Decision Making Process of customer
As a marketer, the biggest challenge today in getting the mindshare of the customer. There is a overdose
of campaigns through mix of different media starting from SMS, print, digital, TV, outdoor, radio .Each
brand claims to be better than other & lot of their campaigns are crafted with subtle imagery thrown
around them by best of minds. This brings us to the basic question, what are basic rules of consumer
decision making process?
Consumer decision making process
The decision making process of the customer is remarkably consistent and almost everyone goes through a
five stage decision making process as shown in exhibit below
Gate 1.Awareness:-
Has your customer heard of you as a brand?
This covers the basic question. Has your customer heard of you as a brand?. If you are a brand who has
been in business for years in B2C segment this may not be a challenging stage. But if you are a new brand,
this stage presents a challenge to be present where the customer is. Research has shown that customers
generally prefer to pick up products that they have heard of as it reduces risk in his mind. That does not
mean lack of awareness means those products won’t be picked up. In case of B2B brand, brand may be
many a times ingredient brand. There are many cases where brands have moved out of being an invisible
brand & become brand case in point being Intel
Then there are commodity brands where brands do not have any role in consumer buying behaviour. These
are low involvement products where customer does not feel like investing time to pick the product, he just
picks up whatever is available at counter. An example of such case will be typical nails that are purchased.
You just look at nails & pick it up & don’t think much about it