Customers buying behaviour towards premium dog food brands

Abstract:

The purpose of this assignment is to contribute to knowledge of customers’ buying behaviour toward premium dog food by examining their brand associations and how these are shaped by using Bozita Robur as a case study.

Market for dog food has increased heavily during the last decades what made knowledge of underlying driving forces of dog food consumption crucial for dog food producers. Quite peculiar is a phenomenon of purchasing behaviour towards a product purchased but not consumed turning it into a more complex and dynamic object of study.

Introduction:

“An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought.” Pablo Picasso

Dog owners spend more and more money on something they don’t consume themselves, but instead give to their dogs. Through this study, our aim is to increase the knowledge in the area of premium dog food and investigate how customers reason when choosing what brand to purchase.

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In Sweden pet food and accessory industry has an annual turnover of ca. 3 billion Swedish kronor (Versfeld, 2005). Cat and dog food accounts for 2, 4 billion Swedish kronor, where 65% comes from grocery stores, with the rest purchased from specialty stores, veterinarians, breeders and pet hospitals. There are 729 000 dogs in Sweden, as compared to 1 256 000 cats and 283 000 horses (Manimalisrapporten, 2009). 12.8% of Swedish households own one or more dogs, with an average of 1.32 dogs per household.

Consumer decision making process:

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Decision making process (Kotler & Armstrong, 2002).

There is a general model describing the customer decision making process. This model is particularly suitable for purchasing decisions of products that require a high level of engagement from a customer (Kotler & Armstrong, 2002). For the purpose of this study, the information search area of this theory is found most relevant for answering the question on how information search in the decision making process occurs. Therefore, throughout the study, there is a purposeful focus on information search.

Need recognition:

Need recognition is described as a relationship between the following two kinds of problem states in a customer’s mind: an actual state and a desired state (Schiffman, Lazar & Hansen, 2008). The actual state concerns customers who experience a problem when a product doesn’t bring desired satisfaction, while the desired state includes customers who have a desire for something new. Thus, a need is recognized when there is a gap between a customer’s current situation and a desired state (Kotler & Armstrong 2002). Purchasing behaviour is a result of a customer’s aspiration to minimize the gap. Marketers usually use different methods to generate a large gap between these two states in the minds of customers.

Information search:

When their need is recognized, customers start to search for information to meet this need. In cases where customers‟ drive is strong, information is searched externally and more extensively (Bruner & Pozmal, 1988). On the other hand, as noted by some authors including Hupfer and Gardner (1971) and Kassarjian (1978), not all purchasing decisions involve equally the same high level of customer interest and engagement. Hence, it may not be possible to apply these theories to a larger number of decision making situations (cited in Hoyer, 1984).

At the same time, buyers also face a number of decisions on a regular basis during a certain period of time which engage constant information processing (Hoyer, 1984: Hogarth, 1981). Where such decisions take place, customers‟ attitudes will be shaped by information obtained in the past, and by their own assessment of their level of brand satisfaction in the post-purchase evaluation stage. That corresponds to the actual purchase of a product. Moreover, customer buying decisions can also be affected by the information received from various marketing channels, such as advertising or coupons. This makes it harder to apply conventional theories on buyer choice that examine ways of conducting information search (Hoyer, 1984).

Evaluating alternatives & Purchase:

The evaluation of alternatives differs largely between product categories (Kotler & Armstrong, 2002). For a better understanding in a certain product category, customers should be studied in how they evaluate it. To efficiently influence customers, knowing the evaluation process is rather helpful. Furthermore, an evoked set, alternatives a customer is familiar with and are available at the time of purchase, tends to be quite small, consisting on average between three and five brands (Schiffman et al., 2008).

Post purchase evaluation:

Finally, in the post purchase behaviour, a customer evaluates a purchase. Predominantly in a trial or a first time purchase, Schiffman (2008) explains how a customer evaluates the act compared to earlier expectations. An outcome of the evaluation is either the performance that matches expectations, that performance which exceeds expectations or that the performance below expectations. The latter two lead to satisfaction or dissatisfaction depending if the product is better than the expectation or not.

Application to case:

Every purchasing decision involves a certain process that occurs in the minds of customers. This analysis applies the findings of consumer decision making theory (Kotler and Armstrong, 2002: Solomon et al., 2002) to the purchasing decision process of the consumers in the premium dog food industry. The first stage of this process, need recognition, would arise when a consumer is unsatisfied with current offerings available on the market. For instance, it can be a situation when a product, such as a certain brand of premium dog food the customer is currently purchasing for his or her dog, does not meet the customer’s expectations leaving him or her unsatisfied. Or, in other case, the customer that is purchasing dog food is looking for a new offering on the market, which pushes him or her into trying new products and brands offered by the premium dog food industry.

When a customer wishes to meet the need recognized, he or she attempts to search for information sources that provide some level of expertise or advice on benefits of using this or that dog food brand. The dog owners in Sweden are becoming more attached to their pets the decision on choosing the proper nutrition for their peers becomes of high importance and consequently, as Bruner and Pozmal (1988) researched, it makes the information search from external sources more rigorous.

The study shows that the customers tend to discuss dog food which they choose to purchase for their pets with their friends and family that also own a dog. Yet, according to the survey customers do not often act on those advices and might therefore estimate these advices as less reliable. However, it is hard to estimate how important a purchasing decision is concerning buying a specific brand of premium dog food for a particular customer in a specialty store. Because of this, it will be noted that when a customer’s involvement is lower and when a decision on buying a dog feed is done repeatedly, such opinions of a friend or a family, could become normative factors as suggested by Hoyer (1984) and Deshpande (1982) that yet can influence purchasing decisions of such customers (Hoyer, 1984: Deshpande et al., 1982).

Since a purchasing decision on a brand of premium dog food is something done on a continual basis, a customer can be assumed to have undergone the process of purchase and consequently was either satisfied or dissatisfied with the dog food brand of choice, depending on how well the product purchased has matched or even exceeded their expectations. The factors that may affect the level of customer satisfaction can be visible improvements in a dog’s performance, visual fur quality, better appetite and higher resistance to injuries. Since customers tend to trust their own judgments, the post-purchase evaluation of a product brand occurs. If the customer that purchases a premium dog food brand is satisfied with the product and effect it has on their dog, according to Hoyer (1984), a purchased brand of dog food can become their brand of choice. The research results show that in forming a certain image with regards to premium brands an important role for Swedish customers play their own experiences with different brands or people around with long experience and satisfaction with a brand.

Brand Schemas:

According to Aaker (1991), customers use brand associations to process, organise and retrieve information in memory as well as help to ease their purchasing decisions. This processing is done through a framework called brand schemas. These schemas are important to find in order to research customer’s brand associations with premium dog food. Further, an ability to map the customer’s brand associations is essential for this study since it helps to understand customer’s purchasing decisions. Bartlett (1932) was the first psychologist of the modern era to demonstrate the importance of schematic thinking. According to Bartlett’s (1932) initial studies schematic representation is constructed through experience. Their function is to help us deal with the immense amount of stimuli made accessible. Simplified schemas are used to categorise information allowing its faster processing.

According to Taylor, Peplau & Sears (2003) a schema is a structured set of cognition. It also includes knowledge about an object, relationships among various cognitions about it and some specific examples (Taylor et al., 2003). Schemas help people process complex bodies of information by simplifying and organising them. Schemas can also help to remember details, speed up processing time, fill in gaps of knowledge and evaluate new information. Schemas can be formed about particular people, social roles, stereotypes of groups, the self or attitudes about particular objects (Eckes, 1995). The schemas about particular objects, such as brands, are of a particular interest for the purpose of this study. Stagliano and O‟Malley (2002) state that brands form a complex structure in each person’s mind, while explaining schemas.

A believe that brands are part of a structured set of cognition is further clarified by Barnham (2008), who explains that a customer’s perception of a brand is thus entirely determined by his or her experience of it, such as where they found it, how they use it, what advertising and other marketing activity they have encountered from it and the competitive set in which they place the brand. Taylor et al. (2003) claim that schemas are important because they help people process significant amounts of information swiftly and economically. Low and Lamb (2000) propose that customers have higher developed brand association structures for familiar brands than for less familiar ones. Hence, they are more likely to have multi-dimensional brand associations for familiar brands compared to less- or unfamiliar brands.

2.1.1 Expectations Another important aspect of schematic processing for a particular object, is that a related infer-

ence to the schema occurs automatically (Taylor et al., 2003). For instance, meeting a friendly person may automatically attribute other characteristics associated with friendliness, such as kindness and warmth. This automatic effect is more likely to occur if a schema involves an object which a person has strong emotional concerns about. Schemas also contain expectations for what should happen. These expectations can determine how pleasant or unpleasant people find a par

ticular situation. When experience meets expectations, a result becomes pleasant. In contrast, violations of expectations are often experienced as unpleasant. Under some circumstances, a schema of an object can change the feeling one has towards that object. Simply thinking of an object with a certain schema in mind can intensify the affect one feels for that object (Taylor et al., 2003). All advantages have accompanying disadvantages that can lead to misinformation and bias. Among the disadvantages is that people can be misled by oversimplification due to schemas (Myers,

2009).