How to study consumers buying behavior in India?

How to study consumer buying behavior in India?

Studying consumers buying behavior is very important for all entrepreneurs who want to start their business, for sales and marketing students, and for managers who want to study consumers buying behavior. Before starting any business or entering the field of marketing, it's very necessary how to study consumer buying behavior in India.

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Consumers may be individuals, businessmen, common men, housewives, or students who consume products. But the consumers are brilliant. They have different characteristics which need to be studied.

It is a very important task for beginners to get an experience of the behavior of the consumers. Before studying consumers’ behavior some affecting factors that need to be known as cultural, social, personal, and psychological factors.

Table of contents

• Cultural factors
• Social factors
• Personal factors
• Psychological factor 
• Consumer buying decision 
• Purchase decision 
• Conclusion 

Cultural Factors

In cultural factors, how to study consumer buying behavior in India, is classified into the following different categories:

Deprived: The people who earn less than 1 lakh annually, they are also known as those below the poverty line. Their life depends on hand-to-mouth. This category serves food and shelter.  

Aspires: Who earns above Rs.1 lakh to Rs.2 lacs annually. They are above the poverty line, and low-category income levels of people, but they can earn for the family and live in a proper shelter.

Seekers: Those who earn Rs.2 lakhs to Rs.5 lakhs annually, most of the population of India is in this category. They are called middle-class families, they have the capacity of achieving everything in life, but some circumstances make them weak.

Strivers: Those who earn Rs.5 lakhs to Rs.10 lakhs per annum, are leading the maximum consumption of every product. Small-scale businessmen and professional government employees are in this category.

Global Indian: Those who earn Rs.10 lakhs and above, are the leaders, high profile businessmen, who purchase international brands of products. And travel all over the world. Their consumption is in the VIP category.

Social Factors  

The social factors are classified into two major categories, reference group, and family group.

Reference Group

Reference group gives us awareness about the quality of the products, circumstances which you have to face, attitude, values, and behavior of the people, whichever they experienced about the particular products; they used to share their passion with us.  

Family Group

Family is the most important part from where we get lots of information. Indian culture gives importance to their families, for any kind of purchasing family plays an important role, even every member is asked before purchasing any product.

Personal Factors

The personal factor of consumer behavior depends on the different age groups, occupations, and lifestyles. They have different behavior according to their occupation and lifestyle. 

Age Group

A personal factor depends on different age groups, it’s varying from age to age, and young man and old man's behavior is different. And children basically depend on the fashion or trend which goes on.

Occupation

Occupation is based on different levels of jobs and business classes. Every occupation has its different consuming habits, and accordingly, consumer behavior is required to be identified and recognized.  How to start a business without MBA

Lifestyles

Personality and self-confidence are basically adaptabilities and aggressiveness is very common to be studied. Sometimes people do not think about price, as their lifestyle changes and accordingly behavior changes.

Psychological Factors 

Psychological factors are based on some theories, the need for hierarchy theory is mostly known by their classes, and their style of living also gets changed. These categories are as follows:  

Physiological needs

These are important needs for sustaining human life, food, water, shelter, medicine, and education, these are basic physiological needs and are primary needs of satisfaction.

Security & Safety Needs

This need is to get free from physical danger, and fear of losing a job, property, food, and shelter. It desired protection against harm. For this people use to buy a life insurance policy or medical insurance or burglary etc.

Social needs

Human beings strive to be in society; this need will try to satisfy their needs for affection, acceptance, and friendship. This needs the desire to have a good social circle. Our social need creates value in society.

Esteem needs 

Once people are satisfied with their social needs, and financial status, they need power, prestige, and status, and want to improve their self-confidence to maintain status.

Need for self-actualization

This is the highest need in the hierarchy; it includes growth and achieving one's potential. This is the category of high-profile government officials and mostly businessmen, and their needs are for manufacturing products. 

The psychological factor is the hierarchy system that categorizes consumers according to their financial growth and the success of the people.

Consumer buying decisions

Based on all the above, we have to study all these factors that affect consumer behavior. At every stage and status, we have to study all these factors. And then we reach the final decisions.  

Final Decision- making is a very important part before starting any business, marketing, or producing things according to the consumer's behavior.

As per the study of the consumer’s behavior, the consumer buying decision depends on the following major points that need to be noted:

Need Recognition

Need recognition depends on internal stimuli and external stimuli, we must know whether the product is our need or not, whether it’s urgent or maybe postponed, the need is recognized as per the maximum satisfaction.

Information  Search

We have to find out the information about the products from different sources, that are personal, public sources, and external sources.

Personal Source: It starts from our family, our family members, friends, and neighbors, which are the best informative source that we use to take information from them.

Public source: The consumers have cleverly justified the products, they check from mass media, consumer rating agencies and verified from all public sources. How to evaluate the brand, how it's working. Etc.

External source: The consumers applied their full satisfaction; they want a demonstration to examine the products. That is known by external sources.

Evaluation of alternative

Indian consumers basically evaluate the products before purchasing, on the following parameters:  

Price: The consumer may change their plan as per the comparative price concerned, and they will go for the lowest price for the same range of products.

Features: Consumers may ask about the best features of the product, with the comparative study of the same range of products.

Availability: Sometimes the consumer’s demand may be immediate if the availability is not on time, consumers may change their plan of purchasing.

Quality: After verifying all the product quality is the main requirement of the consumer.

Durability: Finally, the durability of the product will be checked, if not satisfied, the consumer may return the product or may change the plan of purchase.

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Purchase decision

After all inquiries, payment time, and the terms of payment by cash, credit card, or finance, all facilities must be available, and the customer may change them after the final decision of purchasing. As per the consumer’s demands, accordingly purchasing decisions will be finalized.

Post purchased

Satisfaction or dissatisfaction and resale values are checked by the consumers. Now the perception is the process of selecting organizational senses. These created areas must be noted before manufacturing products.

Selective attention

Our complete analysis of the above process, and to make the final analysis report, will help you with the sale of the products and equally for the purchase of the products. As per the quality of products nowadays car manufacturing companies are booking their products with prior facilities of purchase decision, delivery will be after one to two months.

Conclusion

All the above steps are very necessary to study consumers' behavior. These are learning processes about every category of consumers. According to the consumer’s behavior, we must make a checklist, and then the product should be launched, if the product is already on the market it must be sold according to consumers' demand.

You will have seen in the shops, even if you buy a single thing, you would like to draw out the maximum related products, such as a lady has to buy a sari, she will try to check at least ten and more, then she may purchase or not there is no guarantee. But the salesman has to show her whatever she demands.

It’s called sales and marketing, every consumer is different as per category, and we have to check the behavior of the customer accordingly, and then we should provide as per demands. I hope this article will help to know about consumers' behavior.

Related link: 

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Decision making