ADULT CONSUMER'S DECISION-MAKING PROCESS

Adult Consumer's Decision-Making Process

Adult Consumer's Decision-Making Process

Introduction

Adults have to make many decisions each day, decisions selecting one option over another. Marketers have several views of consumers with different perspectives of how individuals make decisions: economic, passive, cognitive, and economic views. The complex process of adult consumer decision making integrates many psychological concepts. The social and cultural rights of the individual, in a simple conceptual framework that allows us to understand how consumers make decisions, take a more comprehensive and examines the consumer decision-making in the context of all types of consumer choices, ranging from the consumption of new products to the use of traditional and established.

What is a Decision?

Every day each of us makes decisions of all kinds, but usually we take without thinking about how we do, and is involved in the decision making process.

Broadly speaking, decision-making is selecting an action from two or more alternatives. They have to be several alternatives for the individual is in a position to make a decision. On the other hand, if the consumer does not have a choice, just like in the case of buying a drug, then this action of "no options" is not a decision. (Brenkert, 1997)

For consumers, at present, and situations do not happen without options or consumption. Freedom expressed in a wide range of product options, so there is usually an alternative and an opportunity for consumers to make decisions.

Stages of Decision Making

The act of making a decision has three stages: need recognition, pre-purchase search, and evaluation.

Need recognition stage occurs when the consumer has a problem. The consumer purchases a product based on fixing a problem. The pre-purchase stage is base on perception of a need for the satisfaction of product and its consumption. The consumer recalls through memory enough information to make the purchase. Then sometimes, there needs to be research information from external sources to make a good decision. (Argyris, 1996)

Four Perspectives on Consumer Decision Making

Several models represent human decision-making process of consumers in distinctly different ways. The term model of man refers to a general view held by a large group of people in relation to how (and why) people behave the way they do. We define below four models:

Economic Man: In the field of economic theory, which poses a way of perfect competition, the consumer is characterizing as an economic man, i.e. to make rational decisions. Consumer researchers, for various reasons, have criticized this model. To have a rational behavior from the economic point of view a consumer should know all the product alternatives, correctly classifying each in terms of advantages and disadvantages, and identify the single best alternative. However, consumers rarely have sufficient information, or are sufficiently precise, and even a sufficient degree of involvement or motivation to make perfect decisions. (Ferrell, 1995)

According to a distinguished social scientist, the model of economic man is not realistic for the following reasons:

People are limited by their skills, reflexes and current habits

People are limited by ...