WEEK 4 EOC

The consumer market consists of all the people that purchase items or merchandise for personal use.  There are entire jobs devoted to the study and analysis of the consumer market to determine consumer buyer behavior. Consumer buyer behavior is the all of the reasons why, when, and where people purchase the items they want.  Many factors determine why consumers make the purchases that they do, and a brief description would never to it justice.  Demographics and psychographics categorize the areas of study where consumer buyer behavior is analyzed. Demographics refer to the age, gender, income, education, race of consumers, whereas psychographics refers to the consumers’ values, ideas, feelings, and culture. All of things affect the way customers make purchases. There are fives stages to the buyer decision process: need recognition, information search, evaluation of alternatives, purchase decision, and postpurchase behavior. Need recognition is when a person recognizes the need for something, due to either internal or external stimuli. Information is not always sought for once the recognition of the need has arisen. It depends on the convenience of the situation and the complexity of the need. Once the consumer has enough information, they can consider evaluating other alternatives, or they can skip straight to the purchase decision, depending on the consumer and the frequency with which they purchase the item needed.