Q: How Post Purchase behaviour of a consumer can be explained?
Ans: Post-purchase behaviour engages all the consumers' activities and the experiences that follow the purchase. Typically after making a purchase consumers experience post-purchase dissonance. In other sense they regret their purchase decision. The causes for high post-purchase dissonance can be attractiveness and performance of forgone alternatives difficult purchase decision and large number of alternatives and so on.
A high level of post-purchase dissonance is disapprovingly related to the level of satisfaction the consumer draws out of product usage. While understanding post-purchase dissonance consumers become acutely aware of the marketers' communication. To decrease post- purchase dissonance consumers may sometimes even return or exchange the product.
Marketers thus can use these opportunities to reduce consumers' risk perception by way of good return/exchange policies as well as reduce their post-purchase dissonance by messages targeted at this segment of their consumers.
Consumers' retail store assortment behaviour depends on - store image despite post-purchase dissonance several consumers proceed with consumption of the product. How consumers utilize the products is an important knowledge source for marketers as they can propose better products and reach more consumers based on these consumer usage patterns.
In some cases nevertheless consumers initially utilize the product but after a period of time fail to do so. Marketers consequently shouldn't consider a product purchased as a product consumed. A non-used product is as well more likely to affect the repurchase pattern of the consumers negatively. Consumers require to dispose off the products or packaging before or during or after the use. The issue of disposal is gaining substantial importance for marketers as it directly affects the repurchase pattern of the consumers.
As more as well as more products are consumed and disposed off it is likely that repurchase will also be more. Various a time consumers can't repurchase without disposing off the product first because of space and financial constraints. Therefore many marketers especially retailers are helping consumers to dispose off their old products. This not merely gives consumers a reason to repurchase but as well increases marketers' sales. The disposal alternatives the consumers have are - keep the product temporarily dispose off or permanently dispose off.
Product use or consumption is followed by its evaluation which may then lead to satisfaction (perceived performance > minimum desired expectations) non-satisfaction (perceived performance = minimum desired expectations) or dissatisfaction (perceived performance < minimum desired expectations). Consumer dissatisfaction may perhaps result in complaint behaviour. Consumers may perhaps choose to take action against the marketer/service provider by returning the product, way of warning friends, boycotting and complaining to the marketer, complaining to the relevant government/nongovernment bodies, brand switching and/or taking legal action against marketers/service provider.
Marketers must try to use consumer complaints as a way of assessing their performance as perceived by their consumers and must use this opportunity to delight them by showing their commitment to consumer service. Many marketers are vigorously seeking consumer feedback to improve their products and service quality with a view to retaining their existing consumers and attracting new ones. They have recognized consumer retention as a major concern as research has shown that even satisfied consumers can't be termed as loyalists and frequently switch to competing brands to get a better deal.
Marketers therefore have identified the quality of product and service as the parameter to evaluate consumers' intention to repurchase in its place of their level of satisfaction. Merely totally satisfied and committed consumers are recognized as brand loyalists. Brand loyal consumers not merely spread positive word-of-mouth for the brand but are as well less likely to switch to other brands. Marketers are more and more indulging in loyalty marketing to increase consumer retention with various schemes and discount offers for their high value regular consumers.
Nevertheless many observers believe that these kinds of tactics otherwise implemented properly can fail to deliver what they initially promised resulting in frustrated consumers. Others as well believe that marketers should classify their consumers on the basis of their satisfaction thresholds and then treat each group differently.