Consumer Behaviour Assignment 1 I. Introduction: Interviewee and Purchase context 1.

1 Characterise your research subject: Describe his/her personality and report demographics. Identify his/her a) consumption patterns and non-typical behaviour (explain why you consider the behaviour to be non-typical); b) product and brand of interest; c) perception of the company that produces and markets the brand; d) contexts (where, when, with whom) in which purchase occur. My research subject is Kavita Dhawale. Kavita is my elder sister. She has completed her graduation in commerce and currently staying in Mumbai, India. As she is my sister I know her from my childhood. She has done her schooling from a girls school and so does her college. As a result of this she was much more aware of the fashion brands. She stays in Colaba, Mumbai which has almost all brands stores available. Levis, Lee, Addidas, Nike, Reebok, Wills Lifestyle, Bombay dyeing, Mudra, Chirag Din, West side and Globus are some of the branded store names that she often visits. Apart from the stores branded stores Colaba area also has a lot of cloths stalls, called as Fashion Street, Cause way and Linking Road. These places usually have all the non-branded stuff which is offered at a very nominal price. There have been incidents when people end up buying all their required stuffs from these non-branded shops. So this provides a lot of variety for Kavita when it comes to shopping. She has plenty of options for shopping. One of her hobbies is to go for shopping. Not to buy any new stuff, but just to improve her general knowledge about whats new trend in the fashion world. Since she had done her graduation from commerce she was working in a bank for some time, then in a construction company and then in a charted firm. But as this was not her area of interest she always knew that she needs to go to a field of her interest or liking. And finally she landed working in a designer boutique called as Adarsh Gill. She is a nontypical consumer because she likes all the brands as well as non-branded stuff. She likes unique things but its also doesnt matter to her if its not unique. There is no such one brand of her interest. A typical customer would stick to a brand that he likes. Or stick to nonbranded stuff and occasionally buy branded ones. But in Kavitas case there is no predictable ratio for this. This is why she is a non-typical customer for me. 1.2 Interview the person about his/ her consumption philosophy. Provide a brief analysis of your findings. Her consumption philosophy is very simple. As she says I buy what I like. She doesnt like to walk but she loves to walk hours and hours while shopping. She likes to visit each and every shop but that doesnt mean she will want to buy something. She just visits the shop to know the new fashion trends, new designs and what are the new varieties or options available. For example, once we had gone for buying a pair of shoes for her and we end up buying an artificial jewellery necklace for her. The reason for buying that was that she liked that necklace, and we bought it even if she didnt need that. She doesnt mind buying a nonbranded product as long as she likes it. As per my knowledge she has developed this philosophy since there is a wide range of variety available for shopping in Mumbai.

There is one more example to understand more of her shopping philosophy. Once she had got a gift voucher from a radio channel for participation in their contest. The voucher was for some limited varieties of branded sun glasses. We went at the store to make full utilisation of the voucher. We saw a wide range of sun glasses on which the voucher could be redeemed, but she liked Polaroid sun glasses on which the voucher was not valid. But once she likes something there is nothing that can change her mind. So we had to pay and buy those pair of glasses and that voucher just got wasted. I wished I could have used that buy it was only valid for female sun glasses.

From the above stories we can clearly make out Kavitas consumption philosophy. She buys what she likes and that what her main philosophy behind buying a product. II. Buyer Decision Making Process: Model Focusing on particular purchase, make an extended observation of the persons consumption process. Apply the model of consumer decision-making process to explain in detail the various stages of his/her decision process: a. How the person recognises problems Since she is a salaried employee, she has to take care of her monthly budgets also. Most of the time it happens that, when she is doing a window shopping and she likes a branded product which is expensive but is unique. At this point of time she has to wait till she has enough funds available. But as she is a shopaholic she knows that its ok if she is not able to buy this unique product and she waits for another unique one. There is this one example that she shared with me. Once she was shopping for her mom and she saw a beautiful saree at the display counter. When she went inside the shop and asked all the details about it, it turned to be very expensive and out of her budget at that moment of time. So she saved her money and bought that same saree for her mom next month. She had the will to buy that saree and she did that. Money is one of the constrains that she had. There is one more constrain, that is

time. As she works for 6 days a week, from morning to night, she gets a very little time for herself and for the things she needs to buy. So to overcome this problem she manages her shopping list as per their priorities. For example she needs to buy a pair of jeans which she can wear daily while going to office and a Punjabi suit which she can wear during any special occasions or weddings. In this scenario she buys a pair of jeans at the earliest as those are going to be used the most and later at her own pace she buys a the Punjabi suit, as she knows there is still long time to wear that.

b. How the person searched for information We are taking an incident when she had to buy a pair of jeans, which she could daily use it while going to office. When she has to buy a new jeans she will make sure that she visits almost all the shops and even try out all the jeans she likes it. She went to all the shops in Colaba. As we earlier saw that there are time constraints when she shops. So she has kept one entire day just to buy jeans. She prefers to have a trial of the jeans and see how it fits her. She wants it to be comfortable and good looking so as she has no problem while using it daily. As she wants to have trial for the jeans she has to buy branded ones only. As the non-branded stalls wont have a trial room. She has a habit of window shopping, so she know what and where she has to buy things and where she will get a good deal. But when she does a window shopping, she never has trial of those stuffs. So now she goes in each of those shops and has trial of them. She will also ask her friends if they know any new arrivals in any of the shops. She will visit multiple shops and take her own time to buy particular jeans. Because as I mentioned before she only buys what she likes. She also asks the sales man about the jeans details and makes a comparison with the other brands. She looks and feels the material, while she is having a trial of them. c. How the person evaluates alternatives Here we are taking an example of buying jeans. She will consider different parameters to evaluate all of them. The basic parameters are as below

Colour She will select either a unique colour or a common one so that it will suit most of her tops. She knows as she is buying this pair of jeans for her daily use, i.e. while going to office, she wants it to be presentable and also a good one as there will be so many people observing her.

Fitting Which of them fits the best to her? Once she had bought jeans from a nonbranded shop and that was not good in terms of fitting. It was tight and caused her discomfort while sitting. This is when she started buying jeans only after trial. So for her fitting is the key factor while buying a jeans. Material She checks the material for each of the jeans and does a comparison among them. Now a day there is variety of materials available in jeans. Thick, thin and stretchable are some of the widely available materials. Material and jeans fitting goes in hand in hand. If fitting of the jeans is good that material is of less concern. But if fitting of jeans is not good that then material also doesnt matter. Pattern If some new design has arrived. This is a key feature as this will high light her in the crowd. She would prefer to buy more of new pattern jeans and be up to date with the trend that is occurring in the society. Price And lastly she will consider the cost for the jeans...as if is it worth buying at that cost.

d. How the person chooses a store She is not a person that will select any product on the basis of a store. She will evaluate different parameter for the product but wont involve the any decision that will depend on the store location. She will not mind even travelling a distance to buy jeans from the store that is at the other end of the city. She starts her search by visiting all most all the store because she has a thinking of that one can get the best jeans even at a non-branded store. e. His/her post purchase processes Her post purchase is going home and trying out those new jeans with different tops she has. And also show it to everyone i.e. family members. But then she has to wait to actually wear it out and go. She waits for a specific occasion or a good day to wear it. She is eager to listen to compliments for it. Once she hears compliments she is more than happy for her purchase. III. Buyer Decision-Making Process: Level of Involvement.

1. Focusing on a particular purchase context, Identify the type of his/her purchase decision: extended, limited or routine. How would you characterise his/her level of involvement? Here we have taken a purchase for jeans and it is a form of extended decision purchase. As we discussed she was actively involved in all the decision making process. She found out all the options she had and also did a research by asking her few friends and she even had a trial of each jeans. 2. If his/her purchase was extended, identify conditions in which the same purchase would be considered routine. If it was routine, then identify conditions in which the same purchase would be considered extended. If it is limited, then examine situations in which the same purchase would become either routine or extensive. Her purchase can become routine under the following situation. As she buys what she likes, There may be chances that the new collections in the store is liked by her, and she again opts for a new jeans without considering other options. If she is in an urgent need to buy jeans, she will straight go to a shop and buy any pair of jeans.