Consumer's Role In Buying Behavior

Consumers play an important role in buying process. Buying behavior defines the decision process that the people and customer involved when buying or using the products. Consumer buying behavior is the individuals and groups of people go through the process of choosing, buying and using of products or services in order to fulfill their needs and wants (Solomon,1995). Basically, the types of consumer buying behavior based on the level or degree of the consumers involvement and the differences among the brands. In general, consumer buying behavior can be classified into four types which are complex buying behavior, habitual buying behavior, dissonance-reducing buying behavior, and variety seeking behavior (refer to Figure 1).

Variety-seeking

Unlike complex buying behavior, buyers with habitual buying behavior have low involvement in purchasing products and little significant in differences between brands. This is because the consumers do not pay much attention on the difference between available brands in the market. The customers keep on buying the products that suitable and best fit for them and they do not looking for other brands. The consumers reach the shop and directly buy the brands of the product without doing anything survey by without comparing the products. For example, salt and sugar are the products that consumers have little involvement in the buying process. This consider as out of habit rather than loyalty towards the brand if the consumers just keep finding the same brand such as brand loyalty and store loyalty. In this condition, customers do not pass through the usual belief-attitude-behavior sequence. According to Homer, Pamela, Kahle, and Lynn (1988), belief-attitude-behavior means “the role of values has received limited empirical attention relative to its potential significance, especially within a causal modeling approach” (p. 640). Consumers do not look for information of the brands, assess the characteristics, and think carefully which brands to buy. Instead, they receive the information from watching television, online and printed advertisement, mass media, and also through magazines. They do not have the habit

The consumers have a high involvement due to the expensive and infrequent purchase with the differences between brands of the products. It means that the customers can purchase the products anywhere without make the differences of the brands. The carpet as a example of the product that cause customers face a high-involvement decision. This is because carpets are expensive, extremely expressive and rarely purchased products. Customers think that most of the carpet brands in a given price are in the same range which is easily available in every shop to purchase the product. In this condition, differences of brands perceived are not large, customers search the information of the product and shop around to learn what is available but they mostly end up purchase the product that is easily available. After the purchase, consumers experience post purchase dissonance also known as after-sale discomfort. They experience after-sale discomfort when they notice certain disadvantages of the purchased carpet brand when they understand the after sale discomfort. Marketing communication is important for the marketers because they have to provide after sale communications, evidence and support to let the consumers feel good and comfort about their chosen brand to overcome this kind of