Question

Measures consumer purchases and represents the percentage of customers who follow through and buy a product . The seller information to evaluate how well they move a consumer from purchase intentions to actual purchase .

Answer 1

Consumers’ stated purchase intentions are one of the primary inputs that marketing managers use to forecast future sales and to determine how the actions they take will impact consumers’ purchasing behavior. Between 70 and 90 percent of clients of market research suppliers indicated in a study that they regularly measure and use purchaseintentions (Jamieson and Bass, 1989). To measure consumers’ intentions, these firms typically survey a sample of consumers and ask them to respond to a purchase intentions question such as, “How likely are you to purchase product x in the next y months?” on a scale with response options such as where 5=“definitely will buy,” 4=“probably will buy,” 3=“may or may not buy,” 2=“probably will not buy,” and 1= “definitely will not buy.”

While managers’ widespread use of purchase intentions measures suggests that they believe that they are good proxies for what consumers will do in the marketplace, we have long known that they are correlated with but are imperfect predictors of future consumer behavior (Namias, 1959). Consumers often have every intention of purchasing a product in a given time interval, for example, they may plan to replace their current car with a new one within the next six months, but they may fail to fulfill their intentions. This may happen because their personal circumstances changed, for example, if they lost their job, or their home required a major repair, and therefore they no longer had enough money to purchase a new car. It could also happen because of marketer-related or more general economic reasons, for example, if a desired new model car’s launch was delayed, if its quality ratings were lower than expected upon launch, or if interest rates increased. On the other hand, though the evidence shows it is less likely to happen (Sheeran, 2007), there will also be consumers, who when asked to indicate their purchase intentions, have no intention of buying a new car in the next six months, but who end up doing so. This could happen, for example, if the consumer’s current car suddenly broke down or was destroyed in a car accident, or if the consumer got a new job or a raise and decided because of those reasons to purchase a car.