An individual who buys products or services for personal use and not for manufacture or resale is known as a consumer. In other words, a consumer consumes the goods and services produced. A consumer is someone who can make the decision whether or not to purchase an item at the store, and someone who can be influenced by marketing and advertisements. Any time someone goes to a store and purchases a toy, shirt, beverage, or anything else, he or she is making that decision as a consumer.
Mahatma Gandhi said “a customer is the most important visitor in our premises. He said, consumers play a very important role in the survival of goods or services. He is not dependent on us, we are on him. He is not an interruption to our work; he is the purpose of it”.
The types of buyers and consumers are combined within several major categories, the consumer market and the business market. The consumer market comprised of individuals and households that purchase goods and services for personal consumption whereas the business market are organisational entities that purchase goods and services for the use in the production of other products and services or for the purpose of reselling to others at a profit.
Goods bought in the consumer market can be categorised in several ways, these include; Fast moving consumer goods (milk, sugar, ready meals etc), consumer durables (microwaves, cookers, fridges etc), soft goods (chlothes,shoes etc) and services (hairdressing,babering,dentist etc).
The consumer market is also made of the: Food and Beverage market which consists of the sub-market like market for diary product, bakery products, packaged food products, beverages etc. The Retail market which comprises of the supermarket, departmental stores, food chain outlets etc. and The Transportation Service market, this type of consumer market consists of postal services, courier and logistics services.
Consumers can be broadly categorised into two classes’ i.e. personal consumer and organisational consumer.
Personal consumer are consumers that buy goods and services for their own personal usage. This type of consumers make their own purchasing decision and consumes the product themselves. A typical example is a person or individual who walks into a shop on a sunny day to purchase a bottle water and drink it. This category is found in the consumer market
Organisational consumer is the type of consumer in the business market. This type of consumers are mostly manufacturing companies or firm, government agencies, factories etc who purchase goods and services for the production of other goods and services, or basically to run their own business. Most of the goods they purchase are raw materials to be used in producing their products.eg Fanmilk limited buys sugar, milk, flour, flavour etc to produce ice-cream for selling.
Business markets possess a smaller amount of large buyers, unlike the consumer market whose consuming traits are “more geographically concentrated”. Depending on the the type of consumer, characteristics through decision processes may differ. For instance the consumer markets behaviour is influenced by four sets of buyer characteristics namely social, cultural, personal and psychological. The business market‘s behaviour is influenced by a buying centre that displays three types of buying situations: straight rebuys, modified rebuys and new tasks.
A study entitled “ marketing to the post recession consumers,” by the marketing and research firm Decitica identified the distinct types of consumers the study reveals there are four group of consumers namely: Steadfast Frugalists, Involuntary Penny-Pinchers, Pragmatic Spenders and Apathetic Materialists
These categories were derived by analyzing the frequency, satisfaction and the self-efficacy associated with a variety of spending, purchase and consumption behaviours.
Steadfast Frugalists
Steadfast Frugalists are committed to self-restraint, engaging in prudence with unequivocal enthusiasm. They make up about one-fifth of the American consumers, representing all income and age groups. This group are the least brand loyal group hence the switch between brands.
Involuntary Penny-Pinchers are mainly made up of households with less than $50,000 income, with more women than men.
This segment take extreme care when spending money, they are reluctant to spend money unnecessarily. Also, the recession has had a heavy emotional impact on Involuntary Penny-Pinchers; they admit to being more scared, stressed and worried about the future than other groups.
Pragmatic Spenders
"Pragmatic Spenders are the most attractive group for marketers because of their higher spending power," says Dr. Val Srinivas. "While it is true that they have also curbed their spending, they are the most capable, both psychologically and financially, to wilfully resurrect their past spending patterns," he added. This group comprises twenty-nine percent of consumers.
Apathetic Materialist shows little or no interest in things around them. They are the least driven by price: only eight percent admit to being much focused on value compared to thirty percent of Pragmatic Spenders and fifty-two percent of Involuntary Penny-Pinchers.
Analysis of motorists shows that they can be divided into seven types of consumers, these are as follows:
The status seeker-for whom the car is a status seeker
The pragmatist-for whom the car is a marriage of convenience
The rationalist-to whom the car is an implement and a work tool
The design lover- for whom the car is an aesthetic project
The city bohemian- for whom the car is a trendy rebellion project
The Environmentalist- for whom the car is an ethical project
The technology enthusiast- for whom the car is a hobby project.
REFERENCERETRIEVED FROM:www.investorwords.com/2975/marketing
Dr. Val Srinivas(2009),Principal Decitica, Marketing to the Post-Recession Consumers
