Question

1. EXPLAIN BUYER/ CONSUMER BEHAVIOR IN COMMUNICATION PROCESS.

2. GIVE EXAMPLE.

Answer 1

Consumer Behaviour is defined as the behaviour that consumer display in searching for, purchasing, using, evaluating and disposing of products and services that they expect will satisfy their needs. Marketers need a keen understanding of their consumers as a basis for effective brand communication. This understanding begins with a view of consumers as systematic decision makers who follow a predictable process in making choices among products and brands. The steps involved in the process of communication to induce the buying behaviour of a buyer or consumer involves

• Establishing the communication objectives
• Selecting the target audience
• Choosing the best media
• Developing suitable message strategies
  • Match message with audience characteristics
  • Develop suitable message structure or presentation
  • Develop suitable message appeals
• Reducing barriers to effective communication
• Measuring effectiveness of marketing communication

Marketing communications is essentially a part of the marketing mix. Promotion is what marketing communications is all about. Marketing communication aims at conveying a firm’s message as effectively and accurately as possible. The process is as follows: Sender, Encoding, Transfer Mechanism, Feedback, Response and Decoding.

• Source – A source is also referred to as a sender. The sender has a message to convey to others. The sender can be anyone from a brand manager (in a major corporation such as Nike or Budweiser) to a salesperson in a smaller organization. At times, celebrities are used to endorse products and act as a sender for the product. It is always important to make sure that the source is credible and trustworthy. A direct source can be a salesperson delivering a message about a product and an indirect source uses a well-known public figure to draw attention to a product.
• Encode – The source encodes or translates ideas into a message. For example, a brand manager decides to promote a new product.
• Message – After defining the target market, the marketer designs an effective message that will achieve the communication objectives.
• Receiver – The receiver is the person or group with whom the sender attempts to share ideas. Marketers want a response, the reactions of the receiver, after being exposed to the message: for example, a consumer receiving the message about the new product.
• Decode – The receiver decodes or interprets the message. For a message to be decoded by a receiver the way it was intended by the sender, the sender and receiver need to have common experiences. In other words, a receiver may not decode a message the way it was intended to if her background and experience differ greatly from the sender’s. A marketer has to be sensitive to the intended audience.
• Noise – Noise interferes with or disrupts effective communication. This can include a poor television or radio signal.
• Feedback – Feedback is monitoring and evaluating how accurately the intended message is being received. This can be done by conducting market research. Essentially, this involves asking consumers if they have seen the message, if they recall the message, and what their attitude was towards the product.

The marketing communication can provide a real sustainable competitive advantage to any organization that leverages its potential. In an economy with a highly competitive, organizations must capitalize the integrated marketing communication in the most effective way, to ensure the creation and maintenance of long-term relationships with current and potential customers. Integrated marketing communication is a process by that can develop, implement and evaluate programs of persuasive communication with current and potential customers, with employees, associations and other relevant audiences inside and outside the organization. The purpose of the integrated marketing communication is to generate both financial effects in the short term and build profitable customer relationships in the long term. As the market is saturated of products and/or services, most companies try to differentiate by transmitting their functional attributes through messages by the communication. But, these features have become easily copied by competitors. That is why, the challenge to differentiate returns to the specialists in marketing and communication, which must transmit the values of emotional and/or rational that can influence consumer buying behaviour. The main goal of consumer behaviour analysis is to explain why consumers acts in a certain way in certain circumstances. The major objective of communication messages is to have a positive impact on purchase behaviour. Therefore, an important aspect is to determine the factors that influence consumer behaviour, in particular aspects of economic, social and psychological. Because buyers acts on base of some incomplete information, they assume a risk aware for each purchasing decision. The dimension of the risk decreases depending on the quantity and relevance of information transmitted through communicational messages. The communicational messages to be transmitted the target audience have the ability to change consumer attitude and of to keep their constant interest regarding the products and/or services offered by a company.

Process	Example 1	Example 2
SENDER	Tyre manufacturer	Deodorant Manufacturer
MESSAGE	Tyre made is of good quality and has exhibits enhanced performance	The Deodorant increases attractiveness to opposite Sex
ENCODING	Advertisement agencies	Advertisement agencies
TRANSFER MECHANISM	Television Ad	Television Ad, Newspaper Ad
DECODING	Customer sees the ad and keeps it in mind	Customer watches the ad and understands the meaning conveyed
RESPONSE	Customer goes to the store and purchases the new tyre	Customer buys the product
FEEDBACK	Information that customers are responding positively to the message	Sales increase

Today, consumers turn to as many sources of information, and the value of the integrated marketing communication has grown considerably. Highly targeted, the integrated marketing communication campaigns is based on the strengths of existing communication tools to favourably influence the behaviour of the target audience. Designing of an effective message and selecting the most appropriate communication tools are important steps in the creation and maintenance of consumer preferences for a product/one brand or company. Integrated marketing communication is an activity that allows creating profitable customer relationships and creates value of the product/brand or of the company. It aims to ensure consistency of the message transmitted through a mix of communication tools such as advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing, public relations, online communication, etc. Knowledge the way how customers have access to communications transmitted on the market can reveal their preferences for how they want to receive the respective information. Taking into account consumer expectations, an organization can use the integrated marketing communication in a way most effective and economical for it.