Consumer Decision Making Process

Hi everyone hope your having a lovely Monday morning, sipping back on some nice warm coffee to help kick start you into another week :) To help you get through the first day of the week I'm going to talk about how social media affects our decision making process.

 Step 1. Need Recognition
Now lets keep this basic and say we are hungry and we need to be full.

Step 2. Information Search
Here we are searching for information to satisfy our need so we start looking through our fridge or start looking for a restaurant but if the decision is becoming difficult, society often turns to social media for help with a post such as "any good restaurants in the Unley area??".

Step 3. Evaluation
This is where we rank the options that we have come up with for example I might decide to cook 2 min noodles because I don't want to drive down the road to Pasta Go Go or your friend might have posted a bad review on the corner store down the street so you think that might not be the best option.

Step 4. Decision
Now for the time to make your choice of where to satisfy your need and this can be tough with many things getting in the way of you choosing brand X or Y because suddenly your friends have seen your post and want to go to X but you were thinking of Y and now your confused between the need to socialize and your initial need of hunger and Y has a two for one special, the list goes on. What ever you do finally decide though a large percentage of the choice was in most cases in this day and age partially because of the social media influence.

Step 5. Post Purchase Evaluation
This is where we decide if what we purchased satisfied our need or in some cases didn't and you guessed it we turn to social media to either praise or shame for our experience.

With more people online now then ever it is becoming easier to find what you need and someone who as been there and reviewed it to help us with our decision.  

Well I hope this has helped you in some way to get you through a dry Monday morning, enjoy your coffee and ill see you soon yours truly Luke Henderson ;)