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Top1. Introduction
Empirical studies on consumer behavior have been increasing over the past few years (Anisimova, 2016; Domina, Lee, & MacGillivray, 2012; Park & Kim, 2003; Wagner, Schramm-Klein, & Steinmann, 2020; Yang, 2007). Consumer behavior emphasizes on how consumers form their purchase decisions as a results of spending their time, money, and effort to obtain certain products or services (Schiffman & Kanuk, 2007). By understanding consumers’ behaviors and their purchase decision process, organization tend to have better ideas about how to design effective marketing programs that would appeal to the target market and deliver superior customer value better than competitors. In today’s business environment which has highly become competitive and challenging, retailers need to thoroughly identify and forecast how different types of consumers behave in searching for and buying desired products and services to fulfill their needs and wants (Hanaysha, 2018; Kim, Kim, & Lennon, 2018). Consequently, in order to build a competitive advantage in the marketplace, it requires marketers to strategize themselves to create a distinct image in consumers’ minds towards their brands which can exert a strong influence on consumer behaviour (Galli, 2018; Oghazi, Karlsson, Hellström, & Hjort, 2018; Shamsher, 2016).
The process of consumers’ decision making represents the phases in which consumers go through for reaching at purchase decisions. Marketers should put emphasis on the whole purchasing process rather than concentrating only on the ultimate purchase decision (Basil, Etuk, & Ebitu, 2013). Consumer buying behavior is multifaceted because there are several elements that correlate with the decision to form a purchase (Peterson & Merino, 2003). Occasionally, consumers spend less time on searching for buying products or services with high or low value, as their needs at certain times tend to be more important. Therefore, marketers should look for innovative strategies, offer superior services, and set marketing plans that can stimulate their consumers to purchase their products and services and increase their satisfaction (Hanaysha & Hilman, 2015; Hynes & Lo, 2006; Ibrahim, Abdallahamed, & Adam, 2018). In past literature, marketing mix was regarded as one of the important aspects that are associated with decision making and assessment. Marketing mix was defined by Kotler and Armstrong (2010) in their book as a series of marketing variables that a company can control and mix them to create a desired response from target audience.