Introduction
The purpose of any company is to meet the needs of its customers. However; there are many factors that determine the consumer’s behavior. Therefore this paper is going to examine the factors that influence consumer’s behaviors (which is the study of how people choose, buy, use and dispose off goods and services, experiences or ideas so as to meet their needs and desires).Additionally, each company has many competitors and has to do something so as to ensure that consumers gain confidence in their products. As a result this paper will also give examples of some global brands that have good qualities and give example of a global brand crisis that have occurred recently.
Factors influencing foreign consumer’s behavior
There are many factors that influence consumer’s behavior. Some of these factors are culture, subculture and personal factors. Firstly, culture which refers to the beliefs, norms, values or customs that are learned by an individual from the society they belong to influence consumer’s behavior. For example, it determines the type of food one eats as some foods are customary unacceptable, the type of clothes one wears and the type of house to live in. That is the culture will force people to buy goods and use the processes that are culturally acceptable to the whole society (Kotler & Keller, 2007, p. 32-40).Secondly, subculture which is a subdivision of culture and refers to people with similar core values from which can either be nationality, religion, racial group or geographical region also influences consumer’s behavior. For instance it influences the kind of clothes people buy, type of food they eat and the type of house they live in as some things are taboos to them. Moreover, it determines the activities people engage in the process of meeting their needs. Lastly, Personal factors also affect consumer’s behaviors. For example, a person will buy clothes and engage in recreation activities that fit their age and buy items whose personality match with their own personality. In addition, they will buy goods which they are capable of paying for. This therefore calls for market research.
Companies should carry out market research so as to know what their target customers needs. A company should hire an outside company to do research for them as this will reduce enormous costs in finding out what customers need and the outside company can provide more information than what the company could have collected by itself. In addition, the company can use that time they could have been doing research in other things that are important to the company.
Global brands
Brands refer to terms, names, symbols or combination of all which are used by companies so as to distinguish their good from those of their competitors. Some of the global brands that I believe have high quality includes; Coca Cola, Colgate, Sony. Nokia,Visa,Nivea,Gillette,Google,Nescafe,amazon.com,Yahoo,adidas,Philips,Siemens,Samsung , Microsoft, and IBM, amongst others. The global brands reflect global economy and therefore every company should work towards developing and improving their brand (Best global brands, 2009, p.1).
Global brand crisis
Toyota which is one of the biggest automobile company in Japan and the supplier of most quality vehicles in the world at low prices faced a crisis.It was argued that some of their parts were not of good quality e.g. the radiators were said to accelerate so much. This made them loose a good number of customers. The crisis was not managed well because the whole bad picture came to the public as problem was not managed in good time. In addition the company did not show their responsibility as they kept on blaming others nor did how they intend to solve the problem in future. Moreover they did not address the problem to the public.
Implications
Learning factors that affects consumer’s behavior have made the companies improve their marketing strategies, For example, after companies knew that people get the information about food when they are hungry have made the advertisement of snacks to be made in the evenings. In addition, the companies have been able to identify their consumers and reschedule the manufacture and supply of goods towards their consumer’s needs. For instance knowing that it is a taboo for Muslims to take pork has made the company not to take pork to Muslim community. Moreover the companies have been able to know their weaknesses and strengths by carrying out market research and this has enabled the company to grow by working on their weaknesses.
Issue of global brands have made many companies work hard towards creating a good image of their products by trying to improve its quality create satisfaction of their consumers. This is because when people have confidence in a certain brand no matter how many competitors are they will always go for that good. On the other hand, the issues of crisis that have faced certain companies have taught other companies many lessons. For example, to be always prepared on how to handle the crisis by developing mechanisms of solving the problem and solve it in good time so that the good image of their brand can remain.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is important for the companies to carry out market research for them to know what their customers need and what affect their purchasing power. In addition, the company should be aware of the crisis that is likely to arise in their company and be prepared on how to solve them. Moreover, every company should work towards creating a good image of their brand.
Reference List
- Best Global Brands. (2009).
- Kotler, P., &Ketler, K. L. (2007).A frame work for Marketing Management.3rd Ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.