Customer Behavior

In the ongoing changing marketing environment, the understanding and learning to predict customer behavior is the key to a successful marketing strategy both domestically and globally (Quester., 2012). Consumer behavior refers to the behavior that customers perform in seeking, purchasing, evaluating and disposing of products and services that they expect will satisfy their needs (Shiffman and Kanuk). According to Quester., (2012), to survive in a competitive environment an organization must provide even more value to target customers than its competitors do. Many previous studies has demonstrated that the pattern of shopping behaviors of customer is likely to be influential by various aspects including personal characteristics, product specific and consumption situation (Quester., 2012). There has been a controversy regarding to whether individual difference variables or situational variables are better predictors of consumer behavior (Mattson and Dubinsky., 1987). Critical reviews of some prior research maintain that individual difference variables are inconsistently related to behavior and unreliable predictors of behavior. This report is mainly focus on the influence of situational characteristics on customer perception in purchase. Customer making decisions are driven by impulse when they conduct their shopping activities even in recession (Quester., 2012). Therefore, besides other important factors such as product characteristics and individual difference variables it is important for marketers to understand which situations influence the purchasing decision of customer and how those situational impacts used in marketing activities to market a specific product to target customers. The purpose of this report is first to discuss the situation affect the customer decision in purchase a product or service and identify the situational characteristic may influence Kate’s purchase decision. This report also integrate the concept of situational influence on customer...