site, would you buy
advertising in order to
get preferential
treatment?
YES
NO
evaluative criteria
The dimensions consumers use to compare competing product alternatives.
heuristics
A mental rule of thumb that leads to a speedy decision by simplifying the process.
brand because they assume that if it costs more, it must be better (even though this isn’t always true).
Perhaps the most common heuristic is brand loyalty; this occurs when we buy the same brand over and over, and as you can guess it’s the Holy Grail for marketers. Consumers who have strong brand loyalty feel that it’s not worth the effort to consider competing options. People form preferences for a favorite brand and then may never change their minds in the course of a lifetime. Needless to say, this makes it extremely difficult for rivals to per- suade them to switch.
Still another heuristic is based on country-of-origin. We assume that a product has certain characteristics if it comes from a certain country. In the car category, many people associate German cars with fine engineering and Swedish cars with safety. Brandon assumed that the Japanese-made Honda would be a bit more reliable than the Ford or Saturn, so he factored that into his decision.
Sometimes a marketer wants to encourage a country association even when none exists. For example, U.S. firm General Mills offers consumers Swiss-sounding Yoplait yogurt while Stonyfield Farms has introduced its Greek-sounding Oikos Organic Greek Yogurt. Häagen-Dazs ice cream comes from that exotic Scandinavian area we call . . . New Jersey.
Step 5: Postpurchase Evaluation
In the last step of the decision-making process, the consumer evaluates just how good a choice he made. Everyone has experienced regret after making a purchase (“What was I thinking?”), and (hopefully) we have all been pleased with something we’ve bought. The evaluation of the product results
in a level of consumer satisfaction/dissatisfaction. This refers to the overall feelings, or atti- tude, a person has about a product after she purchases it.
Just how do we decide if we’re satisfied with what we bought? The obvious answer would be, “That’s easy. The product is either wonderful or it isn’t.” However, it’s a little more compli- cated than that. When we buy a product, we have some expectations of product quality. How well a product or service meets or exceeds these expectations determines customer satisfac- tion. In other words, we tend to assess product quality by comparing what we have bought to a preexisting performance standard. We form this standard via a mixture of information from marketing communications, informal information sources such as friends and family, and our own prior experience with the product category. That’s why it’s very important that marketers create accurate expectations of their product in advertising and other communications.
Even when a product performs to expectations, consumers may suffer anxiety or regret, orcognitive dissonance, after making a purchase. When we reject product alternatives with attractive features, we may second-guess our decision. Brandon, for example, might begin to think, “Maybe I should have chosen the Honda Element—everyone says Hondas are great cars.” To generate satisfied customers and remove dissonance, marketers often seek to reinforce purchases through direct mail or other personalized contacts after the sale.
So, even though Brandon’s new Focus is not exactly as powerful as a Ferrari, he’s still happy with the car, because he never really expected a fun little car to eat up the highway like a high-performance sports car that costs ten times as much. Brandon has “survived” the consumer decision-making process: He recognized a problem, conducted an informational search to resolve it, identified the (feasible) alternatives available, made a product choice, and then evaluated the quality of his decision.
Apart from understanding the mechanics of the consumer decision-making process, marketers also try to ascertain what influences in consumers’ lives affect this process. There are three main categories: internal, situational, and social influences. In Brandon’s case, for
When you’re dieting and you’ll only consider low-calorie options, taste becomes an evaluative criterion.
brand loyalty
A pattern of repeat product purchases, accompanied by an underlying positive attitude toward the brand, based on the belief that the brand makes products superior to those of its competition.
consumer satisfaction/dissatisfaction The overall feelings or attitude a person has about a product after purchasing it.
cognitive dissonance
The anxiety or regret a consumer may feel after choosing from among several similar attractive choices.
example, the evaluative criteria he used to compare cars and his feelings about each were influenced by:
1. Internal factors such as the connection he learned to make between a name like Ford Focus and an image of “slightly hip, yet safe and solid”
2. Situational factors such as the way the Ford salesperson treated him
3. Social influences such as his prediction that his friends would be impressed when they saw him cruising down the road in his new wheels.
Figure 5.4 shows the influences in the decision-making process and emphasizes that all these factors work together to affect the ultimate choice each person makes. Now, let’s consider how each of these three types of influences work, starting with internal factors.