Observe Consumers Behaviors

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Consumer Behavior– MKT202

(Out of Class Assignment – Outlet Mall Trip)

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As the assignment requires, we went to Dubai Outlet Mall in order to observe why the consumers there prefer to shop from this Mall rather than any other mall in Dubai. We did some conversations with a good number of customers and retailers in order to practice and relate what we studied during the past 6 weeks with what happens in the real life. As a start, we asked some customers who seemed highly motivated and engaged in purchasing about the reason of this motivation and what we found out that the feeling of "dissatisfaction" is the main reason behind customers' motivation and involvement. Each customer had the feeling of "dissatisfaction" because of demanding a specific product / service which is different than the other customers but all of them went to the Outlet Mall to fulfill their needs by purchasing what they are missing. Below, here are some reasons behind customers' motivation:

• Convenience: One of the customers said that he always does his shopping from Outlet Mall because he lives in Silicon Oasis and the location of the Mall is perfect to him. So, he can go and shopping whenever he wants and it will not take much time to reach the place. 
• Prices:  Most of the customers that we’ve interviewed said that they always feel motivated to purchase and buy what they need specially from Outlet Mall stores because they can find a high – quality branded products & services with a cheap price comparing to the stores prices which are located in other Malls and shopping centers. [pic 3]
• Exclusiveness: The customers also agreed that a huge number of stores in Outlet Mall make an exclusive offers and discounts every Monday from each week “Bargain Mondays”! Prices goes very down at this day even if the prices of the products are already discounted. Isn’t this an excellent opportunity to increase customers’ motivation? [pic 4]

During observation, we didn’t forget to observe in which degree the customers are involved during purchasing process. Briefly, Involvement in consumer behavior discuss how much effort, time, engagement, consideration given and excitement that the consumer derives and shows during choosing and purchasing products & services. Connecting theories with the real-life situations, we observed that the degree of customer involvement is low when purchasing a product / service with a short – life period, while on the other side, customers seemed highly involved during purchasing durable products.  

We cannot forget to mention that values took an important part from the consumers’ purchasing process. This means that there are some criteria that the customer put to him/herself during purchasing related to his/her values and beliefs. These values could be cultural values, family values or even values related only to the person him/herself. We cannot imagine how these values effects purchasing decisions till we observe it by ourselves. This is a huge challenge for businesses to understand all customers values and trying to offer what suits each consumer with his/her values and beliefs.