Buyer Behaviour Report

YA FANG

Nowadays the consumersbehavior becomes less predictable.However，basically，a consumers buying behavior is influenced by four major factors，cultural，social， personal and psychological factors.These factors cause consumers to develop product and brand preferences.Hence， here the personal factor will be discussed more details in the report，especially age.The purpose of this report is to analyse and evaluate buying behavior go through when purchasing convenience foods in supermarkets.The objective is to compare the differences of shopping results between the two Chinese female people in two weeks.One is a student who studies in Lancaster University；the other one is teacher who works at Oxford College.

As can be seen from the diary，a young girl goes for shopping five times in two weeks. Compared with the teacher，she goes for shopping four times in Tesco.But the young girl does not shop at a particular supermarket，once in Marks& Spencer，once in Asda and three times in Sainsburys.In addition，a young girl normally shops in the afternoon or evening.By contrast， a teacher goes shopping in the morning or evening. Moreover，from receipts，it can be seen that a young girl buys more convenience foods than a teacher，such as MLK biscuit， Salad Onions，Instant Noodles，Rice Noodles，JS quick SPAG，Toffee yogurt and CKD MT& Bacon.On the other hand， from receipts of the teacher，she buys most things for her own cooking，such as fresh vegetables： Chinese leaf，spinach，tomatoes，Spanish onion；meat：fresh chicken wings，pork steaks and pork ribs and eggs；fresh fruits：conference pear and bananas.

Besides data from both receipts，we find some problems with the data.Firstly，the data was collected just for two weeks.It only shows that peoples short time decision when purchasing.Sometimes people do make the buying decision in rush.For example，there is one possible situation；a young girl buys milk biscuit which seen in the receipts.She might be hungry at that moment，so she went to the shop and buy that kind of food. Nevertheless，normally she does not like the biscuit，in order to save time or being lazy， she just buy it for that moment but not for the next week.Secondly，it may not show the true behavior of the people.Many people will change their mind in the different situation and different time period.

As mentioned problems in findings，maybe we can collect long time data to evaluate buying behavior，like two months not only two weeks.It can be found that different age of people has in common in buying decisions.In order to find out the truth of buying behavior，we may interview different people to ask specific question，such as what they buy，when they buy and why they buy.In that case，we need to research more and more people but not only two person.For this report，we are using the diary research method.Diary researches often use a personal interview to collect additional background information or about behavior and events of interest that the diary will not capture.A diary research will be a retrospective account.However，if we just let the respondents record their own diaries， when we come to analyse the data，the labour intensive work required to prepare and make sense of the data may very difficult.Just image that 50 respondents give at least 30 different answers and their format are different.This makes the data become unrealistic to analyse.In addition，we can choose some other researching methods. One of the qualitative research methods is observation.Observation is the one way to gain an accurate picture of the behavior of interest.Without observation， we cannot tell exactly what the responses from the consumers.Sometimes we may think of a reaction of a particular action，we may think that it is the only way that people will response，however，most of the time，after observation，different responses will be found from consumers，which the answers are always surprisingly.Another advantage is that，observation can be used to supplement and complement other research techniques.Observation method not only could be used by its own，it could also be used to support research techniques.

In this report，buying behavior has been analysed and evaluated go through when purchasing convenience foods in supermarkets.The differences of consumer buying behavior also have been compared between the two different age people in two weeks.Therefore，in todays volatile environment，it is very dynamic and changing very fast and is quite difficult to suggest the concrete framework with regarding to consumer buying behavior that is also an ever changing phenomenon.Research may only help to certain extent to the marketing executive.

References：

[1]Sheth，J.N，Mittal，B and Hewman，B，IConsumer behavior-Consumer Behavior&Beyond[J].Dryden，1999.

【作者簡介】YA FANG， School of Foreign Languages， Northwest University.