Abstract
This report explains the process consumers usually go through when purchasing a laptop. The report uses the consumer- decision making process model to help a laptop manufacturer understand the consumer buying process and how they can intervene in it to ensure their laptop brand is purchased more than competitors’ brands. According to the report, customers usually go through a five stages process when purchasing a laptop. These stages include need recognition, information gathering, evaluating the available alternative, selecting and purchasing the most preferred brands and finally evaluating their purchased brand and engage in post-purchase behaviour which can be the ‘make or break’ for the company.
Consumer Decision-Making Process when Buying a Laptop
One of the most important things for any company is to understand their customers’ behaviour during the pre-purchase, purchase and post purchase stages. This would help them understand their customers well hence being able to offer products and services that meet their needs. This report explains the steps that consumers usually goes through when purchasing a laptop. The report will be divided in several subheading based on the five stages of the consumer decision-making process model.\
Need/problem recognition
The first step in consumers’ decision making process is the need recognition. Need recognition occurs when a consumer discover unmet need that must be satisfied (Lamb et al, 2011). As stated by Kolter and Armstrong (2015), need recognition can be triggered by internal stimuli, such as hunger, thirst or external stimuli such as advertisement, friends among others. Just like other purchase decision, consumer’s decision to buy a laptop usually starts by discovering that they really need the product. There are several factors that can trigger one to realize they need a laptop. For instance, their old laptop maybe outdates, they may be in need of more conveniences which desktop can’t give them or maybe they would need an extra laptop to handle office work.
Information gathering
The second step in consumer decision making process is information gathering. Once an individual’s discover that they have unmet need that need to be satisfied, they start gathering information on how they can satisfy them (Kolter and Armstrong, 2015). As pointed out by Lamb et al (2011), consumers always gather information from various sources which include their own memory, friends, advertisements, Internet, reading materials, mass media as well as handling and experimenting with various brands. In regard to purchasing a laptop, once individual recognize they need one, they don’t go directly to the shop to purchase any laptop they get. They first of all gather information from various sources. According to a recent study, most consumers spend averages of 79 days gathering information before making their final purchase decision. The study also indicated that 81% consumers of electronic products gather information on the internet with search engine and companies/products’ websites being the most utilized (Charbonneau, 2013). In additional to internet, consumers would also gather information from their friends and families who already own similar products i.e. laptop (Lamb et al, 2011). This stage end when the consumers get enough information in regards to all the alternatives they have to fulfil their unmet needs (Kolter and Armstrong, 2015). For instance, in the purchase of a laptop, the information gathering stage would typically end when the consumers identifies a numbers of laptop brands and models that will fulfil their unmet need. At this stage, a company should identify customers’ sources of information and ensure they communicate their brand information through the sources.
The third stage in consumers’ decision making is where the customers evaluated the alternatives. As stated earlier, the information gathering stage end when the consumers identified a numbers of products or brands that would satisfy their needs. However, since they only need one product and their goal is to maximize their satisfaction, they evaluate the identified alternatives so as to choose the best deal (Kolter and Armstrong, 2015). As mentioned by Lamb et al (2011), there are no standard criteria that consumers use to evaluate the available alternatives. Each consumer evaluates the alternatives based on the factors that are most important to him or her. For instance, when purchasing a laptop, one consumer may use price and customers reviews as his/her criteria for choosing the laptop while another one may chose quality and physical attractiveness as their main criteria for evaluating the same product. This therefore suggests that, it is important for a laptop manufacturer to conduct market research in order to understand the most important factors used by customers to evaluate the available brands before they purchase. Understanding these factors would help the manufacturer, produce, distribute, package and price their laptop brand in a way that will attract more customers hence gaining competitive advantage in the market.
This is the fourth stage in consumers’ decision making process and it start immediately an individual is done evaluating the available alternatives. Basically, this stage involves selecting the best alternative and eventually purchasing/acquiring it (Lamb et al 2011). As noted by Kolter and Armstrong (2015), logical customers will usually purchase the products that meet or surpassed the product’s evaluation criteria they had in mind. However, most of the laptops models available in the market have competing brands with similar features, prices, quality and appearance. This means that two or more laptops can meet the customers’ evaluation criteria and therefore stand an equal chance of being purchase. For a laptop manufacturer to ensure their products is chosen over competing brand, they needs to go an extra mile to offer excellent after sales services, warranty and other offers that will attract the customers to their brands. Alternatively, they can develop advertisements that display their products as more superior than rival brands as this would help reduce customers’ dissonance.
Post –purchase decision
This is the final stage in consumers’ decision making process. It is at this stage that the customers get to evaluate whether the product they purchased satisfies their needs or not and they will then engage in post-purchase behaviour (Kolter and Armstrong, 2015). This stage is very important to a laptop manufacturer as customers’ experience with the product goes a long way to affects the reputation of their brand. Normally, if customers are satisfied with the product they become loyal as well as spread positive word -of-mouth. On the other side, if the product fail to live up to the expectation, they would tarnish the reputation of the brand by spreading negative word-of –mouth among their friends, family, as well as the general public through online products reviews and rating (Kolter and Armstrong, 2015). To succeed in the market, laptop manufacturer should therefore take this final stage very seriously. They should do follow-up after product purchase to gather feedbacks from their customers. The feedbacks should then be used to improve their products as well as sale services. In conclusion, the report shows that when buying a laptop, customers usually goes through various stages. First, they have to discover that they need the laptop. Secondly, they gather information relating to laptop from various sources with the major one being the internet. Thirdly, they evaluate the alternative laptop brands available using criterion that is most important to them. Fourth, they select the laptop that they prefer most. Finally, they evaluate whether the laptop they purchased live up to the expectation or not. The outcomes of this evaluation will then determine their post-purchase behaviour. To gain competitive advantages in the market, a laptop manufacturer should understand each of the consumers’ decision making process mentioned above and respond appropriate.