need has to be backed by the capacity,
which refers to the resources, to buy the products.
Then, customers have to be willing to buy at a certain point of time.
Ability
Benevolence
Trust
Integrity
Buyer Characteristics
Buyer’s
Propensity
Outcome:
Interest
Intention
Purchase
Need
Capacity
Motivation
Willingness
Source: Ambrose, P.J. & Johnson, G.J., A trust-based model of buying behavior in electronic
retailing, 1998
Figure 2.2. Model of Buying Behavior (2)
2.3.3
Researching consumer behavior
It is important to consider some issues in researching consumer behavior. Loudon and
Bitta (1984, p55)
write, ”consumer research
may
be defined
as
the
systematic
gathering, recording, and
analyzing
of data
about
consumers”.
The main issues have
to be considered include consumer research strategies, methods of gathering consumer
information and measuring consumer characteristics.
The consumer research strategies are grouped into some categories. They may differ
according to the goal of research, the type of data used, and time frame of investigation
(Loudon & Bitta
1984, p59)
.
These categories refer to the research design (Pinsonneault &
Kraemer
1993, p79)
of consumer behavior.
Methods of gathering consumer information use two basic approaches
(Loudon &
Bitta
1984, p64)
,
that is, observation and communication. These are divided further into
observation, experiments and survey. It is a bit different from Neumann’s categories
(Neuman 2000, p33-37)
but the main ideas are similar.
How do we measure consumer characteristics? There are three measurements in
measuring consumer characteristics, that is, demographic measures, consumer activity
measures and cognitive measures
(Loudon & Bitta
1984, p64)
.
Demographic research is
 |