A Theoretical Approach to the Influence of Social Class on Consumer Behavior
Q1. Explain with help for an example why is the consumer decision making process
important in determining purchase behavior?
Importance of Consumer Decision Making Process
Consumer decision-making process is important in determining purchase behavior because it
gives an insight into consumers’ brains why do they buy the things they do? how they decide to
go to the college they are attending? where do they like to shop?. Companies know that once
they do have answers to all these questions, they will have a much better chance and clear
picture to create and communicate about products that their consumers and people like them
would buy. It relies on many factors such as personal, situational, social, environmental. Once
we know our consumer completely, we can better do segmentation and target the relevant
market for the product.
Studying people’s buying habits create the base to what we can sell, how we can sell, which
social class will buy our product, which consumer segment isn’t our target market and which
factors can influence the buying decisions.
Even for small business and entrepreneurs, consumer buying behaviors have great importance
for example: by figuring out what zip codes their customers are in, a business might determine
where to locate an additional store.
Or if we take an example of the current situation of COVID 19 and changing buying behavior of
consumers we can see there is a huge shift to eCommerce online purchases rather than
purchasing from physical stores even those who never willing to do online purchase are doing
so, there are around 37% Pakistani consumers that have not yet used online home delivery
services are willing to do so now this is all due to the change in situation which influence the
buying decisions whereas those families who used to purchase daily use products in small
sachets, small quantity and small-sized packets now purchasing products in large quantity and
full-sized shampoo, oil packs, milk packs, etc.
Q2. In your own words write a short note with examples for each of the following terms:
a. Horizontal mobility
I think horizontal mobility is when there is a change in position and no change in
social class then it is horizontal mobility means the position is changing but it has
no further influence on social class.
For example: If I am switching my job of Assistant Manager position from
company A to company B for the same position that is horizontal mobility, as
same job position with the same social level.
b. Downward mobility
Downward mobility is when an individual move from one social class to the lower
one. If a person is now in better social class but when he shifts to downward
mobility he won ‘t be enjoying the perks he had before.
For example: If a person gets demoted from Executive level to the Assistant
Manager position his social class will change to the lower stage. Or if an
