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4.5 Summary

In this chapter we have learnt some of the characteristics of both consumer and business buying behaviour that are fundamental to all marketing efforts. The study of how people choose, purchase and use goods and services is neither an esoteric area of research for academics nor an optional concern of managers. It is no longer appropriate for managers to rely on gut feeling or to extrapolate from personal buying experience. Anticipating buyer behaviour in response to product, price, distribution and promotion strategies is indispensable to business success.

Since we now understand the importance of marketing information and the place of market research in contributing to that information, we can now combine them with what we have learned in this chapter about buying behaviour. However, there is one aspect to understanding the marketplace that will help us put all this information into a more useful order; namely, the segmentation of markets. This allows us to target particular consumers, and to offer our products in a way that more precisely meets their needs. We shall address these topics in the next chapter.

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