Chapter 6 : Consumer Decision Making

       One of the most important part of marketing is to understand your customers behavior and what they either want and/or need from your business. In order to do, a marketer must follow the consumer decision-making process, which consists of five steps that customers typically use or “go through” when buying services or goods. 

       First, the customer must experience recognition. After talking to an Banana Republic employee, it is evident that the company services the wants of a portion of its customers. However, the company also focuses a great deal of attention to a significant amount of consumers who enter their stores with a need. This need can be anything from a woman who just lost a significant amount of weight and is looking for a new wardrobe or a student who just graduated and is looking for a suit for his or her new job.  

       After recognizing a need or a want, consumers will then search for information about the product that they are interested in. This search for information can take or have many forms. Banana Republic focuses a lot on tapping in to an internal information search in the minds of their consumers, which is the process of recalling a past memory [about their experience with the company]. Banana Republic wants you to associate them with high quality clothes and helpful employees and hopes that good experiences in the past will draw customers back into their stores.

       Once a customer has realized his or her needs (or wants) and has decided what kind of product he or she wants, it is time to decide where and how to get it. Banana Republic has certain competitive advantages compared to its competitors such as their Reserve-In-Store online concierge service (as mentioned in Chapter 2) which its competitors don’t currently offer. This is one reason as to why Banana Republic is a leading company in the clothing business.

       Next is the actual purchase. Because of the high quality and good service that Banana Republic offers, their products tend to sell at a higher price. This leads us directly to the last step, which is post purchase behavior. Consumers want to get what they expect and they want to know what they are buying. When customers buy products at Banana Republic, they know for sure that the product is of good quality coming from a reputable business. That is how they continue to create and maintain a large customer pool.

A Banana Republic customer

Banana Republic's Spring 2014 campaign demonstrates the luxurious and sophisticated clothing the company is known for

Banana Republic's Spring 2014 campaign reaches out to the LGBT community and illustrates the company's support of gay rights (like its parent company, Gap Inc.)