Katherine Plyam
Busn. 3140 Consumer Behavior – Midterm Analysis
Professor Barbara Lewis
June 20th 2016
Consumer behavior is the study of the processes involved when individuals or groups
select, purchase, use, or dispose of products, services, ideas, or experiences to satisfy needs and
desires. “The big day” is commonly known as the day where two people that love each other get
married. It is the most simultaneously the happiest and most stressful day because the consumer,
the bride, must make strategic purchasing decisions in order to ensure that their “big day” is
perfect and magical. One of the biggest decisions made by the bride, is what to wear. The brides
dress is a sacred purchase that can take some bride months to find, and can change the mood and
tone of the entire wedding. The history behind the dress, the groom not seeing the brides dress
before the wedding and the surprise reveal as she walks down the aisle, puts loads of pressure on
the bride to purchase be most amazing dress she can. That being said, the decision making
process when purchasing wedding attire is more then just a simple decision of this vs. that, it’s a
decision that will influence what you will remember yourself wearing for the rest of your life.
Brides hold on to/refurbish their dresses to either be able to pass them on the their future
children, or to be able to wear them again. Wedding attire is much more then just a purchase of a
piece of clothing, it’s a investment the bride makes to create magical memories. Therefore, when
deciding what to wear for your wedding every decision the bride makes must be done
strategically.
A consumer is a person who identifies a need or desire, makes a purchase and then
disposes of the product during the three stages of the consumption process, (1) pre-purchase
issues, (2) purchase issue, and (3) post purchase issue. Stage 1, is the process of the the costumer
deciding that he/she needs a product and how they decided they need it, stage 2 describes how
stressful or pleasant the consumers experience was while purchasing the item, and stage 3
determines if the product provides pleasure of performs its intended function. Just like
friendships, our relationships with brands/items evolve over time, some resemble deep
friendships, whereas others are more exciting but short-lived, like wedding dresses. There are 4
types or relationships a person might have with a product but when it comes to wedding dresses,
the relationship between the bride and the dress is love; the dress elicits an emotional bonds of
warmth, passion, or other strong emotion. The purchasing of a wedding dress is hedonic, an
experiential need involving emotional responses or fantasies. However, the three categories
involved in the actual decision making process are cognitive, habitual, and affective. A cognitive
decision is one that processes attributes, a consumer chooses the brand that meets all the cutoffs,
but rejects the brand that fails to meet any of the cutoffs. Habitual decision making describes the
