I’ve a good amount of years analyzing how consumers behave when decided to buy a new computer, this is the consumer journey towards the purchase of a laptop or desktop, which in the marketing arena is called “The Purchase Funnel,” even is not a funnel any more, but a loop since decision-making process has become more complex, dynamic and its phases interdependent.
We all know that the final goal of marketing is to influence a potential customer to decide on buy companies’ products, and use every means of persuasive communication and interaction at companies disposal to influence the purchasing decision.
This process is the same consumers follow when buying any product or services, the only difference lies in the amount of time consumers spend in each state, for example, if the product is brand new in the market the most challenge stage is the awareness, but if the product is a convenience product, a candy already know, the preference and purchases stages are essential.
In this case I will focus on the purchase funnel or loop when buying a new computer, which takes about a month from the awareness and opinion form to the actual purchases, this journey is very similar when consumers buy cars, cameras, video game consoles, and other consumer electronics products.
Obviously the first stage in this process is Awareness since consumers have to be aware of the existence of companies’ product, if consumers don’t know that your product exist is most likely that none will buy the product, but as I mention before now the decision-making process has change so much that some brands are able to be unknown during the whole process, but jump right the moment before you will actually buy, think of some wines you have bought without even known how to pronounce the brand. In terms of computers most of the brands are already well known, so in this stage consumers learn about new technologies, microprocessors or software, and any upgrade in the design of models.
The second stages is the Opinion Forming stage, here is when consumers consider an initial set of brands, base on brands perceptions and exposure to recent touch points, there are different ways to consumers build perceptions about brands, but some of the communications forms companies use at this level are press releases, social media and above the line tactics (broadcasting and print), at this stage is important for brands to become relevant, and engage with consumers to drive desire for your brand.
The third stage is the Preference, here consumers add or subtract brands as they evaluate what they want, during this process the research part play an essential role, since consumers spend a significant amount of time in deciding which product will be the best for their needs, this stages is probably the one that has changed the most with internet, since people have more access to different type of information, think about this stage before the internet, your only source of information when buying a car was the car dealer and probably if you were lucky a mechanic friend, think about this process now, there are expert blogs, online forums, reviews sections, editors reviews, rankings, etc all these new sources of information to do a better research, these new sources play a essential role in the decision-making process, here your brand depends in how the experts rate your product, and unfortunately or fortunately companies don’t control this.
If your product is consider the best in the market companies can charge a premium for that, think about Apple’s laptops, they are goods and experts love them, but if you look carefully most of the users don’t even use all the capabilities of the Apple, or those features that experts use to proclaim them as the best ones, actually most of the users use them more as a “normal” PC but anyway they pay an extra 20% just because experts like it. This stage is now the most important stage for consumer electronics and the one consumers spend the most time when considering buying a product, some of the efforts companies can do to participate in this stage and try to “control” some of consumers research are retail champions or train the trainers, seed units to experts, product presentation to bloggers, launch events with editors showing products capabilities, social media participation, own blog and online forum, among others.
The fourth stage is the Purchase, here the consumers select a brand at the moment of purchase, as I’ve wrote before this stage has evolved into an experiential one, as I mentioned in the Microsoft Retail Store, retailers understand that this final stage consumers see it at different ways, for example consumers buying a computer in Wal-Mart are consumers that only care about the price, instead there are consumers that will never buy a computer in Wal-Mart because they want some finally explication of which computer is the best, and to have some support if the computers have any problem, that’s why Best Buy still sells the most of them, but at the same time there are consumers that already know which computer want to buy, and actually they are the wants that build it, so here is when online plays a big role, finally there are consumers that still look for the experience of buying a new product like this, which could be a big event, probably getting into a college here is where Sony Style or Apple Store play an important role.
The final stage could be considered the Repurchasing or Loyalty, after purchasing a product or services consumers build expectations based on experience to inform the best decision journey.
As you can see the Purchase Funnel has several “touch points” with end users and in each touch point brands can influences some behavior of consumers and actually influence their decisions. It is clear that the class has help me to understanding how consumers from different culture, age, sex behave and how we can work towards attracting most of them or at least think more about the different customers out there.
