Type your email address:

Name:

When faced with a decision (a choice between two or more alternative actions or behaviors), a consumer goes through a five stage process to arrive at a optimal choice. These stages (need recognition, information search, alternative evaluation, purchase decision, and post-purchase evaluation) have been studied for many years. The question is do consumers go through these five stages any differently because of new technology.

The question to you is this. At each stage of the consumer decision making process, how can the internet have an influence?

 Need (or problem) Recognition

Consumers are alerted to some need for a product or realize a problem that could be solved by a product. This alert can come from internal as well as external sources.

Information Search

Once alerted to a need or problem, the consumer searches for information to determine those products that can solve that need and their attributes. Search is conducted internally as well as externally.

Alternative Evaluation

The consumer evaluates the alternatives giving each attribute a value and weighing some attributes greater than others. The outcome is a consideration set of possible products to purchase and eventually the choice to fulfill the need or solve the problem.

Purchase Decision

The consumer completes a transaction that purchases the product. Decisions are made about where to buy the product, when, what payment method, warranties, or to postpone the decision to purchase.

Post-purchase Evaluation

Both the product that was purchased and process used to make the decision is analyzed. The consumers expectations are matched to the perceived performance of the product and the purchase.

Be sure that you have typed an E-mail address in the field at the beginning!!