Academic literature on the topic 'Consumer pre-purchase behavior'

One convenient way of describing consumer behavior both off-line and online is to present the topic as a model representing the steps typical consumers go through when they acquire the goods and services they desire. These steps are Need Recognition, Information Search, Pre-purchase Alternative Evaluation, Purchase, Consumption and Post Consumption Evaluation (Blackwell, Miniard & Engel, 2001). Although not every consumer goes through every step for every purchase, this model is a useful heuristic for organizing the study of consumer behavior and serves as a way to describe online consumer behavior as well. In the Need Recognition stage consumer behavior is stimulated by needs and wants. Needs are the abstract categories that consumers require in order to survive, function and thrive. Wants are the specific objects or mechanisms that consumers learn will enable them to satisfy their needs. Consumer needs are few, universal and inborn. Wants are acquired through individual learning histories defined by the time, place and context of the consumers’ life. Consequently, wants are many, individual and varied. Each consumer is born with the same needs and learns what will satisfy those needs through the experience of being reared within a specific society, time and place. Marketers recognize that consumers have shared needs and seek to develop brands as the specific want-satisfying ways in which consumers can gratify their needs. Table 1 presents a summary of consumer needs and wants (Foxall & Goldsmith, 1997). Physiological needs derive from the fact that consumers are physiological creatures. The social needs come from the fact that consumers are social animals. Hedonic needs describe the needs consumers have for pleasurable sensations for the five senses. Experiential needs arise because consumers are saturated with feelings and emotions that they constantly seek to modify. Cognitive needs come from the curious, inquiring cerebral cortex that wants to know about its environment. Finally, consumers have egos, a sense of self-identity, they want to express, usually through symbols. Each consumer is born with these mind/body “systems” and spends much time and energy seeking to satisfy the requirements these systems impose. Products (goods, services and information) can be multidimensional (Freiden, Goldsmith, Hofacker, & Takacs, 1998). That is, consumption of a given product can simultaneously satisfy more than one need, as buying and wearing an item of clothing protects the wearer from the elements (physiological), attracts the opposite sex (social), is comfortable to the skin (hedonic), makes the wearer feel sexy (experiential) and represents the self-concept and values of the wearer (psychological). Consuming a news magazine might satisfy cognitive needs as well as psychologically symbolic ones; the reader acquires some desired information and shows that he/she is a responsible citizen. Moreover, consumers might buy many different products to satisfy the same needs, as where designer brand names are wanted for clothing, furniture, perfumes and cars to symbolize social status. This theory of motivation can be used to explain the motivations for participation in virtual communities. Belonging to a virtual community fulfills some of the social need for belonging and fellowship. Group participation can yield feelings of fun, excitement and pleasure. The community can be an important source of information that can satisfy the cognitive need to know. Membership can be used symbolically to express identity. Thus, much like the consumption of goods, services

Trust, which dominates the research on online shopping behavior, is relevant to various consumer behaviors across different online shopping stages. To provide a big picture of the research on trust in the online shopping context, this chapter reviews the literature on this topic and summarizes the major research findings. Specifically, trust-related behaviors are identified according to the three online shopping stages: information adoption and information disclosure behavior at the pre-purchase stage, product purchase behavior at the purchase stage, and relational behavior such as electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) and re-purchase at the post-purchase stage. The research topics relevant to these behaviors, including recommendation agent, information credibility, privacy concern, trust building and transfer process, and relationship marketing in the online shopping context are detailed. The future research directions such as location-based services, trust and distrust, and trust repair are also highlighted.

Although the hype around virtual worlds has slowed down in recent months, chances are high that this type of social media will increase in importance over years to come. Many companies which pioneered in entering virtual worlds have left these environments after their first steps. One of the reasons for these initial failures is likely the lack of understanding of in-world consumers and their expectations toward virtual commerce. The purpose of the authors’ chapter is therefore to investigate consumer purchase behavior within the virtual social world Second Life. Specifically, the authors analyze the types of purchase behavior consumers show within such an environment (planned purchases vs. impulse buying) and the factors that influence the decision to buy virtual products and services in exchange for real life money. For this, the authors’ study is based on a combination of a qualitative pre-study consisting of 29 in-depth interviews and a quantitative analysis based on responses obtained from a representative sample of 580 Second Life residents. The authors’ analysis results in the following three findings: First, the authors show that Second Life residents engage in two different types of purchase behavior: planned purchases and impulse buying. Second, the authors show that traditional consumer behavior theories and concepts can be transferred to similar behavior in a virtual world, although with different degrees of importance for different variables. And finally, the authors show that a Second Life resident’s usage intensity and consumption experience have a significant moderating influence on planned purchase behavior but not on impulse buying. From a managerial perspective, the authors’ results imply that Real Life companies that maintain Second Life flagship stores may consider communicating about their virtual products and services within real life. Additionally, Second Life stores should try to make the purchasing process as simple and convenient as possible (in order to increase planned purchases) and to create an overall exciting and pleasant shopping environment to elicit positive emotions among their potential customers (in order to maximize the probability of impulse buying). Finally, since purchasing behavior within Second Life appears to be more individualistic than what can be observed in real life, firms can consider offering virtual products and services in Second Life that are highly extravagant and may never be purchased in Real Life due to fear of other people’s opinions-–which is likely to be of particular importance for fashion goods.

This chapter examines the usage of social media in predicting consumer buying process. A mixed method approach has been applied, a cross sectional survey and in-depth interviews were conducted in three universities in Ghana. The responses were collected from individuals in the age group of 18 -30. Data was analysed using Logistics Regression and Thematic analyses. The findings revealed that the social media behaviour of young consumers could significantly influence their behaviour at the pre-purchase information search and evaluation levels. The findings suggest young consumers are more likely to use social media for marketing activities such as purchasing, hence industries should redirect more activities towards this digital channel. This implies that social media is driving young consumers into e-commerce and that presents a huge opportunity for business and marketers.

Facebook has been one of the popular Social Networking Sites (SNS) in recent years. With an increasing number of consumer groups using SNS, an understanding of consumer attitudes and behaviour towards its advertising becomes useful for businesses, in particular for those mobile phone companies that encounter consumer tastes in favouring technologically innovative products. Furthermore, greater attention needs to be paid to the function of online advertising in influencing the purchasing process. The study in this chapter contributes to our understanding of consumer behaviour towards SNS advertising. The differing behavioural segments identified show that Facebook advertising impacts the pre-purchase stages of the consumer decision-making process in mobile phone purchasing. Furthermore, the findings show that whilst social networking amongst peers is recognized as a key determinant of online engagement formal networking enabled by technical mechanisms on Facebook can be another key reason for using the site.

In an era of consumerism, unsustainable clothing consumption is becoming an essential problem. Problems are related to extensive use of raw materials, energy, water, and labour. There are also bottlenecks with used chemicals in production and labour exploitation issues. Home economics subjects deal with concerns related to textile topics and try to raise awareness of sustainable consumption of textile products. Particularly important is to educate people to have the right knowledge and skills to behave sustainably. The aim of the study was to find out the extent of pre-service teacher trainee’