Consumer Behavior Towards Departmental Stores

Abstract

Consumer Behavior is defined as activities people undertake when obtaining, consuming, and disposing of products and services. Simply stated, consumer behavior has traditionally been thought of as the study of “why people buy” - with the premise that it becomes easier to develop strategies to influence consumers once a marketer knows the reason people buy specific products and brands. Consumer behavior is the study of how individual customers, groups or organizations select, buy, use, and dispose ideas, goods, and services to satisfy their needs and wants. It refers to the actions of the consumers in the marketplace and the underlying motives for those actions. Marketers expect that by understanding what causes the consumers to buy particular goods and services, they will be able to determine which products are needed in the marketplace, which are obsolete, and how best to present the goods to the consumers. The study of consumer behavior assumes that the consumers are actors in the marketplace. The per­spective of role theory assumes that consumers play various roles in the marketplace. Starting from the information provider, from the user to the payer and to the disposer, consumers play these roles in the decision process. The roles also vary in different consumption situations; for example, a mother plays the role of an influence in a child’s purchase process, whereas she plays the role of a disposer for the products consumed by the family.