The Decision Making Process

The Decision Making Process

The decision making process is a model which helps marketers make important decisions on the whole decision making process which their potential buyer makes and not just the decision to buy the specific item. The process is known not to work on every purchase made by a consumer, for example some customers can skip through or reverse certain steps, e.g. if a consumer is thirsty they will go and buy a drink to hydrate, not because it is a particular brand therefore skipping the evaluation.

The decision making process begins with a need recognition & problem awareness, this means a consumer will realise that they need a product which can occur either from their general life e.g. being hungry/needing a new TV or it can be from marketing stimulus e.g. seeing a poster of a product they would be interested in. Psyche use their marketing activities such as TV advertisements to draw the customer in. At this point, the information search begins, this means if necessary, they will need to develop their knowledge of the product and decided to purchase another time, if they already know enough about the product, they will then instantly purchase it.

A customer can gain information from the following sources:

• Personal Sources: Friends, family, work colleagues, neighbours.

• Commercial Sources: Sales teams, retailers, point-of-sale display, advertising, packaging.

• Public Sources: TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, organisations.

• Experimental Sources: experiences, handling, examining and using the product.

Psyche have defiantly thought about this process, being an established retailer for almost 30 years in the same location can guarantee to fulfil their customers personal sources. Commercial sources have been dealt with in store, hiring enthusiastic fashionable staff and using point of sale displays. Public sources have been tried, tested and paid for my Psyche as they have appeared in a wide variety of media. Finally, with Psyche only stocking top brands, experimenting and using the products of such high quality can only make customers want to return again.

The customer can then use the information obtained from this process to decide if they feel it has personal importance or relevance for them to make a first time purchase or purchase a product again. This decision will be made whether the purchase is either ‘high involvement' or ‘low involvement'

• High