Bhutan is not very popular in business world but still there is process of purchase taking place. The purchases are not done so much in detailed by Bhutanese consumers according to my observation. This model is a psychological and a sociological model as it shows about the consumer need and the purchase behavior influence by the family, friend and other environment. So, the above model developed shows and explains how Bhutanese consumers purchase products along with the steps they involve in for making the decision of purchasing final products. Before decision making process by the consumers, marketers should study about the consumer behavior of what are consumer prefer, how they choose and under what criteria do they make a decision to purchase the product. There can be consumer with personality like social character, sensation seeking, exploratory purchaser and need for uniqueness consumers. So all this personality types will be stimulated to purchase the product in different ways. Consumer materialism is also type of consumer behavior trait which means importance a consumer places on the acquisition and possession of material objects.
Inputs
Inputs is a source of information about a particular product which stimuli’s consumer with the attributes and features of a particular product. In the above model it is shown that Bhutanese consumers are stimulated and triggered mostly by price of the goods, quality of the goods and availability of goods in the market in terms of significance and in terms of social, they are influenced by family members, friends while talking about the product and society where they live. The flow of information from advertisement and social media also influences them to make a purchase. The feedback information also influences the consumer to purchase a product.
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Information process
When the consumer is being stimulated to purchase, they starts the information process under which there is certain steps of information processed. Firstly, the information will exposed to the consumer about the product and then next the information will be received by consumer but here consumer will give attention to the information he/she needed and will not give attention to other information. The consumer will look into different brands of those particular products and then will store all this information in their short term memory. This information process is being used by Bhutanese consumers in three levels of decision making that is extensive problem solving, limited problem solving and routinized problem solving.
In extensive problem solving consumer have no idea of any brands of that product or does not have any information about that product at all. For example, mother wants to buy shoes but she is not aware of any brand nor have any idea about the shoes. So in cases like this information process is very important. In limited problem solving, consumer has little knowledge about the product or brands but still search general information for better purchasing decision. For example, Tshering Dema wants to buy a new phone but she has limited information about the different brands of phone in the market. So in this case she will need to search for little more information but not too extensively.
Routinized problem solving is situation where consumer has information about brands and features of product for purchasing. The consumers have purchased before or have already had knowledge about the product. kinley purchasing football boots could be an example as in this case just a little information is required to be processed as Kinley knows base on what criteria should he purchased. Therefore, Bhutanese consumers undergo all the process of information in for all the levels of decision making as for better and unregretful purchase.
Decision process
After the information is being processed in the mind of consumers, the decision making process begin with following steps:
- Need recognition: The Bhutanese consumer is stimulated to buy because of a need or a motive within a consumers mind. The action to purchase will be stimulated by internal stimulus like hunger or by external stimulus like pretty shoes color in the shop. There are two types of state of need recognition that is desired state where other goods seems better than current one and actual state which means product is finishing its value or there is problem. Most Bhutanese consumers they recognize their needs in actual state.
- Pre purchase search: After the recognition of need, the consumer starts to search information about the product. The information is search on the product category of that product need to be purchased and different varieties and brands available. The information search will depend on the category available, times of purchases done and personality of the consumer. But Bhutanese consumer usually does not take brand in consideration as much like other countries consumers as they just look into quality and price the most with different categories. That’s why brand is not included in the model above. There are three types of search activity but Bhutanese consumers go for specific search for a specific product which will solve the problem and they purchase immediately.
- Evaluation of alternatives: under evaluation of alternatives there are different alternatives on certain criteria of a product like evoked set of generation of choice alternative which means particular brand a consumer want to purchase but it is not mentioned in the model as Bhutanese consumer most often go with the criteria like economic, social and behavioral. These criteria’s includes price, quality, personality, need and group influences which are being taken to evaluate the product by the Bhutanese consumers.
After the product is being evaluated, different decision rules are applied like compensatory rule which means positive attributes compensate the negative attributes. The second decision rule is non-compensatory rule where negative attributes are not compensated by positive attributes. This non compensatory rule have three rules under it that is conjunctive decision where if the cutoff point set is not fulfilled by one attribute then the category gets eliminated. The second rule is disjunctive whereby cutoff point achieved by one attributes also then it is selected. The last one is lexicographic decision rule whereby the attributes are ranked/ rearrange based on choice. Then the consumer compares various alternatives by taking particular attributes which is important and the highest scored category is selected at the end. Bhutanese consumer will not go into this process but some may follow. Bhutanese consumers purchases directly after evaluation or apply the compensatory rules only.
Purchase behavior
Purchase behavior of consumer in Bhutan can be of trial purchase and long term commitment purchase out of three types including repeat purchase. Trial purchase means consumer is buying the product for first time and purchases less quantity and Bhutanese people also buy the product which they have never bought before in less quantity as they think that product might be good or bad. So to experience, they purchase in less quantity. Long term commitment purchase means products like refrigerator are purchased to use for longer duration with long term commitment directly without a trial. The repeat purchase means consumer purchases same brand always; it is similar to brand loyalty. There are Bhutanese consumers who repeatedly purchase the same branded products always. This purchase behavior are done base on the motives of that products need, knowledge about the product and consumer resources which means income or budget that consumer have.
Post purchase evaluation
Post purchase Cognitive dissonance is like the feeling of tension and anxiety after the experiences of that product. This is the stage one in post purchase which is not experienced by most of the Bhutanese consumers or it is not included in the model but the second stage that is product usage and reaction can be applied to the Bhutanese consumer as after the purchase of the product and experience, there can be three reaction that are the expectation of consumer meets and consumer is satisfied, the expectation of consumer is exceeding and consumer is happy and satisfied and the expectation of consumer fails and consumer is angry , sad and unsatisfied. This is what happens with Bhutanese when they are in the stage of post purchase.
But if the consumer expectation fails or falls short then Bhutanese consumers go back to purchase behavior and again do a trial on different brand of similar product as show in the model with a blue arrow going up towards the purchase behavior. It’s said that Bhutanese consumer are lazy compared to other consumers so they will not go back till the information process and restart the search on product again from the beginning. The view of this Bhutanese consumer decision pattern could be economic view as Bhutanese consumer does not will to do a deep extensive search of information about the product. They are satisfied with satisfactory decision and they take decision keeping in mind the cost and benefit of the product.
So lastly, this model shows an input that influences Bhutanese consumers to purchase followed by the process of information applying to all the levels of decision making process. The decision making process is done with specific search activity. After that it’s followed by the output where by Bhutanese consumer experiences three different outcomes or result of decision after experiences. If the Bhutanese consumer is not satisfied they go back to purchase behavior and repeat the purchased rather than following whole process again. Therefore, the model shows how Bhutanese consumers make a purchase decision.
Reference
- CONSUMER DECISION MAKING-PROCESS,MODELS,LEVELS,DECISION RULES. (2016). Retrieved from bbamantra: https://bbamantra.com/consumer-decision-making-process-models/
- Richins, M. L. (n.d.). Consumer Materialism. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230294036_Consumer_Materialism
- Vijayrangan, H. (n.d.). Personality and consumer behavior. Retrieved from Slideshare: https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/hshvjy/personality-and-consumer-behavior-15719593
- Wangpo, K. (n.d.). MKT202/SS-2020 Consumer Behaviour. Retrieved from Virtual Learning Environment: http://vle.gcbs.edu.bt/login/index.php
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