Assignment:
Read the discussion questions and answers below and write a written response (at least half page, single space for each answer) by working in the textbook pdfs (see attachments labeled pg 172-178 and pg 258-259, be sure to use them as references at least once in each of your responses). If you need to see a student example (do not use this answer, this is just for reference) of a response to a discussion post by another student, see attachment that's labeled "Response Post".
Question 1:
Discuss the five stages of the Buying Decision Process by applying them to an example of a recent or important purchase that you have made as a consumer.
Question 2:
Discuss the VALSTM approach to Psychographic segmentation. Take the VALS Survey and discuss your results. Do you agree with your survey results and why/why not?
Example Student Response to Discussion Post Answer
Question 1 -
It sounds like you and your wife did a lot of homework in finding your car seat, including gathering information from various sources from personal, to commercial to public! I think in this situation though, information search via experiential sources would benefit you as well. Actually using the products that could be identified as alternatives would be a great way to gather information on what attributes are most important to you and your wife. Taking a friends child, with their permission of course, and going through a few motions you would typically do yourself, like getting the baby in the car seat, from the car seat to the stroller etc. would be a great way to evaluate each option. Just like you would test drive a car by actually being behind the wheel, I think this type of information search, and in turn, evaluation of alternatives could have greatly helped the purchase decision process.
Also, I wonder if any intervening factors came into play in the purchase decision. I know with major purchases, the factor of attitudes of others, usually will intervene for my husband, meaning his “motivation to comply with other person’s wishes” (second type of this factor from Kotler and Keller, 2016). It ends up he usually agrees with what I want! In this situation, I wouldn’t be surprised if maybe you were influenced by your wife’s preference as well, and were more likely to go with what she wants. Overall I am sure you made the right choice and will be interested to see what you think of it once it is truly in use!
Question 2 –
For your VALS results, I find it interesting that you do not completely agree with the results. I myself found my results to be quite accurate. Since of course I don’t know you well I can’t comment on whether or not I agree with yours, but maybe taking the two results and combining them might provide a better understanding. For example, with you saying you do not worry about trends, which is an Experiencer trait, it might relate to the Innovator trait of being confident to experiment and looking toward the future. You might not be worrying about the trends or actively following them, but in your actions of experimenting, you maybe are a part of starting the trend which you don’t realize. Just something to think about for how that particular result came about.