Consumer Decision Making Process

COMPLEX DECISION MAKING

High involvement purchases are recognized as those purchases that pose some level of risk on the purchaser or consumer. This can be further divided into brand loyalty, it is a habit, or complex decision-making, if there are many difference between brands and the products offered. Some examples include a house, a car or a big screen TV like the one my roommates and I bought in the end of August. As we were putting together our new place, the three of us came across an important decision: should we keep our 28 inch TV or go bigger? Of course, a 28 inch TV is more than decent but in the end we went for the 50 inch TV. Here is the process by which we decided to make our purchase.

1. PROBLEM RECOGNITION

Although in our situation it was not an actual problem or, more importantly, a need, we felt there was a discrepancy between our actual state of TV usage and our ideal state. In reality, we had a regular-size TV. However, improvements in technology had made it out of date and we even had some malfunctioning problems with the screen. Ideally, we wanted a big screen TV which also meant better technology and picture quality. We also felt that we had managed to put together such a nice place that we ought to capitalize it with the purchase of a big screen TV that would also serve decorative purposes. Last, we want our place to be the “get together place” to watch games, movies, etc. So far it has been…

2. INFORMATION SEARCH

a. INTERNAL SEARCH

Since neither my roommates nor I had been involved in the purchase of a TV in the past years, our internal research could only help us to a certain extent. Our consideration set included: JVC, Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba, Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric and Samsung. We recalled these brands based on brand familiarity, past experiences and our preference. The attributes we were considering were price, technology and quality of picture. Still, neither of us were tech junkies and we did have some problems recognizing the competitive advantage of each brand due to the outbreak of technology in the past years. Hence, we decided to trust more our external search.

b. EXTERNAL SEARCH

SOURCES Personal Media

Marketing Best Buy

Circuit City - Best Buy and Circuit City websites

- Ads in magazine, newspaper and TV about “Back-to-School” Deals

Non-Marketing Father

Friends (Mainly) General technology websites that are objective towards consumer needs, technology offered by each brand and prices

As we conducted our external research, we felt that there was not a high motivation to process