{"id":3438,"date":"2015-12-31T20:50:57","date_gmt":"2015-12-31T20:50:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.candelalearning.com\/waymakerintromarketing1xmaster\/?post_type=chapter&p=3438"},"modified":"2024-05-14T15:24:56","modified_gmt":"2024-05-14T15:24:56","slug":"reading-situational-factors","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/waymakerintromarketingxmasterfall2016\/chapter\/reading-situational-factors\/","title":{"raw":"Reading: Influences on Consumer Decisions","rendered":"Reading: Influences on Consumer Decisions"},"content":{"raw":"

What, Exactly, Influences a Purchasing Decision?<\/h2>\r\nWhile the decision-making process itself appears\u00a0quite standardized, no two people make a decision in exactly the same way. People have many beliefs and behavioral tendencies\u2014some controllable, some beyond our control. How all these factors interact with each other ensures that each of us is unique in our consumer actions and choices.\r\n\r\nAlthough it isn't feasible for marketers to react to the complex, individual profiles of every single consumer, it is possible to identify factors that tend to influence most consumers in predictable ways.\r\n\r\nThe factors that influence the consumer problem-solving process are many and complex. For example, as groups, men and women express very different needs and behaviors regarding personal-care products. Families with young children tend to make different dining-out choices than single and married people with no children. A\u00a0consumer with a lot of prior purchasing experience in a product category might approach the decision differently from someone with no experience. As marketers gain a better understanding of these influencing factors, they can draw more accurate conclusions about consumer behavior.\r\n\r\nWe can group these influencing factors into four\u00a0sets, illustrated in the figure below:\r\n