Consumer Behaviour

WEEK 5 DQ 1 – CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR IN LUXURY CAR PURCHASE

INTRODUCTION

How consumers arrive at the choice of what they buy has been of great interest to marketers for a long time. Understanding this “how” is crucial to getting a first-time buyer to make repeated purchases, which is an important step to gaining competitive advantage and sustainable profitability. The AIDA model (the sequence of Awareness-Interest-Desire-Action) mirrors the consumer proposition chart described in Baines et al (2011) which involves motive development, information gathering, evaluation of alternatives and selection as well as the acquisition and re-assessment of the decision. In the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Gorman, 2010), human needs and motivations are structured in a hierarchical form such that the satisfaction of lower level of needs automatically opens up the cravings for higher needs. Cars rate high among several other high-involvement products, however, luxury car rates even higher. I believe luxury car consumption lies between the need for self-esteem and self-actualisation – where the status conferral role of the car, as against its raw functions matters. The luxury segment thrives on esteem, status and exclusivity. The need for exclusivity is innate to humans and has been exploited to great lengths by smart marketers of luxury brands. Arriving at a universal definition of luxury brand by scholars has proven to be a bit of a challenge. Although Vigneron et al (1999) asserted that the definition of “luxury brand” may be subjective and dependent on the socioeconomic classification of the person involved; our interpretation of luxury brand in the context of the DQ is the “super” luxury brands like Rolex, Bentley or Rolls Royce, Louis Vuitton and Mercedes.

INFORMATION PROCESSING PERSEPCTIVE

For a consumer to process information to buy a product presupposes that he already had a motivation and perhaps the capability to buy. The prospective buyer either searches within...