Understanding the Consumer Assignment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Understanding the Consumer Assignment - Essay Example Although, this model might look applicable in the modern world however consumer behavior is far too complex to be predicted on the basis of one single model. The reason is that today consumers themselves are very diverse and so any one set of assumption cannot hold true for everybody. In the paragraphs ahead it will be discussed how things as simple as signing one’s name, the name a person has been given by his or her family and the culture one lives in can have an influence on purchase decisions. Consumer decision making process and online shopping Haubl & Trifts (2000) propose in their study on the impact of decision aids on online shopping and consumer decision process that interactive decision aids are made for helping customers online. These decision aids help during the initial display of products available online and they also help in detailed comparison between preferred substitutes which might have highly wanted characteristics with regards to consumer decision making . Such aids permit online shoppers to conveniently find products that have been over-priced or find products which have been dominated by competitors’ inferior products due to competitors spending excessively on online advertising. Consequently, market has become more economically efficient. Generally, the presence of interactive decision aids on e-commerce websites should improve the skill of customers to find products that correspond to their personal preferences and, consequently, result in considerable optimistic and good effects for consumers. (Haubl & Trifts, 2000). Impulsive buying and culture An early study failed to differentiate among impulsive buying and unplanned buying (West, 1951) but it did describe both as the dissimilarity between actual procurement and procurement planned before. However, all procurements not planned beforehand are not impulsive ((Kollat & P.Willett, 1967; Stern, 1962). Instead, impulsive buying is comparatively more unprompted and spur-of-t he moment (Inman,Winer, and Ferraro 2009; Rook 1987; Rook and Fisher 1995) than unplanned procurement, which comprises of procurement not planned beforehand (Stern 1962). Zhang, Winterich, and Mittal (2010) describe the link between impulsive buying and Power Distance Belief (PDB) (Zhang et al., 2010). The authors discuss in details the concept of power distance. Power distance can be defined as the amount of power or authority a group is willing to accept without being forced to do so. There are high power distance cultures and also low power distance cultures. Usually, in high PDB cultures people try to learn self-control which is needed for accepting authority. Such people are reluctant to act on impulses or emotions unless told by somebody in authority to act in a certain way. The reason behind learning and practicing self-control is that this is appreciated by others. Tibet is an example of a high PDB culture. On the other hand, low PDB cultures suggest that less attention shou ld be given to authority or source of power and self-control is not as necessary as some people might think (Hofstede, 2001). For instance, students belonging to low-PDB cultures feel encouraged enough to start chatting randomly, stating their different opinions openly, and even going as far as disagreeing with their teachers if they think teachers