The 4 Types of Buying Behaviour
Have you ever caught yourself craving trendy shoes? Only to realise that there is nothing really special about their look a few weeks after, and you are left wondering why you even purchased them in the first place. This scenario is very similar to the four consumer buying behaviours described down below.
Generally speaking, there are different consumer buying behaviours, which can be categorised in the following:
Extended Decision-Making
Limited Decision-Making
Habitual Buying Behavior
Variety-Seeking Buying Behavior
1. Extended Decision-Making
Extended Decision-Making occurs when consumers are buying a rather expensive product.
What do you do when thinking about purchasing a designer handbag for a four-figure price? Of course, you spend some time doing in-depth research about the handbag, before making your final purchase decision. Since it is a high-end handbag, the economic risk of buying it is much higher than if you would buy an average bag.
Simply put, you would not necessarily purchase a designer fashion item on a daily basis. Therefore you spend more time evaluating the looks and the use of the product, and how you will feel about it after purchasing it. You might even ask your family and friends for advice, or read product reviews online before committing to investing.
2. Limited Decision-Making
Speaking of Limited Decision-Making, consumers are faced with limited decision making. This essentially means that there is a limiting variety or availability of this product on the market.
For example, you really fancy this pair of sunglasses with white frames and yellow-tinted lenses. However, there are only two brands out there that offer this style of sunglasses. Brand “X” offers their sunglasses for 195,-. Yes, that is a lot for a single pair of sunglasses. But the other sunglasses available, by the brand “Z”, costs 365,-, which is far more expensive than those sold by brand “X”.
Since you do not have a lot of options (and because you desperately want to own this stylish pair of sunglasses with yellow-tinted lenses), you decide to spend your money on brand “X” anyway, if you have the budget, of course (even though they are pretty expensive).
3. Habitual Buying Behavior
Habitual Buying Behaviour plays a big role in our daily routine. We do not put a lot of thought or research into buying a product that is incredibly cheap and available in masses, at the same time.
For instance, you frequently buy a new pair of socks. Either because you always misplace them or because you always end up having holes in them. What you do is, you continue buying the one pair of socks that costs the least amount of money, since you keep running out of socks. It has literally become a habit of yours.
4. Variety-Seeking Buying Behavior
You display this type of purchase behaviour when there are visible differences between a product within the existing brands. You, as a consumer, might want to try out a similar product of various brands out of curiosity.
To give you a concrete example, you may feel the urge to buy a plain, white t-shirt in slightly different designs at multiple stores. Just because you might not want to wear the exact same white t-shirt every day - you want to switch things up every now and then. The t-shirt is very affordable at all places, so buying 3 or 5 of them should not be a problem at all.
How To Cultivate A More Conscious Buying Behaviour
Many of the buying behaviours described above, are often impulsive and can easily be influenced by the media, like TV, print, radio and social media. On top of all of this, these types of purchasing decisions often come at an environmental cost. To avoid or reduce impulsive buying, it is important to be more conscious of your purchase behaviour.
Here are 3 tips on how you can become a more conscious consumer:
1. Choose quality over quantity. A product should last years, instead of a few months or even weeks, so if you have to repurchase it after only a few uses, is buying the product really worth it?
2. The cheapest price is rarely the fair one - So spend some time researching your investments, even the very small ones. Consider how a product is made, where it was made, who made it, if they were fairly paid for their work and how it impacts the environment.
3. Support conscious brands using ethical fashion certifications, like B-Corp.
Do you want to learn more about ethical fashion certifications? If so, feel free to read our blog post here: 5 Ethical Fashion Certifications You Need To Know About.
Sources
https://clootrack.com/knowledge_base/types-of-consumer-behavior//
https://zoovu.com/blog/types-buying-behavior/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/smarter-living/sustainabile-shopping-conscious-consumer.html
https://growensemble.com/conscious-consumerism/
https://www.woronstore.com/blogs/journal/5-ways-to-become-a-conscious-consumer
