2 Buying behaviour

Try thinking about customers differently, rather than thinking about them ‘buying’ a product or service, think about them ‘exchanging value’. Customers need to feel that the value they receive is equal to or greater than the value they give.

Watch this short video, where this concept is discussed.

Consumers do not all make buying decisions in the same way. Depending on the type of product being bought, consumers may or may not search for different amounts of information on the product beforehand. Consumer behaviour is often explained according to one of the following four types of behaviour:

• complex buying behaviour
• dissonance-reducing buying behaviour
• habitual buying behaviour
• variety-seeking buying behaviour.

Which kind of behaviour consumers engage in depends on how involved they are in a particular purchase. This partly depends on their personality and partly on the kind of purchase being made.

Figure 3  Assael’s four types of buying behaviour

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In this matrix, Assael uses the difference between brands and the level of involvement of the consumer to give four genarlised buying behaviours. As with most matrices, the lines between boxes is not a firm line and the descriptions should be seen more as tendencies rather than definite behaviours. The closer to the centre lines, the less obvious the behaviour and the further from the centre lines, the more clearly evident the behaviour is likely to be.

Figure 3  Assael’s four types of buying behaviour