Consider the following before beginning your discussion activity. The buying behavior varies a great deal depending on the degree of buyer involvement and the degree of differences among brands. The different types of buying decision behaviors are the following:

• Complex Buying Behavior
• Dissonance-Reducing Buying Behavior
• Habitual Buying Behavior
• Variety-Seeking Buying Behavior

Each of these buyer behavior types is characterized by different influences that affect buyers as explained in Chapter 5 of your course textbook. The buying process starts long before the actual purchase and continues long after. The marketers are expected to focus on the entire buying process which is comprised of the following different stages:

• Need Recognition
• Information Search
• Evaluation of Alternatives
• Purchase Decision
• Postpurchase Behavior

The buyer decision process explains how consumers make buying decisions.

Directions

Choose one of the following, and imagine you would be planning to buy it:

• A tube of toothpaste
• A smartphone
• A financial service
• A new car

Choose one of the buyer decision behavior types listed above, and act in your discussion postings accordingly.

Remember, this is a role-playing exercise, so it might be useful for you to choose a type which is the least typical of you.

Role-play is an activity when you either put yourself into somebody else's shoes or when you stay in your own shoes but put yourself into an imaginary situation. The joy of role-playing is that you can pretend to be anyone you like for a short time. You can also take on the opinions of someone else. Functional language for a multitude of scenarios can be activated and practiced through role-playing. Try to keep the role(s) you play as real to life as possible.

Discuss

1. Describe how your chosen buyer decision behavior characteristics show through all the five stages of buying process with your chosen purchase.

For example, if your chosen purchase had been a veterinary pet insurance, you might go through the following kind of buyer decision process:

• Need recognition: A person needs a pet, to begin with. Then, it is important that a person perceives that there is a reasonable possibility that their pet will need veterinary care at some point and that that care will cost more than the person is able to afford at any one time.
• Information search: - With the need recognized, the consumer will seek out information on ways to solve the problem. This may happen by reading news articles or blogs, gathering information from company websites, or talking to fellow pet owners about how they have dealt with the issue.
• Evaluation of alternatives: This may be a brand-to-brand comparison. It may also be a comparison between purchasing and not purchasing the item at all. Whatever the case, the options are compared with respect to the features and benefits that are most important to the customer.
• Purchase decision: The consumer decides to buy or not to buy. Buying involves agreeing to a contract and making the payment. This decision has been facilitated by the web interfaces of most every pet insurance company, including VPI.
• Postpurchase behavior: How much the person seeks veterinary care, the degree to which that care is covered, the ease of filing a claim, the nature of customer service, and many other factors that happen postpurchase will affect the attitude that a customer holds toward VPI. 

How would you describe the buying process stages in the case of a tube of toothpaste, a smartphone, financial services, or a new car?

Now combine your chosen buying decision behavior characteristics in the buyer decision process model. Depending on the type of buying decision behavior, describe what happens on each stage of the buyer decision process. For example, how would a consumer who has undertaken complex buying behavior search for information or how would a consumer undertake variety-seeking buying behavior to make a purchase decision?