Paper Example on Buyer Behavior

Introduction

One of the thoughts so significant to the aspects of marketing today is to understanding why consumers develop the tendency to make individual decisions. In light of reality, these decisions made by consumers tend to influence marketing with certain degrees either negatively or positively. For instance, it is difficult to tell why a soccer mom would prefer to drive an SUV car instead of a minivan, in the same note, why would a teenager prefer coke to Pepsi? In fact, these examples present one of the phenomenon arguments that product features rarely dictates consumer choice. It is therefore essential to note that consumer decision making tends to go much deeper than that product features. It is imperative for the marketers to know what drives consumers to develop certain emotional level to build a persuasive message associated with specific products and services. In this regard, how therefore do marketers see the manifestation of these emotional triggers? This paper provides comprehensive methods and literature versed with the right tool Means-end Model, which facilitates analysis of the product markets as far as consumer behavior, and judgment is concerned. The model draws its multi-faceted study on categorization processes which is often the basis consumers use to set out substitutable products.

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Means-End Chain

The means-end chain is a presentation of a conceptual structure that links a product and a consumer. In many cases, the product is looked in the perspective of various bundles of attributes, which elicit specific behavioral manifestation in the consumers. On the other hand, the product consumer is regarded as a collection of values. The characteristics of the product are seen as one character that often leads to various consequences of the product use of the need for consumption of a particular product which in turn satisfy consumer values. The traditional paradigm of understanding why consumers make specific choices particularly product choices is usually quantitative. In the broader perspective, the means-end approach tends to give an analytical explanation why consumers consider values exhibited by products rather than product quality. The means-end models dissect the product and services attributes, which are typically associated with different consumer consequences. Additionally, the product benefits and risks, as well as the personal values the product offers to the consumer, are deemed necessary in decision-making. All these scenarios of self-attachment with a particular product or service result in a chain that links a product and attributes come along with consequences such as psychological to point out important underlying personal values.

Analyzing Food Choice from a Means-End Perspective

Nature has it that people have to eat so that they can survive. From this point, survival becomes the most critical self-relevant consequence for the consumption of food products; however, it is not in industrialized societies, a thing to imagine indiscriminate between various food products. To understand the reason why a specific population of consumers prefers one food product to the other becomes necessary in understanding the different self-relevant consequences that consumers exhibit while attached to specific food products. The means-end chain theory has on many occasions advocated helping in understanding how consumers perceive self-relevance on the consequences of their chosen products. The model, in brief, implies that there are individual products, which have established a close association with its attributes. The product has specific characteristics that make it central to consumers' motivation eliciting interest to the product. By linking the product and consumer behaviors, more abstract and cognitive categories and chins of association are established. For instance, a prototype chain may have the following elements: abstract product attribute, terminal; value, instrumental value, functional consequence, and psychological consequences. Nonetheless, the length of the chains is subject to difference and the extent to which an individual product is linked to some of the common abstract type of cognitive categories, i.e., values that are believed to present an expression of involvement of the consumer to the product.

In principle, the means-end chain can be measured in several ways. Laddering is one of the best methods that have been advocated and used in many cases. By employing laddering, some of the relevant product attributes must be found. Finding out product attributes that attract consumers can be done through triads, questioning, and sorting out the products into their meaningful piles. The respondents are then asked for their preferences concerning the already marked attributes. By picking one choice, the respondent is asked, "why do you prefer this product over the other?" this is repeatedly done until the respondent answers with finality. The idea then is that the respondents are pushed to the means-end ladder.

The Laddering Technique

Guttmann and Reynolds 1998 came up with an in-depth analogy of interview technique which they called laddering. This tool made it possible to dissect and uncover the consumer's means-end chains. The technique did so by bridging the "gap" between the qualitative and the predominantly research as it sought to formalize motivational relations which were obtainable in qualitative interviews. In laddering, there are three distinct phases: 1 depth interview, elicitation of salient attributes, and analysis of the results.

Firstly, product attributes that are used by the consumer to evaluate, judge, and compare the outcomes are elicited through numerous techniques. These attributes serve as some of the essential starting points for the depth interview from which the consumer is continuously probed with a given form of questions. For instance,

Interviewer: you said the absence of certain hormone is a factor in deciding which type of beef to buy. Why? (This is an attribute)

Respondent: it is because I believe that a wholesome meat is that with no hormones. (Consequence)

Interviewer: why do you consider it important to purchase a wholesome meat?

Respondent: for me to be healthy" (value)

Interviewer: "why must you be healthy?

Respondent: when I am healthy I will enjoy my life more. (Value)

Interviewer: is it important for you to enjoy your life?

Respondent: it is just important for me.

The data obtained are analyzed with the help of a combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques. The results are therefore made into two stages, the categorization processwhe3re the effects are reduced into a workable number of categories. Implication matrix is then constructed from these categories indicating how many times values, attributes or consequence leading ton another attribute, value or another consequence. Base on the constructed matrix, a hierarchical value maps are built. This is an aggregate representation of motivational structure attache do a product in question.

The distinctions that occur between products of ascertain type presents its attributes and desired features which in themselves are a matter of semantics. In many cases, what gives a brand of product an added value are the performances the product is capable of fulfilling or the ingredients that are built on it. For instance, in readily prepared foods, remote control for a television s or vitamin enriched grains. For a good number of products, the characteristics that are socially shared are vital to consumers' choice, e.g., a pair of jeans conveying one's youthfulness, designer signs portraying status, bear communicating masculinity and so on. These attributes help in conveying social as well as personal identity (both the actual and the desired ones) within a particular type of setup and towards different audiences. Besides, they may work closely in enhancing people's feelings about themselves, be it directly or by relaying g supportive feedback from others.

In regards to laddering technique, there is an ultimate arrival in the higher values that makes a consumer to develop an attitude towards a particular product. This attitude necessarily dictates the priority the consumers attach to a particular product. In stressing the importance of the higher order values#, the ultimately continue to spur motivation and hence called ultimate determinants. For values that motivate consumption, psychologists equally have been intrigued towards the motivational dynamics that occurs, they have undertaken to find out if these dynamics stem out of desires or they are striving factors for ideal states. Despite very innumerable in different ways, most of the conceptions all look for the explanation of human behavior regarding fundamental and remote causes.

Higher Orders Values Guide Consumer Behavior

The distinction that occurs between values and goals, on the one hand, and the hidden needs as well as some human drives, might be less apparent to the point that the means-end tool might suggest. When it is implied that someone is seeking something and then the outcome of the need is described based on self-fulfillment, then that puts a positive spin on the behavior of to whom the driving force originate from such as lessening anxiety. Since the consumers have been thought to poses behavior specific motives which vary as compared to the sum of where they arise, a compelling argument has therefore made to focus on their motive s rather than looking for the remote causes of the values. One of the assumptions made thus is that the terminal values are salient. Nonetheless, more considerable attention will be given to products of designation which is attached to the consequences and the desired behaviors. According to Nurius, 1986, that there is a working self-concept which works ton subject the knowledge becomes dominant band salient in the long run. These factors are so important than the self-related values which are likely to guide the behavior of a consumer in making choices.

The Case for Salient Motives

The expected value approach stresses on the contemporaneous meaning of goals as well as the understanding of desire as opposed to uncovering the historical begging of an individual's motives. For that reason, they have implicitly accepted the importance as well as the diversity of human behavior especially the specific motivators. In this sense, the expectancy rate enables behavioral theorists to think about reasons for avoiding or approaching certain objects.

Consumer behavior has gained popularity in the marketing world today. Consumer behaviors are so dynamic and are as a result of several decisions that involve the myriad behaviors in ideas, experiences, and specific activities. The multitude decisions and responses, in the long run, are directed at satisfying the consumer demands and wants. With regards to tourism, the t5ourism researchers have in the past reviewed some of the individual concepts and specific influences on a consumer will consider in choosing which service is best for him or her. Varied literature searched on the behavior of tourists, exhibit travel choices to the value of what the place of visit offers to them than an alternative palace of the visit.

Means-End Theory and Tourism Decision

Means-end is one of the most popular models which is used to explain consumer values in the tourism sector. The model operates through laddering techniques which elicit a suggestion that almost all consumers have a cognitive hierarchy. The cognitive means hierarchy presents a means of achieving consumption goals hence the facilitation of laddering technique. This model has been use4d to derive how cognitive attributes are always perceived to have contributed to the benefit of consequences which in turn satisfy the significant part of personal values. According to lope...