his or her individuality, family, surrounding aspects as well as mentality are crucial features to shape the decision as well. Through recognizing and comprehending these aspects about clients and consumers, brands can put up a plan, a marketing strategy (Unique Value Proposition) as well as promotions and deals to be more suitable as per the demands and requirements of target clients. This is the actual method or fulfilling the demands of a customer and in turn, boosts their sales.
Keywords: Pigeonholing, Chunking, Law Of Primacy, Socio-Economic Classification
I. INTRODUCTION
The term Consumer Buying Behavior depicts the choices, buying and utilization of products as well as services to satisfy the needs of a customer. Various procedures are engaged in defining the customer behavior. A plethora of attributes, particular features and aspects are intertwined when it comes to shape the personality and needs of a customer along with his or her preferable brands, retail stores, etc. In the beginning, a customer attempts to get the necessary products he want to have, after that he goes for only those that have better utility advantage. Post-selection of products, an approximate calculation about his budget is done by the customer. Finally, the customer explores the average costs of things and products to decide which can be taken (Armstrong, et. al., 2000). In the meantime, societal, culture-related, financial, individual as well as cognitive factors are intricately combined to influence the purchasing decision.
A. Objectives of the Study:
• To study the importance of retail environment affecting the attitude of the consumers and view towards purchasing.
• To identify the consumer’s behavior in outlets of retail.
• To examine the factors influencing consumer buying behaviour.
B. Factors Influencing Consumer Buying Behaviour
The shopper’s behavioral aspects are impacted by different drives and aspects, such as:
1. Internal or Psychological forces
2. Social aspects
3. Cultural factors
4. Financial factors
5. Personal or Individual factors.
Following are the five vital queries that is helpful in comprehending the customer’s buying behavior. These are:
1. Who is the retail store and to which extent they can use their authority in terms of the company/brand/association?
2. What is the buyable stuff?
3. What is the reason behind such purchases?
4. Who is engaged in the Shopping?
5. What is the process of buying?
6. What is the time or season of buying?
7. Which stores or shops are used to purchase goods or services?
To understand the methods or paths through which buyers walk and take a final decision, the answers of the above questions are important.
The stimulus-response design of consumer behavior is as follows:
As per this chart, stimulus comes from external surrounding as well as the components of the marketing admix that goes into the consumer’s 'black box' to communicate with his or her intrinsic and cognitive features as well as decision procedure for culminating results that leads to take a buying decision.
As a marketing designer, one must interpret the functional method of that black box and to do this, two major elements of this box should be taken care of (Furaji, et. al., 2012). The first factor is about the aspects introduced by the customer while staying in that purchasing condition. Secondly, their decision procedures.
Following are some drives or aspects that shape the customers buying behavior.
II. INTERNAL OR PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS
The purchasing nature of buyers is shaped or impacted by several intrinsic and cognitive features. Amongst these, Motivation and Perception are most crucial.
A. Motivation
According to Gizaw and Thu Ha Nguyen (2014), a motive or objective is the force or need of a customer for satisfying his or her requirements (Garga, 2016). When a buyer wants to fulfill his or her need by purchasing some products, then it is termed as a purchasing motive.
An internal need or drive to buy something is motive in this regard and there are two types of needs, core needs or wants as well as secondary or auxiliary needs.
Here, motivation acts like a stimulus to result in a goal-oriented or target-based behavioral nature. To satisfy this goal, a person can buy some stuff. Hence, internal driving forces are crucial to impact a customer’s nature of buying.
A regular or normal requirement can turn into a motive when there are amplifiers to make it intense. Various categories of motives are here, such as:
B. Biogenic Needs
These type of needs come physiologically amidst tension like hunger and thirst.
C. Psychogenic Needs
Such needs come from mental or cognitive states of tension like for getting recognized or having respect.
D. Perception
There are more senses other than five basic ones (touch, smell, sight, hearing and taste) in humans. These are: directional senses, balance related senses, a proper understanding of which is the down way etc.
All these senses provide information to the brain relentlessly and the information burden can saturate the intake power. So the brain chooses senses from surrounding climate and omits the unwanted ones.
So, the data going into the brain do not include the entire scenario of the surrounding world of a person. After constructing a universal view, a person then joins the other data for mapping the ongoing happening in the external environment. In place of gaps, which are enormous, imaginative pictures are put. Hence a cognitive mapping is not the same as a photograph, it’s a constructive imagination. Several aspects can influence this map.
E. Subjectivity
A unique subjectivity refers to the present world view of a person.
F. Categorisation
Categorisation refers to the ‘pigeonholing’ of data as well as prior analysis and judgement of phenomenon and commodities. It occurs by means of 'chunking' where a person makes data into chunks of associated goods or things (Gizaw and Nguyen, 2014). For instance, an image is watched and a specific music is being played in the background which can be chunked as a product in the memory. Hence, whenever the image is seen, that music is also reciprocated and vice-versa.
G. Selectivity
The intensity of selection from the surrounding an operation to interpret what is happening in the neighboring environment of a person and how selective or focused that person is when it comes to the present job. It is another subjective aspects and a unique one. A few persons have more selectivity as compared to others.
H. Expectation
Expectations help the person to construct the data in particular manner. For instance, notice this underlying; series of numbers and letters:
Although number 13 is present in both series, in the first one it is seen as a B as it’s what the expectation asks brain to interpret (The В in Matura Ml Script looks like this. B)
I. Past experience
Previous experience helps people to interpret future happening as per our experience. Psychologically it is known as the law of primacy. Mostly, smell, Visuals, sounds of previous experience help to stimulate inaccurate responses. For example, the bakery smell can evoke the memory of a rural two-decade old Bakery. However, this specific smell can be imitated or even provided in artificial manner by aerosol near the hypermarket bread and bakery section.
A cognitive mapping is implemented as per idea of commodities and then the quality of that item can be seen as follows.
A customer utilizes the input selecting aspect for choosing cues and match values. From qualitative angle, cost, brand name or retail store name are vital. A powerful positive association is found in between cost and quality within ideas of maximum customers (Haghshenas, et. al., 2013). Apart from this, brand name as well as quality is important too; however the name of the retailer is not as important as these two, but still valuable.
III. SOCIAL FACTORS
Being a social animal, human nature and trends of likes and dislikes can be impacted by surrounding individuals as well. Before taking some decision, we want suggestions and affirmations from our family and friends. A socially objected thing is hardly done. In this regard, a) Family, b) Reference Groups, c) Roles and status are most important.
A. Family
Two categories of families exist, nuclear and joint. The first one is the core with members having greater liberty or freedom to decide a thing. The latter has more family numbers and here the decision by group is given importance. Family can massively impact a person’s nature, especially in Indian context. Tastes, choices, preferences, lifestyles of family members are deep-rooted in the purchasing habits of a family (Johar, 2015).
There are two methods to find the impacts of a family on the shopping behavior.
i) The family impacts a person’s individuality, features and values, assessment methods etc.
ii) The impactful nature leads to influence the decision-making procedure while buying products and services. From Indian perspective, the family-head can take decision on his own or in association with his wife what to buy. Hence, marketing professionals must understand the role as well as associated impact of the couple and kids for buying something.
An individual normally lives through two families Family of orientation
The original social place is the family of an individual where he or she is born. Parental impacts as well as the nature of upbringing influence majorly to shape purchasing habits. For instance, a traditional Tamil or Gujarati strictly vegetarian individual might not eat egg or meat in spite of appreciating its healthy aspects.
A. Family of Procreation
Family includes partner and offspring. Usually, post-marriage, a person’s buying habits as well as choices alter because of his or her spouse. With time, that habit settles down and creates some roles. For example, a dad or father decides the investment aspects while the mother decides things about health of kids.
The role of households as well as their numbers is more vital than the number of families when considered from marketing perspective (Kotler and Armstrong, 2007). So families have stronger roles in customer behavioral aspects as compared to the customer demand intensity.
B. Reference Group
A team of two or more individuals sharing some rules and regulations and these interdependent association creates a dependable behavior. A reference group is an association related group with respect to an individual. And these groups can potentially impact an individual choice, behaviors and nature in both direct and indirect manner. Reference group falls into several other probable grouping that might not be overlapping.
C. Roles and Status
A person takes part in multiple clusters such as personal, bludgeons, and administrations. The individual’s situation in every cluster can be clearly distinct in regard of character and position. A role involves of the happenings that an individual is in the thought to exert. Every role is associated with some kind of exertion. People select multiple products those interconnect their character and position in the community. Dealers need to consider the product symbol capability of goods and their brands.
IV. CULTURAL FACTORS
Kotler came to know that human behavior is mainly the outcome of a teaching procedure and as those persons mature teaching an array of ethics, insights, favorites and conduct outlines as the outcome of socialization for both the close relations and a sequence of externally important organizations (Pride and Ferrel, 2007). Observing this, we progress an array of ethics, those define and determine conduct approaches to an extended range. As per the view of Schiffman and Kanuk, ethics consist of accomplishment, achievement, effectiveness, advancement, material coziness, realism, individuality, autonomy, humanitarianism, newness and being pragmatic. This extended array of ethics is then impacted by the sub traditions such as ethnic groups, religious clusters, racial assemblages and geographical locations, where all these display ranges of dissimilarity in traditional taste, cultural favorites, prohibitions, insolences and lifestyle. Traditional elements involve of a) Tradition, b) Sub Tradition and c) Communal class.
A. Culture
Culture stands as the basic element of an individual’s desire and conduct. The maturing child obtains an array of ethics, insight favorites and conducts for both the close relations and other external vital organizations. Culture impacts significantly the outline of ingesting and the approach of choosing with the decisions. Venders need to discover the traditional services and need to outline marketing approaches for every division of culture individually to enhance the sales of their goods (Shenton, 2004). But tradition is not so constant and alters progressively and those alterations are gradually integrated within community.
Tradition is considered as an array of principles and standards those are easily shared by most individuals who are in the cluster. The classifications measured under tradition are generally observed to be large, but there has to be in philosophy a tradition that can be shared only be some individuals. Tradition is transferred from one cluster of member to others, and in specifically is generally moved from one enterprise to the other enterprise; it is educated, and it is supposed to be both personal and subjective.
For instance, food is powerfully connected with tradition. Whereas fish is considered as a fragility in the state of Bengal, and the Bengalis assertion of various hundred dissimilar diversities, in Gujarat. Rajasthan or Tamil Nadu, fish is mainly regarded as extensively intolerable food product. These dissimilarities in individual palates are elucidated by the tradition other than by few accidental dissimilarities in taste for persons; the conducts are shared by individual from a specific cultural contextual. Tradition can alter from period to period, even though those alterations incline to be sluggish, as because tradition is intensely developed into people’s conduct. In the view of marketing, so, it is perhaps more streamlined to operate within the specified tradition than to attempt to alter it.
B. Sub-Culture
Every tradition involves of slighter sub-traditions those offer more precise documentation and socialization for their people. While, sub-culture corresponds to an array of principles those are shared by a sub tradition of the key tradition, those consist population, faiths, cultural groups and topographical locations. Multiple sub-traditions make up vital market sections and dealers need to outline goods and marketing approaches directed to their requirements. Even though this subgroup will segment many of the traditions of the foremost tradition, they share inner to themselves and another array of principles; those might be at negatives with those apprehended by the foremost group. For instance, Indians are generally observed as conventional, traditional individuals, but affluent, up-market adolescences do not vacillate to relish night parties having alcohol and female.
C. Social class
Consumer behavior is mainly resolute with the communal class to which they go with. The cataloguing of socioeconomic clusters is termed as Socio-Economic Classification (SEC). Communal class is comparatively a perpetual and well-ordered classification in a community whose associates share parallel principles, attention and performance (Thangasamy and Pakitar, 2014). Communal class is not only strong-minded by a single element, like income but it is calculated as an amalgamation of multiple aspects, like revenue, business, edification, expert, influence, belongings, possession, life activities, ingesting, outline and many. There exist three kinds of communal classes especially in our community. Those are of upper class, middle class and lower class. These classes expose dissimilarities in regard of in their purchasing decisions. Upper class customers want high-class products to manage their position in the community. Middle class customers buy prudently and gain data to relate various goods in the similar thread and while lower class customers purchase on impulse (Veerakumar, 2017). So, marketing executives are needed to know about the connection that is for communal classes and their ingestion approach and go with necessary approaches to request to the people of those communal classes for whom their goods are intended for.
V. ECONOMIC FACTORS
Performance of the customer is mainly is impacted economic aspects. Economic factors are those where they impact the customer behavior are of:
a) Personal Revenue,
b) Family revenue,
c) Income outlooks,
d) Investments,
e) Liquid properties of the Consumer,
f) Customer credit,
g) Other economic aspects.
A. Personal Income
An individual’s personal income is the element of his purchasing decision. The complete personal revenue of an individual includes of throwaway revenue and optional revenue. The disposable personal revenue corresponds genuine income left at the discarding of an individual after subtracting from all the taxes and forcibly deductible products from the gross revenue. An upsurge in the throwaway revenue directs to an upsurge in the spending on multiple products. A decrease in the disposable revenue, in addition, directs to decrease in the investment on multiple products.
The optional personal revenue mentions to the balance residual after completion of all the essential requirements of life. This revenue is obtainable for the acquisition of shopping products, durable items and extravagances. An upsurge in the discretionary revenue directs to the increase in the investment on shopping products, luxuries etc. those enhance the standard of living of an individual.
B. Family income
Family revenue corresponds to collective revenue of all family members. Family revenue impacts the purchasing conduct of the family. The additional family revenue left after the spending on the essential requirements of the family, which is made obtainable for purchasing shopping products, durables and extravagances.
C. Income Expectations
Income expectations stand as the vital elements of the purchasing decision of the person. If he anticipates any upsurge in his revenue, he is desirous to invest more on shopping products, durable items and even on luxuries. In addition to this, if he anticipates any decrease in his future revenue, he is supposed to restrain his investment on luxuries and extravagances and limit his investment to unadorned requirements.
D. Savings
Savings also impact on the purchasing decision of the individual. An alteration in the volume of investments directs to alteration in the investment of the person. If an individual chooses to accept more external to his current revenue, he will invest fewer on relaxations and luxuries.
E. Liquid assets
Liquid assets corresponds to those properties, those can be easily transferred into cash immediately without incurring any damage. Liquid properties consist of cash in hand, bank deposits, merchantable securities and many If a person has many liquid properties, he chooses to purchase relaxation goods and luxuries. While, if he goes with decreased liquid properties, he cannot invest more on purchasing comfortable goods and luxuries.
F. Consumer credit
Consumer credit corresponds to credit facility obtainable to the customer’s eager of buying durable relaxation goods and luxuries (Zeithaml, 2010). It is made accessible by the vendors, either in direct or indirect method via banks and other kinds of economic organizations. Rental purchase, payment acquisition, direct bank loans and many are the approaches where the credit is accessible to the customers. Customer credit impacts on customer conduct too.
G. Other economic factor
Some of the other economic aspects such as business sequences, increase, etc. also impact the customer behavior.
H. Personal factor
Personal aspects also show impact on the customer performance. The vital personal elements, which impact customer conduct, are of a) Age, b) Occupation, c) Income and d) Life Style
I. Age
Age of the individual is the one vital personal aspects showing impact on the customer conduct. People purchase multiple goods at their various phases of cycle. Their perception, favorite, and others also alter with alteration in the life cycle
J. Occupation
Business of an individual impacts his purchasing decision. The life habits and purchasing thoughts and choices fluctuate extensively as per the behavior of the business. For example, the purchasing of a doctor will be simply distinguished from those of lawyer, educator, clerk persons, land owners, etc. Consequently, the advertising directors need to outline different marketing approaches ensemble the purchasing reasons of various occupational clusters.
K. Income
Income phases of individual are another aspect that impact in outlining the ingesting approach. Income is the one critical aspect of buying influence. So, purchasing approach of people fluctuates with various phases of income.
L. Life Style
Life style for the individual’s approach or the method of living as articulated in his movement, welfares and sentiments that outlines the “whole person” interrelating with the surroundings. Marketing directors need to outline various marketing approaches to connect with the life activities of the customers.
VI. CONCLUSION
For a successful consumer oriented market service provider should work as psychologist to procure consumers. By keeping in mind affecting factors things can be made favorable and goal of consumer satisfaction can be achieved. Study of consumer buying behaviour is gate way to success in market.
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