This or That ?

Picture yourself, sitting on your office chair. Your co-worker’s telephone won’t stop ringing, people come and go at your office and the only thing you can think right now is that Summer is coming. You are mentally somewhere in Santorini sitting at the beach, sipping your cold cocktail and hearing the crickets “singing”.

Suddenly, a striking image comes to your mind…. Your winter body.….images of burgers, spaghetti, crepes and drinks that you had during winter appear before you like a horror movie. You realize that you have only two months to prepare yourself for the beach and you start panicking.

Relax, take a deep breath. It’s simple.

Step 1: find a gym close by and register

Step 2: start checking online diets and meals

Step 3: buy sports gear (the simple stuff, trainers, sports clothes)

Step 4: go to gym and start burning that fat!

You don’t even have to move from your chair - kind of ironic. You can check everything online. The difficult part is finding the one brand that fits your needs, and you can stay on budget. There so many options in the market that getting lost and being indecisive is almost a given phenomenon. Some of the most popular brands in the market (at least for now) are Adidas, Nike, Reebok, Fila and most probably you are exposed to their brand all the time. So, how can you choose? How is your decision affected?

Marketers have the answer. They know (at least they try) how you choose a brand, and specifically why. What are the criteria in buying a specific product?

According to the Decision Buying Model, your choice in consumption takes about 5 steps:

1. Problem Recognition

2. Information Search

3. Evaluation of Alternatives

4. Purchase Decision

5. Post – purchase behavior

Problem Recognition

We’ve already covered the first step. Summer is coming. You need exercise. But, in order to do that, you need training & sports gear.

Information Search

You've already opened a tab on your browser of your favorite clothing site and started browsing among hundred of pages with shoes. And you end up bombarded with information. There are designated shoes for specific sports or activities, such as running, training, walking, course shoes, field shoes, casual, outdoor and the list goes on....

Evaluation of Alternatives

Luckily, most sites have filters so you easily can categorize and do targeted research, so that you can find exactly the product that suits your needs and you will benefit from it. You can categorize via activity, size, color, brand and price range. if you're in the mood, you can also do price comparisons, so you can find the beast deal out there.

Moreover, if you are unsure about the quality of a specific product, or not sure whether the description matches the end product, you can easily check reviews and comments by previous buyers (if they are so kind to warn you for something negative).

Another factor that may affect your decision, is your degree of involvement with the product / brand. Your involvement may be affected by the number of brands/products you have researched, how much time you spent researching and number of sellers considered (Clarke, Belk, 1979).

Purchase

That's it! You are almost done! You're a couple of clicks away from buying your very special shoes that you can't wait to hit the gym and show them off. However, just because you successfully passed all the previous steps and feel confident about your choice, that doesn't mean your opinion is fixed! Anything can happen and change your mind (a sudden online sale on another product / site, a quick chat with a friend that those shoes are sooo off-season, or suddenly your bosses realizes you are shopping online on working hours - don't do that).

Post-purchase Behavior

This stage doesn't really concern you at this moment, but it will in a couple of months! This is the stage where you've bought your product, tried it and judged whether is was truly a good choice or not. You might be in love with it (brand loyalty - Jacoby, Jacob, R.Chestnut, 1978), you might be just okay with it, or you might just hate it! (cognitive dissonance -Festinger, 1957).

So, enough with the theory! Click on that BUY button on the right corner of your screen, call one of the girls and start preparing for summer!

Sources

Festinger L. (1957), A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, Stanford University Press

Jacoby, Jacob, R.Chestnut (1978), Brand Loyalty and Measurement Management, New York, John Woley & Sons.

Keith Clarke and Russell W. Belk (1979) ,"The Effects of Product Involvement and Task Definition on Anticipated Consumer Effort", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 06, eds. William L. Wilkie, Ann Abor, MI : Association for Consumer

Kotler, P., Keller, K.L., Koshy, A. and Jha, M.(2009) Marketing Management – A South Asian Perspective, but China and Japan also contribute 13th ed. India: Prentice Hall, 2009

#eshops #onlineshopper #tactics #decisions #reviews