ANALISIS DEL CONSUMIDOR

Analysis of consumer behavior

We know that persons have a variety of needs and to satisfy them, they adopt a determined behavior. For example, if one person feels thirsty, He or she could go to one minimarket and buy a Soda or mineral water. In other case, if one person needs a better place to live, he or she could buy a house or a department in an exclusive resident.

Thus, the purchase behavior of a consumer can be defined as a group of activities addressed to the purchase and consumption of products to satisfy their needs.

Each person has a distinct buying behavior owing to many factors that affect it such as personality, culture, age, family, etc. For example, a young man that wish to know Cusco, probably he or she buys a travel packages that contains extreme adventure activities in contrast to an old man that probably buys a travel package that contains soft activities.

The purchase decision process

The behavior for buying a product is a process that encompasses the following stages:

a) Recognition of the problem (emergence of needs): This stage refers to the appearance of needs that a person experiences, in other words, a person recognizes one or more needs that he or she must satisfy to feel better. For example. The needs relate to eat, to drink, sleep, eliminate biological waste, etc.

b) The search for information: This stage refers to the search for information related to products that a person desires to meet his or her needs. For example, a person wants to buy a television for having entertainment, first, before buying, he or she ought to collect information of the different tv brands that exist in the marketplace.

c) Assessment of alternatives: In this stage the customer uses information obtained in the stage before for assessing the different alternatives that he or she has. Following the previous example, that person has found in the market place three tv brands, thus he or she ought to give a value for each alternative.

d) The buying decision: In this stage, the customer takes a decision about the product he will buy to satisfy his or her need.

e) Postpurchase behavior: In this stage, when the product has already been used , the customer experiences a series of sensations, these ones are about satisfaction or dissatisfaction." The marketer's job does not end when the customer buys a product. Following a purchase, customers will be satisfied or dissatisfied and will engage in postpurchase actions of significant interest to the marketers. What determines postpurchase satisfaction or dissatisfaction with a purchase? the answer lies in the relationship between consumer expectation and perceived product performance. If the product matches expectations, the consumer will satisfied. If it falls short, the consumer will experiences dissatisfaction (Kotler et al. 2003; 222)".

It is worth clarifying that this process is only for complex and difficult purchases, but not for simple and routine purchases. Buying a house is riskier than buying a bottle of milk, in the first case because there is much money at risk, nevertheless in the second case is quite the opposite so the number of stages in the buying decision process is shorter.

Factors that influence the purchase decision process

Below we are going to explain each factor that affects to the buying decision process. These factors are grouped into two categories: Internal factors and external factors

Internal factors

Attitude: It can be defined as a predisposition or a tendency to respond positively or negatively toward a certain idea, object, person or situation. Two persons who see a bullfight through television, the person A may feel excited and encourage positively this kind of shows, nevertheless the person

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