Consumer buying process and product purchase decision stages

Buying Process for a New Laptop

The influence of marketing, promotion and long-term branding on the buying process of products and services continued to be accelerated by greater use of analytics and more effective use of digital media and channels. The intent of this analysis is to evaluate how the buying process for a new laptop running Microsoft Windows 8 was completed, factoring in the effects of marketing in each stage of the process.

Analysis of the Buying Process

Recently the family laptop running Microsoft Windows Vista had a final hard disk crash that left it inoperable. Our family's problem is that the laptop is used for checking e-mails across school and personal accounts, in addition to tracking expenses and also hosting Skype sessions around the country. The problem recognition phase of the buying process is predicated on evaluating substitutes and selecting a specific alternative, often a product that represents a solution (Shiffman, Kanuk, 2010). Our recognized problem was the lack of computing system power in our home and the fact that smartphones we're cutting as a substitute. The design of new products predicated the substitutes and options customers have at the beginning of the buying process contribute to greater adoption and trust in the new set of benefits the proposed products promise to deliver (Leinsdorff, 1995). This was certainly the case with the latest laptops released running the Windows 8 operating system.

Our next phase of the buying process was information search. The focus of this specific phase of the buying cycle settled on the defining of specific search criterion for evaluating various laptops, in addition to defining the optimal configuration for the laptop our family could best use. Several review cycles of external information were completed to refine the list of attributes to specifically what would best meet our family's needs. The accuracy and validity of information sources and their trustworthiness is what keeps the sales cycle moving forward, from the fundamental to the most complex products and services (Jarvi, Munnukka, 2009). The more the information captured the greater the level of trust, and the faster the purchasing cycle moves. Trust then becomes an accelerator of sales and the willingness to try a new product or service (Leinsdorff, 1995).

The next phase of the purchasing process, which is evaluation of alternatives, happened very quickly as the companies who produce Microsoft Windows 8-compatible laptops have overloaded their sites with information. The evaluation of alternatives was accomplished by creating a relative simple matrix of the top purchasing criteria for our family along the left column, and a ranking by number of each feature by system in each column of the table. Each column in the matrix represented a specific laptop, Our family went through and debates the merits of each one relative to the ranking criteria and eventually had a winning system we all agreed would be best.

The purchase decision was made by consensus, actually our family took a vote. As the Dell laptop had the score the decision was relatively simple to complete. The decision making dynamics behind the purchasing decision of a product can be complex and difficult to master, yet creating metrics to guide this process can reduce conflict and risk (Leinsdorff, 1995). The actual purchase was made by our family over a weekend.