International Hospitality Business Management

CONSUMERS’ BUYING BEHAVIORS IN ABC CLOTHING COMPANY
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Table of Contents
TOC o “1-3” h z u Introduction PAGEREF _Toc439193284 h 3Background PAGEREF _Toc439193285 h 3Research Rationale PAGEREF _Toc439193286 h 3Research Justification PAGEREF _Toc439193287 h 4Research Questions PAGEREF _Toc439193288 h 4Research Objectives PAGEREF _Toc439193289 h 4Research Limitations PAGEREF _Toc439193290 h 5Literature Review PAGEREF _Toc439193291 h 5Factors Affecting Customers’ Purchasing Behavior PAGEREF _Toc439193292 h 5Consumer Purchasing Process PAGEREF _Toc439193293 h 7Market Segmentation in Global Fashion Selling PAGEREF _Toc439193294 h 8Research Methodology PAGEREF _Toc439193295 h 9Data Collection Methods PAGEREF _Toc439193296 h 9Data Sampling and Analysis PAGEREF _Toc439193297 h 10Ethical Consideration PAGEREF _Toc439193298 h 10References PAGEREF _Toc439193299 h 11
Consumers’ buying behaviors in ABC Clothing Company
IntroductionBackgroundCustomer purchasing trends, expectations, and requirements require understanding their buying requirements as the prerequisite aspect. Understanding customer buying behavior is a multifaceted practice since customer behavior is affected by a multiple of factors that include external and internal aspects (Stockford 2008, p. 19). The factors are the reasons for customer purchasing decisions and influence the way a customer evaluate a service or a product before purchasing it.
ABC Company is among the leading retailers of clothes and beauty apparels in New York.

The company requires a thorough understanding of the customer purchasing requirements to design effective marketing campaigns strategies. Like any other business, ABC is affected by both external, internal factors that influence consumer purchasing buying behaviors, patterns, and interests. Among the factors classified as internal factors are personality, attitude, lifestyles, knowledge, and motivations. External factors that influence customer buying behavior include buying situation, culture, and customer membership.
Research rationaleThe research will serve as the source of in-depth insights of observing consumer’s buying behavior in any commercial setup and will not be useful to ABC Company alone but will also provide a yardstick for other companies to gain knowledge of factors affecting customer buying behavior and purchasing patterns. Customer decision-making process will be explored alongside the client behavior models as it tries to cultivate the proposal for ABC Company to observe customers’ buying behaviors.
Research JustificationStudying buyers’ behavior is an imperative issue in the contemporary marketing of services and products. In a clothing business set up, understanding the buying behavior of consumers is important to provide quality services and products as per customers’ feedback. The research shows a comprehension of the customer buying patterns and behavior as the most imperative aspect of marketing as it assist in upholding the customers’ interests in ways that aid in marketing strategies as per the clients’ requirements.
Research Questions The critical problem that the research proposal wishes to address is the importance of observing customer purchasing behavior in a commercial set up. The questions that aid formulation of the research proposal include
What are the factors that influence customer buying behavior?
In what ways do marketing segmentation and targeting correlates with customer behavior?
What are the five common stages involved in buyers’ decision-making procedure?
What is the role of customer buying behavior in marketing?
Research ObjectivesThe chief purpose of the research proposal is to understand how customer buying behavior as an imperative marketing aspect in ABC clothing business. The objective of the research is to:
Articulate the factors that influence customer buying behavior and give a critical analysis of the possible factors that affect customers purchasing behavior in ABC Company
Provide an overview of buyers’ decision-making process and the models used in outlining the decision-making process
Research LimitationsThe research will only be limited customer buying behavior. Data collection methods will be restricted to semi-structured questionnaires and online surveys that will be used for comparison purposes with secondary sources. The restriction is to save time during the research.
Literature ReviewCustomer purchasing conduct is the aggregate of a purchaser’s demeanors, inclinations, aims, and choices on the buyer’s conduct in the commercial center while acquiring an item or administration. The investigation of buyer conduct draws upon sociology controls of humanities, economics and psychological aspects (The Consumer Factor 2014). There are four sorts of purchasers’ buying behavior and incorporate routine conduct where there are minimum efforts needed to persuade a buyer to purchase items. Customers require little motivation and choice exertion to buy a product. The other sort is constrained decision making where items are purchased once in a while. It happens when one need to acquire data about new brand in a well-known item classification. The other is the broad or complex decision-making behavior that involve new, costly and rarely purchased items. Here there is a high level of monetary, execution and mental danger. The last sort is the impulse purchasing where purchasers include no cognizant planning.
Factors Affecting Customers’ Purchasing BehaviorThe factors influencing buyers’ behavior can be classified into three categories mainly social, personal and psychological factors. Personal factors are exceptional to every specific individual purchaser, and they include the demographic variables such as sexual orientation, age, and race. Personal components that affect purchasing decision-making influence the process of making choices to buy a product or service since factors like utility and risks are exceptionally individualistic (Cant 2009, p. 142).
On the other hand, psychological variables that influence purchasing behavior incorporate thought processes, ways of life, observation, dispositions, capacity, identity and knowledge regarding a product. Discernment alludes to the procedure of selecting, sorting out and translating data inputs keeping in mind the end goal is to create meaning. The variations in purchasers’ mentalities depend on data and experience and the ability to take in the same with a disposition that are likewise gained from communication with other individuals. Learning is the recognition with the item and aptitude. Inner characteristics and practices, consistency with self-idea influences consumerism and also the reliable examples of people’s lifestyles (The Consumer Factor 2014).
Social variables influence the buyers’ decision-making process using sentiment pioneers, parts, culture, social class and family impacts. Feeling pioneers serve as the representatives wherein buyers draw from their nature with the individual self. The parts of the general population consider the desires of a buyer from a personal position within a given group of people. Family, where dominant part of practices are designed, has its particular life cycle that describes one of a kind purchase decisions. A purchaser conduct starts inside the family or with a blend of family and individual customer choice making (Tseng 2003, p. 74). As an individual relates to a gathering, there is a likelihood of procuring huge numbers of the qualities, mentalities, and practices of the family members. Social class, on the other hand, involves the inclinations and the purchasing limit of the general population, influencing their choice making and obtaining products. Finally, culture or the arrangement of qualities, thoughts and states of mind manage the level of similarity among individuals and affects the decision to purchase a service or a product.
Consumer Purchasing ProcessThe process utilizes five basic steps that include problem identification, information gathering, and evaluations of alternatives, buying decisions and post-buying decisions (The Consumer Factor 2014). The decision to purchase a product starts with recognition of needs when a buyer weighs a lag that exist between the ideal need, desired need and the current situation. External and internal stimuli influence the need recognition. Internal stimuli arise due to the psychological desire for a product while external stimuli are due to exposure to an advertisement about the product. The first step of decision-making process leads to a buyer classifying the needs into functional, social and needs that prompt change in an individual. The classification of needs may follow the hierarchical process developed by Maslow that encompasses psychological needs, safety needs, psychological needs and needs for self-esteem and self-actualization (Cant 2009, p. 87).
The second step of purchasing decision-making process is information gathering from external and internal sources of information. Internal sources may arise from within the buyer’s conscience and knowledge about the product or externally through secondary sources containing information about the product. The information gathered influence the choice of purchasing a product. The third step involves evaluating the alternatives that are available for the products or services and it is at this stage where the concept of pricing come into play. It is at the third stage where a consumer analyzes the alternatives of the product by drawing a comparison with the product regarding perceived value and quality, functionality, features, perception and reputation (Tseng 2003, p. 85).
The fourth step involves the purchasing decision making where a buyer uses the information and evaluations done in earlier stages to come up with a decision to buy an item that perfectly matches the needs that were recognized in the first step. The last step is the post-purchase decisions that arise after a customer has bought the item, analyze it and evaluate it for the intended purpose that the product was to serve. The step is crucial as it will determine the ability of the customer to come back to the commercial environment and it influence the other steps of decision-making process during the next visit.
Market Segmentation in Global Fashion SellingFashion gives a broad reflection of the past and a road map of civilizations. Through clothing and fashion globalization there is an evident shift in the relocation from the non-conventional ethos of clothing (Yarwood 2006, p. 23). Fashion is a more precise indicator due to its innate all-inclusiveness characteristic whereby design influences everybody. Fashion portrays the individual expressionism of life at a given time and put. With the end goal of fulfilling the always showing signs of change requests of the buyer, the worldwide style industry must discover assets and boulevards to do persistently as such, and that is the place the market segmentation emerges.
The clothing retail market can be segmented into four categories namely geographic, behavioral, psychographic and demographic methods. ABC Company may be forced to relocate some of the businesses to other nations and places using the geographic market segmentation method so as to make use of available market and in turn, may improve the customer purchasing behavior. Demographic segmentation relates to social factors that affect buyers’ purchasing behavior and may include segmenting a market basing on characteristics such as buyers’ ages, income, social class and lifestyle. Psychographic segmentation may explore the psychological factors that affects the customers’ purchasing behavior as it entails having knowledge regarding the thinking, values, behavior and feeling of clients about the products (Stockford 2008, p. 149). Lastly, behavioral market segmentation incorporates making use of features such as buyers’ status, purchase occasion, and client loyalty. It is thus evident that market segmentation depends on the customers purchasing behavior as the factors affecting their decisions also play a critical role in the determination of the type of market segmentation (Cant 2009, p. 139).
Research MethodologyThe research methodology makes use of using secondary sources to understand the purchasers’ decision-making behavior. The approach that will be used is the interpretivism strategy since the reality of the ABC situation will be produced from a thorough research of the detail of the factors and process of decision making (Saunders 2003, p. 32). The nature of the research is exploratory as the methodology will seek to explore different aggregate aspects that affect customers’ buying behavior. The methodology will also involve using primary data obtained from talking to marketing professional and conducting online interviews to complement secondary data.
Data Collection MethodsThe collection methods will integrate both secondary and primary research. The use of semi-structured questionnaires will form part of the data collection method in addition to making surveys from fashion and clothing customers to obtain information about their purchasing behavior, decision making in the buying process.
Data Sampling and AnalysisThe sampling methods to be used should be convenient and will be done in places with human traffic such as large shopping malls. The interviewed individuals will be sampled accordingly to allow analysis regarding the sampling frequency, weighted and percentage mean (Saunders 2003, p. 39).
Ethical Consideration The research is based on integrating primary and secondary sources thus; some ethical issues will be considered to avoid bias. They include honesty, objectivity, carefulness, and integrity. Publication status, data collection, data analysis, results and research methods should follow an honest procedure without fabrication, falsifying and misinterpretation. Objectivity will also be paramount in making a personal decision, data interpretation and analysis. Consistency and sincerity are the aspects that will be ensured so that the research process observe integrity. The research work will be examined thoroughly to avoid negligence and errors. There will also be room for new ideas and criticisms. The survey results and questionnaires shall be treated with confidentiality, and the process will be done without any discrimination.

References BIBLIOGRAPHY Cant, S. J., 2009. Cant, S. J. (2009). Marketing Management. New York: Sage.. 2nd ed. New York: Sage.
Saunders, M. L. P. a. T., 2003. Research Methods for Business Students, 3 rd ed. New York: Prentice Hall.
Stockford, 2008. Understanding the Buyer: Influencing Factors in Purchase Decision.. 2 ed. New York: Sage.
The Consumer Factor, 2014. The Consumer: The factors are influencing consumer behavior. [Online] Available at http://theconsumerfactor.com/en/4-factors-influencing-consumer-behavior/[Accessed 23 December 2015].
Tseng, P., 2003. The Customer Centric Enterprise: Advances in Mass Customization and Personalization.. 3 rd ed. New York: Springer.
Yarwood, 2006. Fashion in Western World. 3rd ed. London: Batsford.