Download The Consumer Response Towards Sales Promotion with Regards to

The Consumer Response Towards Sales Promotion with Regards to McDonalds, Dubai
Chapter 1- Introduction
Consumer behavior describes how consumers make purchase decisions and how they use and
dispose of the purchased goods or services. The study of consumer behavior also includes an
analysis of factors that influence purchase decisions and product use.(McDaniel, Lamb .W&
Hair. F, 2008)
Buying behavior of a consumer is a study that describes us about the tastes, preferences,
attitudes, wants, culture and beliefs of individuals in a market when they purchase a product
and consume it. Buying behavioral activities are vital for the overall development of any
organization. Sales promotion are considered one of the most effective ways by which they are
able to achieve their goals and objectives being set by the management. The reason behind
studying buying behavior is that it helps the marketer of an organization to determine the
various factors which are responsible for consumers to decide to buy a commodity or service.
Consumer buying behavior concentrates on the money, effort on consumption and time. It
helps in determining future purchases and helps in creating an evaluation on different
questions such as why different individuals purchase a commodity, when they buy, what they
buy or how often they use it. Studying the consumer behavior is important as it helps in
creating a focus for any brand in order to increase their efforts and get the kind of results they
want. With the understanding of consumer behavior, an organization will automatically be able
to provide consumers with better commodities and services that will result them into making
more sales and earn more profit, so the study of buying behavior is important as it results into
improving the quality of goods and services and also helps in knowing what kind of products
can be offered to their customers. It helps in establishing better marketing strategies that are
focused on the different type of consumer groups which let an organization target the right
market and be able to utilize their resources and not waste them by spending it on consumers
outside their target market.
Consumers have needs and wants and any brands main objective should be to identify their
needs and create the desired want. They should focus on how they can influence an individual’s
buying behavior and make it profitable for the organization which will give them the ability to
have a better edge over their rivals when it comes to predicting consumer behavior.
With this knowledge of consumer behavior, a marketer is able to understand what an individual
thinks or feels about a product or service being offered. This is effected greatly by the way an
organization influences their customers through their ambience of the shop, sales person,
reference groups and also what an individual’s family thinks about them. Cultural, social,
personal and psychological factors, all these influence a person’s buying behavior and also on
the contrary all these factors are beyond the control of any marketer but at the same time
these factors are kept in mind in order to understand the complex behavior of consumers.
There are different firms that spend billion dollars a year in order to be able to study what
consumers like so that they can customize their advertising, atmosphere of their outlet or train
their employees so that consumers favor their organization more. It is one of the most
challenging and demanding concept in marketing as it tries to understand how buyers react or
do what they do.
According to an article in Rochmarketing: “Trust is…a prerequisite for consumers to even enter
the purchase funnel,” said Laura Salant, director, research, About.com. “By understanding how
consumers view trust and what they value most, marketers can tailor their outreach to deliver
meaningful information and tools to create authentic, long-lasting relationships.”
(Instyrochmarketing.com, 2014). This clearly explains that marketers have to make their
strategies in such a way which will highly influence a consumers buying decision as they tend to
look for value of for the product being offered.
Every individual in the world is different from one another so it is more over impossible to have
the same basic rules that explain how these buying decisions are made.
Factors that influence consumer buying behavior
The central focus of any marketing plan is the consumers so it is very important for an
organization to devise a good marketing strategy which will help them in order to examine a
customer’s behavioral attributes and needs. There are four main factors that influence the
buying behavior of a customer.
1. Cultural Factor- It is one of the most basic reason for a consumers want or behavior
towards a product or service, as it requires a crucial focus to understand the needs of
any individuals. For any organization it is vital for them to take in account the cultural
factor in order to inherent themselves to adapt the different market situations, just like
how a parent grows up their child with some basic morale, values, perception and also
what the family as a whole would expect from the child, hence in the same way even
the marketers are trying to understand what the consumers expect from them and
introduce products that will be wanted by their customers or make changes to the
existing product in order to increase their demand.
McDonalds is one of the best examples when it comes to adapting their market and producing
products according to their customers cultural needs around the world. They are aware of the
importance to provide their customers with food that meets their taste and needs from
different cultures. In UAE there is a mixture of veg and non-veg in their population but mostly
every individual consumes meat, so McDonalds has to provide meat which is hygienic and at
the same time since this is a Muslim country they cannot serve kosher meat here and as well as
pork. Hence, in UAE and other Muslim countries they have to serve meat which is Halal
(slaughtered according to the Islamic Shariah) and not follow any unethical ways in their
production process. The dress code that McDonalds employees have to follow should be not
revealing and covered properly in a decent manner.
2. Social Factor- This is another factor which influences the consumer behavior and is
divided into three different categories.
1. Reference and membership group: The type of social group an individual belongs to will
have their own influence on them. The membership groups are mostly made of people
living in the same residential area, age, workplace etc, whereas the reference group are
described as people who provide other individuals with some points and opinions of
what they think regarding a particular brand.
2. Family: The family can be one of the most influencing factors to an individual’s opinion
about a brand. The perception of a brand usually created by the family members can
have a very strong influence on an individual’s buying behavior. For examples, as a child
your family did not allow you to consume Pepsi because your parents thought it was not
good for your health as it contains a lot of sugar and destroys teeth. This makes a loss
for a person like you to ever buy Pepsi as a grown up who’s never drunk it as a child.
3. Social role and status: The role or the position of a person at his workplace, with family
or friends can also define their social status or role and influence the buying decisions of
an individual specially for those products which are visible to other people an can define
them as a person.
3. Personal Factor- An individual’s age and the way of living his life will obviously influence
his buying behavior because an individual does not purchase the same commodity or
service which they did 15 or 30 years ago. The living lifestyle, hobbies, activities,
personality everything changes with time. A persons financial revenue will also have an
effect on his behavior and purchasing decisions.
4. Psychological Factor- In order to explain how this factor can influence on the consumer
buying behavior, we can divide it into four different categories.
1. Motivation: This works at a subconscious level of mind and in order to increase the
motivation level an organization needs to create a conscience or reinforce a need in the
consumer’s mind pushing them to satisfy it. So in order for any organization to increase
sales and motivate consumers to purchase they should try to create a need in the mind
of individuals and carry out a lot of market research to be able to target the right
market.
2. Perception: This basically means the way a consumer selects, organizes and processes
the information he receives in order to do something about it which will make sense to
him.
3. Learning: When we learn something, we try to demonstrate what we learn by putting it
into action, learning is also known to change the way a consumer behaves or interprets
information and experience. For example: When you become sick after drinking a
mango milkshake, it will create a negative impression about that milkshake you had and
fell sick which will demotivate you from purchasing it again. Hence these learning
theories can be used by brands to market their product better by associating their
products with a positive image in the minds of consumers.
4. Beliefs and attitudes: With experience of life a person tends to develop its own beliefs
that will influence his buying behavior. On the contrary, an attitude can be described as
a feeling of the idea a person feels associated with the product. It is vital to understand
that an individual should identify and analyze and positive and negative attitudes and
beliefs they have on any brand. In order for an organization to change the way a
consumer thinks about their product, they should adjust and customize their marketing
strategies to be able to influence an individual’s perception of their brand.
Marketing Communication
Marketing communication is a crucial and a critical element of marketing activities. It is way in
which the right messages that an organization wants their consumers to know are being passed
to the targeted market with the right channels. The concept of this is clearly to identify and
understand the need of the targeted audience and differentiate themselves from the rivals.
The tools of marketing communications are determined by an organization based on their
capacity of finance, people, power and strategy which is used to target it to the audience and
also the study the various factors which can influence the buying behavior of an individual in
order to make them get attracted and consume the commodity or service being offered.
Marketing communication is known as the promotion part of the marketing mix of four P’s
Product, Price, Place and Promotion. It is known as a strategy which is being used by an
organization to reach their targeted market of consumers through different types of
communication. It is a complex and a fundamental part of any firms marketing efforts. The
different forms of marketing communication includes tools such as Advertising, Public
Relations, Online media, Point-of-sale promotions and sales promotion.
1. Advertising is one of the most powerful tools of marketing communication which is used
by the businesses in order to help them reach a very large number of audiences with
high frequency of message delivery. With this a firm is able to advertise the important
information about their products and offers to the consumers but at the same time this
is an expensive form of promotional tool, a business needs to have a proper advertising
budget and consider the fact that whether they will be coming up with their own ideas
for advertising which will not cost them much or hire an advertising company to plan an
advert for them which will be costly but worth it.
This is basically a non- personal communication which is transmitted through means of media,
the marketing communication should be planned properly so that a business is able to make
the brand or product’s name more familiar in the market and also establish and create a
favorable image and good will, provide information to the consumers about the product and
services being offered and also attract more customers by making them keen in order to find
out more about their product and service.
2. Public Relation also helps in creating brand awareness to the consumers in a subtle way.
The difference between advertising and public relation is that adverts promotes
products in a more aggressive way whereas public relation promotes and communicates
in a soft way. Also on the other hand, if PR is talking about your product then it becomes
the only means of marketing communication which is free, they are planned and take
place purposely by a company in order to communicate to different public categories
that may have an interest in their organizational activities. This group of people can
include employees, customers and investors.
The entire purpose of Public Relation is to create a positive image based on possible mutual
relations. They also use various forms of communication channels. The difference between
advertising and public relation is that PR uses more informative messages which can include
yearly reports and balance sheets, PR are also used to build a trust whereas advertising causes
an immediate action. Advertisings are repeated whereas PR actions are quite unique and can
also be accomplished through public dialogue.
3. Online Media- In today’s the social networking sites too play an important role in
marketing of a product as there are many businesses that tend to use the online social
media as their means of marketing communication. The adverts are easily being posted
on the social sites such as Facebook, twitter or personal blogs so that they can attract an
even larger audience from around the different parts of world.
4. Point of sale promotions mainly involves the display techniques which are being used by
an organization through audio, video or displays that can influence the buying process
of individuals visiting the sale point. It informs the consumers that they can purchase
the commodity or service in that particular place. This form of promotion can be done
through billboards, specific lighting, posters, product display shelves or by giving away
free gifts.
5. Sales Promotion
Bibliography List
Books
McDaniel. C, Lamb C.W. & Hair J.F. (2008). Principles Of Marketing, Indian Edition: Cenage
Learning, India. Pg no. 152
Websites
Instyrochmarketing.com, (2014).Great Article about today’s consumer buying behavior |
Marketing
Services.
[online]
Available
at: http://www.instyrochmarketing.com/marketing/great-article-about-todays-consumerbuying-behavior/ [Accessed 9 May. 2014].
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/types-marketing-communication-concepts20597.html marketing communications
http://www.gb3group.com/promotional-techniques.php