Question

Section 1: Understanding Buyer Behaviour

1. Your new Marketing Director says, “I believe that people go through a deeply involved decision making process when deciding on which brand of shampoo to buy. Buyers really think about every purchase they make…”. Do you agree or disagree that with this? Explain your answer. (400 words approx.)

Answer 1

Gone are the days when shampoo marketing was basically positioned in the market as a product with medicinal value that could be used by the consumers to wash and cleanse their hair. Nowadays, the positioning of the shampoo as a Product, has shifted from mere medicinal treatment for hair and scalp to a Beauty product. Consumers wish to flaunt their strong and healthy hair, shinier and bouncy hair, thick and smooth hair, etc. A beautiful hair helps to enhance the confidence of the consumers because of the ‘feel-good factor’ that they genuinely avail from buying the product. Decision-making in this regard, has thus become more conscious on the part of such consumers. They simply don’t go about buying any cheap shampoo product without really understanding the features of the same. They expect their dandruff shampoos to give them smooth and silky hair even when the basic purpose of the dandruff shampoo remains to clear the scalp and prevent dandruff from surfacing again. They show interest in buying the shampoos that have the necessary blends of oils in it since the Consumers these days are impatient relatively to oil their hair even once a week otherwise before cleansing their hair with a shampoo. They expect they shampoos to have the power of Conditioners as well so that they don’t have to apply the conditioners separately otherwise.

With such expectation pressure of ‘an all-round’ performance by a single shampoo product, it could certainly not be agree with the above statement that buyers do not really think about every purchase that they make, regarding the shampoo. In fact, they have actually migrated from the Traditional concept of the performance of shampoo to its modern concept. Therefore, shampoo has now formed a different category altogether and basically in the lines of the beauty products, that could help the consumers boost the looks. The product placement strategy of marketing of shampoo product is hence a deliberate task and can influence the target market considerably well. Therefore the above statement does not actually go well with the modern characteristics of the consumers.