situational decision making

1. Executive summary:
This report provides an analysis of situational decision-making (SDM) in marketing, the shopping process, how different situations affect buyers, the behavioral factors and the perceptual factors. The research draws attention to the fact that shopping process is a set of stages that customers intend to go through in order to satisfy their needs and wants. It will also determine how the SDM model is useful for the marketers when promoting their brand. The major finding shows that every time a consumer purchases a product or a service they show forms of buying behavior that are persuaded by many factors. Although earlier research in buyer behavior emphasized the individual and personality variables like motives, satisfaction, and predisposition (Howard and Sheth 1967), similarly Belk (1975) suggested that consumer behavior might be a function of the interaction between the individual and the situation. Situational decision-making model involves choosing an adequate course of action before making any decision; decision makers first identify the problems. Gather information, evaluate possible solutions and estimate the outcomes. These are the crucial steps in the decision-making process. The objective is to take a situation from its current circumstances and move it towards a final decision. Consumers differ as to their beliefs about what product benefits and attributes are more (or less) important and relevant in satisfying their needs. Based on their personal judgment on importance of benefits and attributes, consumers develop a set of attitudes (or preferences) toward the various brands. One may express his/her preferences of the brands in terms of ranking, probability of choice, and so forth. Understanding the shopping process helps businesses to align their sales and marketing strategy accordingly.
The ABC model helps identify the affective, behavioral and cognitive aspect of an individual while they are involved in the shopping process it helps marketers understand how the consumers think, react, behave towards a product, ad
The affective aspect deals with emotions of consumers towards any product, e.g.: launch of the new apple iPhone people line up outside stores from the day before, it shows the feeling and excitement people have towards the product. The behavioral aspect reflects intentions if they are willing to buy the product or not, e.g. when a consumer walks in a store and shows an intent to buy however is not sure completely. Then we have the cognitive aspect where the belief and attitudes of consumer towards a product, e.g. a BMW customer will always go for a BMW car and never for an Audi, because he beliefs that a BMW is his liking not an Audi.
It important from a marketers stand point to understand the ABC model and implement it to customers for sales of your product, it will not only give an idea on how to increase customer base but it gives a competitive edge over others in the market.
The SDM and ABC can be linked together from a consumers stand point and another from a marketers stand point. This report gives us a whole over view of the shopping process and how today consumers think, react and make decisions while they are shopping and what can a marketer do to attract a consumers mind or thinking to purchase a product.

2. Learning Objectives:
Shopping process involves SDM (situational decision making) and ABC (affective, behavioral, and cognitive) these process help identify from a consumers perspective as well as from a marketers perspective on how individuals react on different situations, attitudes, emotions, behavior, the main aim behind this is to understand how consumers react to different given situations and how they think.
During our session we came to the understanding that many individuals in the room had different tastes and preferences and when in a given situation to choose from one product with another some had no issues in selecting a product but others took time since they were perhaps not satisfied with the choices they had, this shows SDM how individuals react in specific situations and SDM is not universal it may differ from person to person it’s more of an emotional and psychological aspect of a person. The aim behind shopping process is to find out how a consumer buys his products and how a marketer can sell their products in line with their consumers’ needs and wants.
When talk about the ABC model it shows how affective feeling or attitude of an individual effects his her thinking about the process and here we aim to find out how it changes their thinking about, it also important to understand the demographics, market size, purchasing power all these factors determine how consumer will be in the market.
A lot of times marketers are confused on how to market their product to a particular segment in the market, through SDM and ABC we have seen a significant change in the approach of the marketers towards their customers and these are powerful tools for marketers to understand their customer’s preferences, needs, wants, thinking etc. E.g. Coke has participated in promoting people to people contact between two counties it shows how people are in two different countries and how they can’t bridge the gap between them. Through this exercise of the shopping process we have achieved extensive insight on how consumers are constantly changing and evolving and how marketers are required to keep up with the changing trends of consumers, especially with the youths since they have a different approach to the world which is not conventional in nature. It also involves low involvement and high involvement decision making on part of the consumer, however often observed that many consumers give routine responses to a product.
In conclusion we can say that through the shopping process we get an insight into how SDM and ABC work and how both consumers and marketers can capitalize on its concept.

3. Key Concepts and Values:
The team-based project has expanded our understanding of consumer decision-making process and the strategies that marketers adopt in order to influence consumers buying decision. The study of consumer behavior plays a major role in a successful marketing strategy. Situational decision-making model is the study of how a consumer thinks, feels, and selects between competing products. The decision making process stage is critical, because mostly consumers are not able to make a rational decision by evaluating the alternatives. From a marketing point of view predicting accurately consumer’s choice decision is a challenge for marketers. Consumers are confronted with purchase decisions nearly every day. Therefore, Marketers need to remain in the decision process until the final choice is made.
Further contribution of this team-based project is to evaluate the key concept, which involves understanding consumers buying behavior under different situations. To purchase products or services that satisfy consumer’s current and future needs, consumers engage themselves in a variety of decision-making processes depending on the nature of the products involved. The amount of effort, both mental and physical, that buyers use in solving problems also varies significantly. Expanding product choice has increased decision complexity that is why some decisions are more complex than others and thus it involves more effort by the consumer. After evaluating and considering the best possible options available to them, then only Consumer may make a purchase. In order to deliver this concept clearly to the students, we showed them a video of Heineken, which shows that customers makes several decisions before purchasing a particular product or service and the number of people involved in the buying decision process increases the level of complexity of the buying decision behavior. Every customer shows interest towards particular products and services. The level of interest differs from person to person. Their interest is the willingness of them to buy those products and services that satisfy needs or wants the most. Therefore, marketers need to know which people are involved in the buying decision and what role each person plays, so that marketing strategies can also be aimed at these people. (Kotler, et.al, 1994). When it comes to shopping, the consumer’s buying behavior and the subsequent purchase decision are strongly influenced by several factors such as cultural, social, personal and psychological factors. These particular factors can influence a consumer’s actions in any stage of the buying process. An understanding of the influence of these factors is essential for marketers in order to develop an appropriate marketing mixes to appeal and attract the target customer and to bring into line the brands or products that consumer would choose in a given situation.
In addition, we have identified that the behavior and attitude of consumer is often unpredictable and irrational. Their attitudes are both a complication and an advantage to a marketer. An attitude in marketing terms is defined as a general evaluation of a product or service formed over time (Solomon, 2008).
Consumer’s attitude has three major factors that affect their way of living and the choices they make. These components are represented in what is called the ABC model of attitudes: A for affective, B for behavioral and C for cognitive. The efforts spend by marketers to understand the way consumers think when buying a product plays a vital role in successful marketing. When marketers understand these particular consumer attitudes comprehensively then only they are able to direct their spending, messaging and implement efforts in order to reach consumers in the right place and at the right time because a consumer would definitely buy something, which appeals him or the most. Consequently, they must implement such strategies that are parallel with consumers’ opinion about range of products or services.

4. Structure and Process
To make it to the students more clear about the topic provided by our team, it was presented in such a creative way that everyone who participated in the activities must have easily gotten the idea of what topic was all about. How SDM model works for marketers as well as for the consumers in real life was briefly explained by us in details.
The structure of the presentation that was conducted by our team members to reflect the topic of Shopping Process and The Situational Decision Making Model was next: a brief overview of previous topics was covered that were held in lectures such consumer decision making and its stages. Then a lecture from previous weeks which is about how people build and change their attitudes towards buying a product was covered. And the last topic which was our main target in this presentation covered shopping process, three stages of it, situational decision making model with examples and, lastly, ABC strategy (affective, behavioral and cognitive).
Then an introduction about the offered topic was presented that included a short summary of entire presentation and its steps such as: explaining the shopping process with its three stages: antecedent states, purchase environment and post-purchase process. To keep the attendants interested during the presentation, first we played a video of Heineken which was about how consumers can get influenced by motivation. In this video it showed motivation to buy product (two seats chair like in football stadium) and men were motivated because they could win football tickets by buying these chairs shown in the video. Afterwards an activity was conducted that was completely based on the shopping process. The activity was all about how needs, feelings, gender and other factors can vary in the choice of purchasing any product. Certain choices were given to the participants to see and then we asked why they chose something particularly in the sheet which was distributed to every group. Participants could answer the question in three bullet points and we received many different answers but the most common were price of the product, brand, quality, design, taste which are main factors during decision making process.
Subsequently to this slide it was the SDM model that gave a detailed view of what it is all about and what are the three elements that the learning is comprised of i.e. Think, Feel and Do. This topic was first explained by given diagram for example of restaurant which showed some aspects that could influence consumers’ choice while deciding where to eat. This topic was also presented along with a video about RESE-AD - Retail Sales Expert Adventure. This video gave an audience better idea of what can affect customers choice and kept them interested in our presentation at the same time.
Till this moment SDM model was explained to students from one side which was how customers use it. After showing the second video we moved to marketers’ usage of SDM model which was shown in points in the slide and briefly explained further by our team member. After this part we had our second activity where groups of audience were asked to sell a laptop as a marketer. Lastly we moved to ABC strategy where after explaining the contents of this topic, we played a kind of emotional video about how Coca Cola used this strategy to change relationship between India and Pakistan. As the conclusion of our presentation we conducted third activity which was really interesting since it was quiet easy but none of the groups got it fully correct. In this activity we had given groups list of shops and asked them to pick one of shops which has unique thing to attract customers by actions (answer: Sacoor Brothers has got piano in their stores).

5. Reflective Learning
The session which was conducted by our group for explaining the Shopping process and the Situational Decision Making Model, gave a thorough vision of the topic. The present students get a complete knowledge of Shopping Process that how it differs and varies from different product to their prices and their quality. It also depends upon the gender; males have different choice as comparative to the females. These were some of the factors that influence shopping process but the detailed and formal three stages of shopping process are first is Antecedent State, in this stage the factors that comes are Situational Factors, Usage Contexts, Time Pressure, Mood, and Shopping Orientation. The second stage is Purchase Environment that consists of The Shopping Experience, Point-of Purchase Stimuli and Sales Interactions. Last but not the least the third stage is Post-Purchase Process, which comprises Consumer Satisfaction, Product Disposal and Alternative Markets.
These stages have a chain linked with each other; the first stage is when a consumer comes to know what he or she needs and then they evaluate the choices accordingly after choosing the products they segregate the choices on price, quality or any other features and then they buy it and the third stage is basically about post purchase evaluation that what benefit did they gained from that product, did it satisfied their needs and will they buy it again in future.
Through the presentation we had made learners comfortable with the theoretical foundations of situational decision-making model in marketing field and also facilitate the shopping process by critical and reflective understanding. By using more formal evidence based approach, the exposition of personal knowledge was encouraged. The presentation had concisely sheltered the shopping process & situational decision-making that in which sense these processes are conceptualized and how these theories mediate and framework with consumer behavior and in real life.
And our presentation also covered that how marketers uses these process models as a basis for various strategies and its value in terms of creating ‘satisfying exchanges’ such as ABC Model (3 perspectives of behavioral, affective and cognitive strategies) was linked with SDM Model and clear links were created between them by showing Coca Cola video. From this session and the way we prepared ourselves to present the topic, students learned key points of situational decision making while shopping process. This session also has taught them about this strategy being used not only by customers, but by marketers as well. In order to use the theory we provided practically, our group has found and showed some interesting videos from which students could understand theory part better. In practical part of this session we also included activities which helped audience to feel like a customer and apply the factors that affect situational decision making during such activity. They also had a chance to play role of a marketer during our next activity which helped them to recognize advantages of a product and try to sell it to customers. We tried to make theory part as short as possible and used more activities instead. Our group members tried to be more creative and interactive during this session in order to get effective outcome for ourselves and attendants of tutorial as well. In our last activity we tried to combine both customers and marketers roles in shopping process. By asking students which shop has got unique thing among all listed, we could identify how attentive they are while they are shopping as customers. As marketers we asked them to be more specific in some details that are part of the shop which help to attract more customers apart from good service and high quality of clothes.

References
Hunter, G. L. (2006). The role of anticipated emotion,desire, and intention in the relationship between image and shopping center visits. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 34(10), 709-710. doi:10.1108/09590550610691310
Shao, W. L. (2008). Decision, decisions, decisions. International Journal of Marketing Research, 50(6), 797-816.

References: Hunter, G. L. (2006). The role of anticipated emotion,desire, and intention in the relationship between image and shopping center visits. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 34(10), 709-710. doi:10.1108/09590550610691310 Shao, W. L. (2008). Decision, decisions, decisions. International Journal of Marketing Research, 50(6), 797-816.