Consumer Behaviour

           Consumer Behavior is the process where someone as an individual or a bunch of people in group consuming things products that they need or want. From the point of the consumer’s view, like for example what they do before buying the product. They probably will check and compare prices with other similar products, or even before that they would do researches like getting information about the products that they are looking for in the market from the Internet. All these actions are considered as consumer behavior, but in a proper way, most of the consumers will go through a 5 stages of buying decision processes. The 5 stages are Need Recognition, Information Search, Alternative Evaluation, Purchase Decision and Post-Purchase Behavior. Need recognition stage is the first and also the most important stage, because there will not be any purchasing process if there is no need from the consumer. (Perreau, 2013) But still, why is the need recognition stage is so important to the marketers in the market?  

          Like as stated above, there will not be any purchasing process when there are not any needs from the consumers. When consumers have their needs, they would perform a purchase process to fulfill them. For example, when John felt hungry, he would walk all the way from his office to the nearest restaurant which is 8 blocks away from his office just to end the starve in his stomach, because human have to consume food, which is a very important need in life. At the same time, Dennis would drive all the way to the specific tool store where sells tools cheaper just to get tools like screwdriver and other accessories so that he can fix his broken table in the kitchen. All these examples showed that consumers will start consuming when they recognized needs in their life. As a marketer, consumers’ need recognition stage is very important too. By knowing the consumer needs the most helps the firms’ product development to be more effective instead of developing in products that most of the people rarely need in life.  At the same time, knowing the importance of need recognition also helps the marketers to identify segment with unsatisfied desires from the consumers, which is the kind of desire for the specific group of consumers. For example, consumers with big body size will be hard for them to get shirts with normal small, medium, large and extra-large sizes in the market. They will have to visit some specific boutique shops that sells shirts or pants with extra big sizes like triple extra-large. This is important for marketers to understanding it because this also helps the firms to get the opportunities to produce new products or even to start a new business with that. For example, Cristtee and The Body Shop are two of the biggest skin care product companies in Malaysia.

           There are 3 strategies for a company to start need recognitions among the consumers, which are changing consumers’ desired state, influencing how consumers perceive their current state, and of course, reminding the consumers of a need. First of all, changing consumers’ desired state is the kind of strategy that normally uses commercials like advertisements on television, social media, radio stations and newspapers. This strategies will change how a consumer look at some certain products and change their point of view about the certain products. For example, most of the consumer will not consider about buying insurance until they realize how insurance really helps on saving the money instead of losing it. Insurance companies will make advertisements like happening of accidents and compensations will be to the consumers who bought their insurance plans that covers accident cases.(IS Law Firm, 2015) Second of all, influencing how the consumers to perceive their current status is the kind of strategy that helps the consumers to improve their current life status. This strategy normally applied by companies that produces healthy products like Anlene. For example, the company organized a promotion talk for their product launch at 1 Utama Shopping Centre in year 2013. Dr Lee Jun Kiong stated an important statement that most of the people thinks that they are doing their best in maintaining their health status, but truth is age, lifestyle choices and dietary components triggers calcium absorption in a human body.(Ong, 2013) The third and also the last strategy for activating need recognition from consumers is reminding consumers of a need, this is the strategy for firms that produces products that consumers purchase all the time which are the consumers that the firms are trying not to loose them. For example, Milo has become the most Malaysian families’ breakfast drink since 1950s.(Milo, 2015) Until present, most of the Malaysian consume Milo almost everyday. Even when Malaysians having their meals like breakfast, lunch, dinner or supper at places like local mamak stalls or even restaurants, most of them would order iced or hot Milo as their drinks.(Expat Go, 2014) Even though most of the Malaysians consume Milo almost everyday, the company still make advertisements and events like Milo Run every year to make sure that they will not lose their regular Malaysian consumers as they can’t afford losing the regular consumers. So, until present the company still keep on inventing new product and also keep on organizing product launching talks everywhere.