Consumer Buying Behavior And Market Segmentation

By learning how consumers make a decision on the products that they get from purchasing it from them, marketers of any business establishment can have an accurate and clearer picture on why customers buy a certain item of their product line. The “decision processes” by which a customer bases his buying and using goods and services is the consumer buying behavior.
Customers, in theory, buy things or services that they will gain maximum benefit at the most minimal cost. In reality, however, they may overlook this logical fact due to the internal and external influences that largely affect their decisions. Brown laid out 3 factors that will likely influence the buying decisions of consumers. These are personal, psychological, and social. Personal factor pertains to the uniqueness of a person in terms of his physical qualities; such as his sexuality, race, age, etc. The psychological orientation of a consumer is also a major component that affects his buying decisions. His motives, perceptions, knowledge and skills, attitudes, personality, and lifestyle are psychological considerations that he has to think through as he buys products. Also, external social influences coming from family, opinion leaders, reference groups, etc. are also very powerful influencers.
These factors can have great effect in every stage of the buying process. The six stages are: “problem recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision, purchase proper and post-purchase evaluation.” If, for example, when a consumer has realized that he has a problem about his dandruff problem, he, most likely be influenced by physical factors (whether the shampoo is for male or female, children or adults), psychological (knowledge about anti-dandruff brands, motivation on buying the brand) and social (reactions of his friends concerning his problem). It is by these considerations that consumers depend their purchases on.
With these factors and buying process, consumers can be persuaded by businessmen and marketers to buy their sold products. Knowing how to entice the exact kinds and status of consumers that are most likely to buy their product is a key job that marketers have to do in order to cover a greater market share. In other words they need “to focus on the subset of prospects that are ‘most likely’ to purchase what a marketer has to offer”. This is market segmentation.
Market segmentation increases the probability of a product to be sold by a particular slice of the whole market. In our case of the dandruff shampoo above, with the aid of market segmentation, firms can easily get the attention of their prospective segment. By putting all their advertising and marketing efforts in convincing those who really need the product (prospects with dandruff), they can maximize the exposure of their products to those who really need them, and concurrently minimizing the efforts and costs that these moves entail.
Knowing the consumer buying behaviors, producers can provide products that will fill up the need and solve the most probable problems of their customers. They can create products specializing on the particular needs and buying considerations of their prospects. If consumers have many considerations in buying a particular product, firms, in response to this, segment their products so that it will directly solve the problems that a consumer has. This way they can directly address the concerns and problems of their intended buyers without being obscured by other numerous factors and other market segments of the whole market of a particular product.