Applied Buyer Behavior

Table of Contents

1................................................................................................Shopping Log

2................................................................................................Shopping Story

4...................................................................................Attitude Analysis Reaction

5...............................................................................................Interaction Table

6..........................................................................................Means-Ends Chain

7.....................................................................................Problem Solving Process

8.....................................................................................Suggestions for Marketer

Shopping Log

* Moved houses, and wanted to get new bedroom furniture

* Started looking in local advertisements (very disappointed with the selection offered)

* Looked online on Ebay (everything she was interested in was out of price range)

* Looked at Ashley Furniture (very discouraged because there was nothing she liked)

* Looked at Furniture Row because a friend suggested it

* Looked through pages and pages of furniture not finding anything that was catching her eye (very upset)

* Found a set she really liked, but was completely out of her price range

* Decided to look through everything one last time, in case she missed something

* She found something very similar to the set she could not afford, for a price which was actually less than her budget

* I asked what needed to meet her criteria and she answered with price being the most important. Even if there was something she really liked, if she couldn't afford it, it was completely out of the question. Second was that it had to be a dark finish on the wood. Third was that she wanted a platform bed. Fourth was that she wanted a large mirror to go on the dresser.

* I asked why she didn't prefer to actually go to the stores here in town, especially Furniture Row, and she said it was because she didn't really have the time, and that online stores always have more than the actual display store.

* I asked how she was sure the quality of the furniture was going to be good without actually seeing it in person, and she responded with the fact that one of her good friends had bought a large amount of furniture there and had never had any problems.

Shopping Story

My customer's name is Whitney Emmert. Whitney is a college student who is graduating in May of 2011. She has recently moved into a new home and wants to shed the "college feel" of her bedroom. Her reasoning for this decision is because she is getting older and she wants to start living like an adult. She also feels that she is ready to be able to have nice things and take care of them the way they should be taken care of. She has mentioned she is tired of having the same furniture that she came to college with. She is about to enter a new phase of her life in less than a year, and feels like she can begin that change by changing the environment of her room.

Whitney is setting out to look for a new bedroom suite. She wants something very adult-like, and also very contemporary. Her main obstacle, and she is very aware of this, is going to be the budget in which she is under. She wants to find a new suite for $1000, $1200 at the most. The other specifics that she has in mind are a dark wood finish, a platform bed, and a large mirror to set over her dresser.

Whitney and I have discussed her plan of action. She first wants to look at local advertisements. I asked why she wanted to do this, and she said because a lot of the local manufacturers have sales around the Fourth of July. She wanted to see if she could get a good deal on some quality furniture. She stressed that if she could come out below budget she would be very pleased. She went on to look at the ads and was very discouraged when she could not find anything she was even remotely attracted to. The ads were very small, and the deals were not as good as she had seen in previous years.

Whitney's next option was to move on to eBay. I wondered why she would want used furniture, but she informed me that not everything on eBay is used. They have products with the tags on them that have never been used, which are considerably lower in price than in stores. While she was correct that there is brand new furniture on eBay, she was not so correct about the pricing. Yes, certain items were below store process, but there were not bundle deals for all pieces that she was wanting to purchase. Everything she liked was completely over budget.

The next plan of action was to look at Ashley Furniture. One of her good friend's sister works at an Ashley store in Kentucky. Her friend had told her about the great deals they had received on their living room set. Whitney looked through the website and was extremely disappointed with the selection. There were only one or two sets with a dark finish, but they did not have the platform bed she so very much desired.

The next store she decided to visit online was Furniture Row. I wanted to know why she thought this particular store was going to be any different from Ashley Furniture, and she said a friend had really good luck finding a bedroom suite there last year for a reasonable price. Whitney had also mentioned that her friend had never had any problems with the furniture. She looked through pages and pages of furniture and finally found a platform bed she fell in love with. The only problem was that the set as a whole was going to put her about $1000 over budget. Whitney did not hesitate do completely write that one off of her list once she saw the price. She finished looking through the pages, and did not find anything else. On a whim, she decided to start from the beginning again just in case she had overlooked something. On the first