What goes into the decision making process when buying a product? If you want to a theoretical answer to those questions, I suggest you go and open up a first-year marketing textbook. However, if you want to know how it becomes relevant in real life, continue on and read my story.

Once upon a time, there was a village called Moneyville, and in this town there was a café that everyone loved called SizzleBoil. There was nothing special with this café, but it was a nice and cosy place to relax. Also, in this town was a car dealer which everyone loved more than SizzleBoil called Vroom. Everyone adored and fawned over the shiny Vroom cars. The advertising was dazzling, and owning a Vroom car became the ultimate dream of every villager. In fact every retired villager had a Vroom car, because they worked and saved their entire lives in order to buy one on retirement.   

One day, the stock market crashed, and the economy went on a downturn spiral. However, the café was relatively unaffected, while the Vroom car dealer was unable to make any more meaningful sales. How could this be?

The solution lies in the examination of the buyer decision process:

All the villagers recognised a need. In the case of coffee, it was an internal need which rose high enough to become a drive (ie the need for the caffeine kick of the day). On the other hand, car sales came as a result of external stimuli – adverstising and discussion with other villagers.

Once the need was acknowledged, the villagers wanted more information before they bought the product. Therefore, they embarked on an information search. Because coffee was cheaper than Vroom cars, consumers were able to use experiential sources – by using, examining and handling the product. (in this situation it would be drinking the coffee). As for consumers of the Vroom cars, they were able to consult personal sources that legitimised the car brand, as well as commercial sources from the mass advertising.

However, the recent retirees who wanted to buy a Vroom car were hit by two factors that came between purchase intention and purchase decision. Firstly, the GFC was an unexpected situational factor. Many retirees came close to having their entire savings vaporised, so they decided to save instead. The second force was the attitude of others – especially the younger and more educated generation who urged the retirees to go on a yolo around-the-world cruise instead. Indeed, there were many inputs from older retirees too. Many were in a state of cognitive dissonance because the Vroom marketers did not delight them. The marketers had put in just enough effort to satisfy the consumer. Unfortunately for the Vroom car company, bad word of mouth spread faster than good word of mouth – and without a system to encourage customers to complain, Vroom cars got a bad reputation.

The end.