Consumers make many buying decisions every day, and the buying decision is the focal point of the marketer’s effort. Most large companies research consumer buying decisions in great detail to answer questions about what consumers buy, where they buy, how and how much they buy, when they buy, and why they buy. Marketers can study actual consumer purchases to find out what they buy, where, and how much. But learning about the whys behind consumer buying behavior is not so easy—the answers are often locked deep within the consumer’s mind. Often, consumers themselves don’t know exactly what influences their purchases.

The central question for marketers is this: How do consumers respond to various marketing efforts the company might use? The starting point is the stimulus-response model of buyer behavior shown in Figure 5.1. This figure shows that marketing and other stimuli enter the consumer’s “black box” and produce certain responses.

Figure 5.1

The Model of Buyer Behavior

Marketers want to understand how the stimuli are changed into responses inside the consumer’s black box, which has two parts. First, the buyer’s characteristics influence how he or she perceives and reacts to the stimuli. These characteristics include a variety of cultural, social, personal, and psychological factors. Second, the buyer’s decision process itself affects his or her behavior. This decision process—from need recognition, information search, and alternative evaluation to the purchase decision and postpurchase behavior—begins long before the actual purchase decision and continues long after. We look first at buyer characteristics as they affect buyer behavior and then discuss the buyer decision process.