Consumer Buying Behavior:
It is obviously the
need of individuals, groups or an organization that is in focus for any buying
that shall take place. However a clear understanding of consumer’s buying
behaviors empowers companies to successfully target their offering, servicing
and marketing activities. Understanding
buying behavior results in finding out the relevance of it in line with human
needs and this becomes extremely important in light of fact that marketing is
all about satisfying needs.
Any purchase is
influenced and directed by the very motivation that the concerned buyer has to
make the purchase. As we know the motivations could be varied, the Maslow’s
hierarchy of needs if the appropriate model to understand the structure of this
motivation. The five levels of such motivations (in bottom-up approach) would
be “Psychological needs”, “Security needs”, “Social needs”, “Esteem needs ”,
“Self-Actualization needs”. We however here would refrain from discussing the
details of each of such motivation as they are self explanatory and hence
assumed to be clear.
Once the motivation
aspects are identified and studied, the marketing experts as per the need of
their make the necessary changes or adaptation to their offering to enable the
correct buying behavior. Coming to actual consumer buying behavior it is an
interactive process involving the marketing activities of producer, the
consumer psychological attributes and consumers purchase decisions.
Initially the need
of consumer for given product is identified which is then transformed into
marketing mix variable (4ps). Then the consumer psychologically evaluates the
offerings in relation to these psychological needs (culture, attitude, previous
learning’s and perceptions). This is then followed by decision of where and
when to make the purchase in line with needs and choices.
Kit-Kat American Consumer Buying Behavior Analysis:
If we have to
analyze the purchasing behavior of consumer of Kit-Kat in general it would be
the psychological aspect that needs to be evaluated because all other aspect
more of less either remains the same for all products or at least for the
category of product that we are discussing.
In terms of Maslow’s
hierarchy that we discussed above, if we have to find a suitable motivator for
Kit-Kat purchase it is obviously “Social Needs”. This is because chocolate is
not something which can given one security and not something which is core
needs of life and neither is it that give you a status symbol as it is not a
niche product and hence the social need is what drives it sale (Sharp, 2009). Social need can be
attached to it in the sense that the purchase are mostly made on impulse and
are more driven by friends circle choice and among friends and relative only.
We have ample
evidence from research conducted and results published that the majority of
consumer of product at this point of time are people in the range of 25-40.
This is not very positive from company perspective as it is generally perceived
that chocolates are something that is youth consumption driven .
The obvious reason
and explanation as is evident from data collected is that Kit-Kat at this point
of time have not been able to keep youths attracted or is enable to create good
new consumers of it, hence majority of consumers that are coming to it are
loyal to brand because of their experience and image during their youth time.
