CONSUMER PROBLEM SOLVING PROCESS

The marketers to strategies their strategies should know the stages consumers go
through, when making purchases
Also these stages depend on a number of variables such as
1. type of buying (extended decision making, limited, impulse?),
2. familiarity with the product or service, and
3. Urgency
1. Impulse buying = is an unplanned and spontaneous buying
behaviour resulting from a powerful urge(persistently to persuade
someone to do something) to buy something immediately. Goods
and services are purchased at the point of contact eg purchase of
an ice-cream
2. Routinised problem solving (make something into a matter of
routine) = These purchases usually consider no new brands
3. limited buying situation/Limited problem solving = It may be a
purchase of a new brand in a familiar product class
4. Extended problem solving/extensive buying situation
It is for expensive less frequently bought items; less familiar product
class/changing technology, high involvement and high perceived risk.
The purchase involves relatively extensive internal and external
information search
Stages consumers go through when making
purchases
1. Problem recognition
2. Information search
3. Evaluation of Alternatives and Selection
4. Purchase
5. Post purchase evaluation

Experienced brand royal consumer, or a buyer of a routinized purchase

item, jumps from problem recognition to a purchase decision
Problem recognition

• This results from discrepancy between a desired state and an actual

state that is sufficient to arouse(kuamsha) and activate the decision
process
• It’s the consumer’s perception of the actual state and not objective
reality that triggers (kuchochea) problem recognition

• Factors influencing need recognition are many including external

marketing influences eg. advertisements, changed life curcumstances,
product consumption, etc
• Marketers need to know the problems consumers are facing
• This can be done through
1. intuition, (the ability to understand something immediately, without
the need for conscious reasoning)
2. but more important, through research techniques such as surveys
and focus groups
To discover problems through research techniques, marketers can use
the following approaches; 1. analysis of problems encountered in the
course of doing certain activities, and 2. in using existing products or
through analysing existing problems.
• After that discovery, marketers should develop proper mix to solve
the problems. This may be through product development,
introduction of new product, revision of price, etc
• A marketing mix can be described as a set of marketing elements or
tools which are used to achieve various marketing objectives
4PS 4CS
Product Customer needs and wants
Price Cost to the customers
Convenience
Place

Promotion Communication

Extended Marketing Mix Variables

.People, physical evidence and process
• Marketers sometimes activate problems, Though need recognition
• They attempt to create primary demand in which they encourage
consumers to use a product or service. This strategy occurs mostly in
early stages of product life cycle to convinve people to try new type of
item
• Sometimes consumers may be happy with existing solutions. In that
case, if a new product type is introduced, it may lack market. In such
cases, marketers often convince prospects through offering free trials
to help them perceive differences. These differences become a basis
for problem recognition if new solutions look superior. In this regard,
sometimes marketers are said to create problems.
• In contrast, marketers try to build secondary demand by persuading
consumers to select their brands over competitors’
Further, marketers should be able
• to analyse consumers’ behaviour
• to determine correctly customer needs. If determination of needs is
incorrect and a sales person presents wrong products, the customer
may be lost to a competitor.
Information search
• Once a problem is recognised, relevant information from long-term
memory is used to determine if a satisfactory solution is known. This
is internal search. When past experience or knowledge is insufficient,
the risk of making a wrong purchase decision is high; so, most
consumers turn to external information search. External search is
seeking additional information from other sources. These include:
non marketing sources eg, friends, neighbours, relatives, etc;
professional sources e.g., pamphlets, books, journals, internet, etc;
marketing sources, eg, ads, product labels, sales persons, in-store
displays, demos, mass media, publicity, etc.
A consumer may seek information in the
following areas;
• Existence of various alternative solutions,
• Appropriate evaluative criteria for the solution of the problem,
• Performance level or characteristics of each alternative solution on
each evaluative criterion.
• Many purchases, however, involve either little or no external search.
• Marketers of habitually bought goods should use maintenance
strategy that requires consistent product quality, distribution to avoid
stock-outs and reinforcement advertising.
• This helps to maintain the consumer habitual behaviour and prevent
search for alternatives. If a product does not belong to most
consumers’ evoked (mind) sets, a disrupt (interrupt) strategy should
come into play. This can be through major attention-attracting ads,
free samples, coupons and rebates (pay back). Such approaches help
to disrupt the existing decision pattern. Generally, marketers should
also identify opinion leaders and make use of them. They need also to
know, what information consumers need. This helps in designing ads
Evaluation of Alternatives and Selection
• At this stage, consumers assess products and choose among
alternatives
• There are attitude and attribute based consumer brand choices
• You have to known that, general attitudes, impressions (maoni) and
intuition lead to a choice while rates(viwango) considered brands on
attributes before a choice is made.
• The various dimensional features or attributes consumers consider
when rating (tathmini) products are termed as evaluative criteria.
Evaluative criteria consumers use range from cost and performance
features to intangible factors such as design, taste, prestige, feeling-
generated and image. Many choices, however, are made on attitude
bases. Many consumers use price, country of manufacture, brand
name and warranties to indicate product performance and quality
• Price alone has been found to influence perceived quality of many
product and service categories
• They assume price and quality go together
• however, the relationship for many products between price and
functional quality is low
• Many consumers also form beliefs that certain variables do not go
together such as lightweight and strong
To marketers

• Thus, it is important for marketers to understand consumer beliefs

about relationship of features related to their products. Marketers
further need to understand the criteria consumers use to evaluate their
products. This is essential for communicating brand features sought by
consumers to the market and developing products that excel in these
features. It is also important for influencing evaluative criteria used by
consumers.

• Marketers need also to identify surrogate (upendeleo) indicators of their

products and stress (emphasis) on them
Let us come to the Purchase stage
• At this stage, consumers select where and when to make a purchase..
The consumer continues to negotiate the terms of the transaction
and ultimately either makes the purchase or terminates the process.
Factors such as terms of sale, price, delivery, warranties etc may affect
this stage. Retail outlet selection may be affected by outlet/store
image, location and size of the outlet and advertising.
• Also Sometimes, brand choice may also be made at this stage
• Businesses need also to simplify the actual purchase as much as
possible. For example managing the time spent in queues. They
should further ensure timely distribution of products and prompt
deliveries to avoid stock outs and delays that may make a consumer
change his mind.
Post purchase evaluation
• After consumption, the product is judged according to the needs it
was to fulfill,
• consumer’s own expectations and by the criteria on which alternative
brands were graded
There are three posibble outcomes
1. neutral feeling = Actual performance matches expectations.
2. satisfaction = Performance exceeds expectations causing what is
known as positive disconfirmation of expectations
3. And the third one is when Performance is below expectations
causing negative disconfirmation (kukata tamaa) of expectations
and disatisfaction. If expectations are not met, the consumer
experiences some post purchase dissonance/cognitive dissonance.
• Generally, the stages consumers pass through when making
purchases are very important components which are dependable to
the marketers when formulating various marketing strategies.
Basically, all of the marketing strategies are also formulated in the
light of those stages which consumers go through when making
purchases. For example, pricing strategies, placing strategies and
promotional strategies depends on how those stages have been
organized.
Self study; cognitive dissonance

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