Target Markets Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Target Markets - Essay Example Therefore, even though it is impossible for sellers to have a perfect knowledge of a buyers decision process, at least because it is never completely rational (Drucker et al., 2001, pp.143-160), the more they approach this ultimate goal, the better prepared they become to offer exactly the type of a product or service that people demand. To see how buyers decision processes operate in real life, we may investigate two cases of purchases of the same product, a feature-rich Samsung mobile phone, by two different people, 27-year-old Greg and 22-year-old Kelly. To clarify the roots of their decisions, a series of interview questions were created which helped analyze the buying behavior of each person. Let us see what those questions were and which answers were given to them by Greg and Kelly. The interview questions were grouped according to the logic of the AIUAPR model of buyer decision making (Mercer, 1996, pp.51-55) that emphasizes the succession of mental states of a buyer through which he or she must progress to make single or repeated decisions to buy something. In this connection, as the first such state is awareness that a certain product or service exists, the first question to Greg and Kelly was how did they learn about that particular model of the phone. Greg answered that he learned about it from the commercial by Verizon mobile service provider who promoted this model along with value-added content services, while Kelly actually saw this phone already owned by her friend. Thus, Greg can be said to have been correctly targeted by the advertising campaign, and Kelly represents an instance when an experience of others instigates us to repeat it. After awareness, the next crucial step in buyers decision process is the emergence of the interest in a product or service. Surely, if this step does not occur, then buyers awareness would be useless for sellers. And of course, the real interest can emerge not just after the brief attention to catchy ads, but if the message persuades people that a product or service suits their needs. In our case, the attempt was made to reflect this stage of the decision-making process by the question about why did Greg and Kelly assume that the phone would satisfy their needs. In this respect, Greg informed that he was interested in the prospect of having a single device that would combine in it not only the functions of a phone, but music-playing capabilities as well, thus sparing him from the need to have separate units that would be inconvenient to carry along. For Kelly as the main eye-catcher served the fashionable look of the phone, and the possibility to have it in bright red color, the one she has an affection to. From this aspect of the decision-making process we can see that these were actually two different qualities of the product that interested Greg and Kelly in the first place. The third step in the account of decision-making processes within the AIUAPR model is the understanding as the level of appreciation of the degree to which the qualities of the actual product can bolster the interest that has previously emerged. To uncover how our interviewees passed this stage they were asked how, and if at all, they collected additional information needed for the complete understanding that the decision to purchase this phone would be justified.