CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR MKT 1063

CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR (MKT 1063)

FACTOR INFLUENCE CONSUMER DECISION MAKING PROCESS
“SMART WATCH”

LECTURER’S NAME: ZAINAL ABIDIN BIN MUSTAPA
CLASS: DBS 3C

GROUP MEMBERS:
•HAFIZ AZHARI BIN NOORZAIFUL HISHAM (BDB2107-011)
•MUHD HAKIMI BIN ISHAK (BDB2107-094)
•MUHAMMAD AMINUDDIN BIN ZAMRI (BDB2107-015)
•MUHAMMAD AFIQ DANIAL BIN ABDUL KARIM (BDB2107-016)

Introduction

Consumers are individuals or businesses who purchase goods or services. The term is often
used to describe the hiring of commodities and services. They are individuals or other
economic entities who make use of a product or service. Additionally, they do not sell the
item that they purchased. They are the final consumers of goods and services in the
distribution system. In fact, the buyer may not always be the consumer. Toys, for example,
are used by young children, although they are purchased by their parents. As a result, in the
toy business, the buyer and customer are frequently different persons.
Marketing activities, culture, subculture, values, social standing, demography, family type,
emotions, personality traits, reasons, perception, and learning all influence consumer
decisions. These influences are linked to consumers through information search and
processing. The purpose of the interaction between marketers and consumer decision-
making is to assist marketers in analysing customer needs and wants. This is because
marketers can fix difficulties experienced by users by evaluating their needs and wants. It
also makes it easier for customers to get the items or services they want in a variety of
ways.

Consumer Decision Making refers to the
process under which consumers go through in
deciding what to purchase, including problem
recognition, information searching, evaluation
of alternatives, making the decision and post-
purchase evaluation. Each procedure is critical
in assisting customers in selecting and
purchasing the items or services they desire. As marketers, they should always keep this in
mind in order to attract more customers to buy their products or services.

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Attitude That Can Influence Consumer Decision Making Process

Attitudes influenced consumer buying behaviour. Talking about that, they are referring to any
specific consumption or marketing-related concepts such as products, product categories,
brands, services, product uses, people, or advertisements. Based on the smartwatch product
research, consumers tend to be more influenced by social factors such as family, personally
experienced, and advertisements by the media.
An example of a social factor in attitude is reference groups such as friends, family members,
and relatives. Those types of social factors are the highest in influencing the consumer
buying behaviour of the smartwatch. That is because those people who are very close to us
tend to get more information about the product (smartwatch) easily. By looking at a random
situation, Malik wants to buy a smartwatch after getting a piece of information about the
features from his friends and his family members. He got interested in the features of the
smartwatch and will make a purchase to get the advantages.
Other than that, the consumer who had a personal experience with the product (smartwatch)
is more willingness had a piece of deep information about the product (smartwatch). They
had known about the specialties of the product in a certain brand or series, for example, the
Apple brand. Apple watch had a lot of series of the product, for example, the apple watch
first generation, the apple watch series 1, and the latest is apple watch series 7. Each of the
series had different features. So, those who had a personally experienced, tend to have a lot
of information about the product and will choose which one is suited for him/her.
Next is media, it is a means of communication, the mass media such as television, and radio,
has a major influence in shaping people’s opinions and beliefs. For illustration, an
advertisement that comes from media such as radio, there are tend to give the information
about the product (smartwatch) smoothly to the listener's ear. The result is the consumer will
gain the attractiveness about the product (smartwatch) rapidly and try to seek a piece of
information about the product (smartwatch) in the details. That is because we are living in
the century of technology, so to get the information about the product only at the fingertips.

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Motivation Factors That Can Influence Consumer Decision Making Process

There are three motivation factors that can influence consumer decision making process for
a product. The first one is emotion. We can see that a customer will feel excited because
there are more features in the smartwatch rather than a regular watch that we can see in
the market. They will become attracted to try a new feature in the smartwatch. It is because
people nowadays loved to try new things especially kids and teenagers. This option leads to
free marketing so that people will start to buy and make it as a important needs for this
generation.
Next one is situation. In this era, we can see that our world has become more modern by
using many technologies. So, customer will tend to buy smartwatch because they do not
want to be left behind in this era. As example, smartwatch is used widely in the sports field
by the sportsmen because it has many features that they need such as health observation
features. Furthermore, the evolution of smartwatch has helped a lot in the daily life because
even the features in the phone are also can be access by the smartwatch such as pick up
phone calls.
The last one is personality. It is when someone have a specific personality towards himself
such as he is a person that like to follow the trends that viral on social media, so he looks
that smartwatch has becoming a trend to people in the social media. So, he decides to buy
a smartwatch for himself to follow the trend. Furthermore, he is a type of person that want
to be among the earliest people to buy the product. So, at the same time when he became
an early bird consumer, he tend to influence other people to buy the smartwatch as well as
giving a free review to them.

3

Personality Traits Can Influence Consumers Buying Behaviour

In involving the decision to buy a product, personality on the consumer is an important
matter especially for the marker to do research and experiment before producing a product.
This is because personality is one of the things that are closely related to purchasing power
in a society.

Among the influential personalities in the buying decision of a smart watch is consumer
innovation. We can relate this to the present era. these days, consumers engaged in
industries involved in technology will be more likely to buy a smartwatch than a regular
watch. This makes them to try new technologies where they can turn the watch into their
second smartphone. At the same time, among those who also tend to buy this smart watch
are also people who have busy jobs and work in a long hour within a day such as
businessmen and people who is working in the professional category. This is because it will
make this smartwatch an important device for them to work multi -tasking in their daily
routine. (Scout, 2020)

In addition, this smartwatch will also tend to be purchased to individuals who are active in
sports and involved work in the field of health. This is because most of the smartwatches
produced today have come into existence with features such as being able to detect blood
pressure, oxygen level, and being able to detect the heartbeat at all times. Even at the same
time, there are also smartwatches that have applications specifically for recreation such as
running and cycling like what have made by the collaboration of Apple and Nike did. This
makes this smartwatch worthwhile and useful compared to other watches that reach tens of
thousands of dollars. (Nguyen, 2021)

In fact, there is also a minority of people looks of this watch among those who are
influenced by the environment. Because this smartwatch is still new in society in Malaysia,
some people will buy when they see family and friends enjoy and satisfied to buy it.
Sometimes it becomes a common habit to buy a product like this smartwatch based on
recommendation from people around. For example, many studies have been conducted such
that when in a family wears a product like Apple, there is a high probability that the whole
family also will use an Apple product even a smartwatch. (Almuraqab, 2021)

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Last but not least, there is also the personality trait of a person who buys something when a
product is hot to become a trend in society. For example, a handful of people start wanting
when a plethora of ads and celebrities promote smartwatches. This makes people like this
buy for the purpose of just following current trends so that they do not seem to be left
behind with changing trends in terms of lifestyle accessories such as watches.
Overall, there are various personalities associated with the buying behaviour of a product
especially the products involved in technological advances such as smartwatches. It will be
an advantage to the marketer to produce the product and compete healthily in the
nowadays’ market.

5

Learning Factors Can Influence Consumers Buying Behaviour

At the beginning, learning can be defined as “a process that leads to change as a result of
experience and enhances the possibility for increased performance and future learning”.
(Ambrose et al., 2010). Other than that, learning is the process through which an
individual's behaviour changes because of an experience of self or others. Most of the
human behaviour is taught by experience over time. (Tutorials Point, 2022).
In marketing, consumer learning meaning is a process in which individuals or consumers
collect and analyse information about products and services and then use that information
and knowledge to make purchasing decisions and it will affect their buying behaviour. This is
the process that considers not only the present but also future related behaviour. The goal
of this article is to illustrate the relationship between learning and consumers' buying
behaviour. So, in order to identify marketing methods that are appropriate to the target
market for smart watch product, marketers need to be sensitive to internal factors such as
learning that influence consumer purchasing behaviour.
The first stage of consumer decision making process is consumer recognizes problem and
need. This can be attributed to elements in learning process which is motivation. It is
consequence of when the consumer has unfulfilled needs or desires, he feels compelled and
motivate to act in order to meet those needs and desires through the problem solving and
decision-making process. For illustrate, people who participate in sports such as running
face difficulties in tracking the time, distance, and pace of their runs. This makes it hard for
them to evaluate their performance in sports such as jogging and running. So, it will
motivate and encourage athletes or those who love sports to have a smart watch for the
purpose of knowing their performance when playing sports. The reason is, Zainal (2018)
stated that many smart watches are capable of tracking a person's fitness, such as
accurately recording a person's heart rate when exercising. So, marketers must use caution
when delivering cues, especially to consumers who have expectations based on motives.

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Next stage in consumer decision making process is information search. Consumers do
research to gain information and knowledge about the products they need. When the
consumer has identified their needs, it also will motivate them to search for information
internally or externally about smart watch product. For example, the consumer gain
information about smart watch from his experienced, commercial, non-commercial, and
public sources. In addition, learning also ongoing or takes a long period of time because
sometimes, consumer intends making the purchase in the future. So, as long as the
consumer does not purchase the smart watch, they will do research about the smart watch
and add to their knowledge of that product. Other than that, consumers can get information
about smart watches by incidental learning or without much effort. For instance, the
athletes go to a mall for the purpose of buying groceries and their diet foods but, there is a
smart watch launch event in the mall. So that athlete participated in that event because he
really had the desire to own a smart watch. As a result, he gets lot of information about the
features on smart watch product by accidently attended that event. From this, marketers for
smart watch company must do marketing communication such as advertisement in order to
educates the targeted consumer about their smart watch benefits, features, and price.
After that, the third stage of consumer decision making process is evaluate the alternative
smart watch brands in their choice set. The consumer will use all the information that has
been collected to make a comparison in terms of quality among the smart watch brands. For
illustration, after the athlete learned by watching or reading about the smart watch features,
brand, and price. He will identify which brand are more suitable in terms of quality and
features for his sporting style. So, he will include all the brand that he knows into his
consideration set. This is because, Bedford et al. (2022) show that, there is a lot of smart
watches brand with different specification. The athlete has to evaluate in detail the smart
watch brand that he wants to buy. From this, marketers need to focus on shaping positive
learning on their smart watch brand to increase the possibility of being selected for purchase
by the consumer.

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Then, the fourth stage is the buyer’s decision about which brand to purchase. (Tutorials
Point, 2022). It can be show to elements of learning which is responses. Responses element
is the consumer reaction to a drive or cues such as promotion and discount. This will lead
the athlete to decide to purchase one of the smart watch brands. Another form of response
is learning for the future purchase because the athlete decides to buy the smart watch later
for some reason such the brand of smart watch that the athlete wants to buy is out of stock.
So, the athlete will wait to buy that smart watch brand until that product available.
Marketers should hold promotions and discounts on their smart watches to ensure
consumers buy smart watches from their brand. Baker & Frazier (2022) websites show that,
a lot of smart watch brand are hold promotions and discounts on their respective smart
watches to attract consumers to buy smart watches from their brand.
Finally, the last stage of consumer decision making process is post-purchase decision which
is further action from consumer after purchase the brands. In learning, consumer behaviour
will affect as a result from their experience on the product. This is related with the element
of learning which is reinforcement. In terms of consumer learning, if that athlete gains the
satisfaction and delight from the features and quality such as the smart watch brand that he
bought are able to track his pace and distance while running accurately, it will lead to
positive reinforcement. Consequently, he will learn from his experience and would prefer to
buy other product that same brand as his smart watch brand. Oba (2019) stated that
positive reinforcement could develop brand loyalty and will increase the sales of that brand.
So, the marketer must always be sensitive to the feedback given by consumers in order to
know about the weaknesses of their product and indirectly they can improve the quality of
their product. Mertes (2019) stated that, this is the strategy that Starbuck company apply to
maintain their customer loyalty. Starbucks collect the feedback and request from their
customer to notice their weakness.

8

Perception Can Influence The Consumer Decision Making Process

Perception is an important thing that is emphasized by consumers before buying a product.
in buying a product such as a smartwatch, the thing that will be emphasized is brand
perception. Brand perception is the image of a brand in the customer's point of view before
buying a product. For example, when someone buys a smartwatch, they will take it like
evaluating another product on a particular brand. For example, when they buy a
smartwatch, they will identify whether the product is recognized and known in the market.
This makes branding the basis for measuring the quality of society. This is because when,
someone wants to buy a smart watch they will use items that are guaranteed for them to
use in the long run. This is very relevant in terms of design a choice of variations that can
be adapted in many ages to adapt technology with this style of smartwatch in their lifestyle.
(Almuraqab, 2021)
In addition, quality perception is an important thing to attract the attention of consumers in
marketing smart watches. This is because quality is a value that must be paid to the
consumer to achieve consumer satisfaction. In the smartwatch product category,
functionality and durability are things that need to be improved in parallel and in tandem.
This will allow consumers to be loyal to the products and brands produced. A quality
smartwatch must have features such as safe and have high durability or even have a low
maintenance cost to repair if there is damage. A quality smartwatch, of course, does not
require high marketing effort to remain bestselling in the market. For example, apple and
Samsung do not need to promote their smartwatch brands. This is because these two
brands are already recognized by the rest of the world when they have been producing
high-tech and high-quality smartphones for decades. (Krey et al., n.d.)

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Price perception is also a factor in buying a product. But, in buying a smartwatch the price is
not the dominant thing before the consumer tends to buy it. This is because most
consumers will acknowledge that to get this technological product consumers prefer to pay
more to get a quality smartwatch. They are willing to pay more for long -term durability
than to get cheap but poor-quality goods like smartwatch. This is because products like
these smartwatches are not frequent items to buy. In fact, it is a product that consumers
have adopted for a long time to replace their watches. Based on the price list on the
internet, smartwatch brands such as Apple, Samsung and Garmin, the price of this watch is
categorized as a product that has a moderate price that can be bought by most sections of
society. This is because this watch is sold as low as a price starting from RM 300 to RM 3000
only. However, most smartwatch buyers like these three brands are able to get good
feedback from buyers because of its price which is comparable to the quality. Indirectly, this
makes the production of this smartwatch so potential that many competitor smartphone
brands also produce their own smartwatches such as Huawei, Oppo and Xiaomi.
(Scout, 2020)

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Conclusion
To sum things up, there are two types of factors that influence consumer behaviour which is
internal factors and external factors. What is focused on this study are internal factors that
affect consumer behaviour such as personality, perception, learning, motivation, and
attitudes. These internal factors are also known as psychological influences and it would
affect how consumer such as individuals, groups, or organizations purchase, use and
disposal of goods and services.

As marketers in smartwatch company, in order to become knowledgeable about consumer
reaction on smartwatch product, they need to focus and study internal factors that affect
consumer behaviour by doing research such as surveys, focus groups, interviews,
experiments and using secondary data. This will help the marketer to determine the
consumer behaviour according to all the internal factors. As a result, the marketers will be
able to identify which marketing strategy that appropriate to market their smartwatch
product around the world and indirectly increase their target market customer efficiently.

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Recommendation

I. As a marketer for smart watch company, they need to focus on the right target
market in conveying information about smartwatches in advertisements. For
illustration, the appropriate target market for smartwatch product are the health-
conscious users. So, marketers need to highlight the health and sports related
features in the ads. The purpose is to provide efficient advertisement to attract the
right target market and indirectly increase the company's smartwatch sales.

II. Becoming a good marketer, they have to collect the reviews from the users of their
product (smartwatch). It is because, good reviews symbolize people’s trust in us,
and over 90% of people check reviews before approaching the product. Moreover, a
smartwatch is a technology device, so a customer has the right to know about the
quality and the function/features of the product (smartwatch) before they make a
purchase. By having a good review, the company will get a big chance to get more
customers in the future.

III. Besides, marketers need to increase innovation in order to remain relevant to the
current lifestyle for every walk of life. for example, marketers can contribute to
highlighting safety features that can be adapted not only to young people but
beneficial to children and the elderly. marketers can improve security features such
as increasing the quality of location tracker which can help in the event of an
emergency in this particular group. the implication is that smartwatches with high
security and quality features can increase consumer confidence which helps a brand
stay in the market.

IV. To become a good marketer, they provide longer battery health and lifetime that
suitable for user. People often use for long hours and avoid to regularly charge their
wrists. In other side, as marketer, they should promote smartwatch that require low
cost of maintenance and easily to get smartwatch. Indirectly, consumer will tend to
prefer to buy watch that less of maintenance and durable for long periods.

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References
I. Attitudes references

Social Factors affecting Consumer Behaviour. (2015). Managementstudyguide.com.
https://www.managementstudyguide.com/social-factors-affecting-consumer-behaviour.htm

Ayşen Akyüz, & Bilge Karamehmet Altuntaş. (2018, November 28). Attitude and Purchase

Intention Towards Smartwatches: An Empirical Research on the Innovative Wearable...

ResearchGate; unknown.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329245974_Attitude_and_Purchase_Intention_To

wards_Smartwatches_An_Empirical_Research_on_the_Innovative_Wearable_Technology_Fi

eld

Altuntaş, B., & Akyüz, A. (2019). Attitude and Purchase Intention Towards Smartwatches.
Advances in Business Strategy and Competitive Advantage, 41–57.
https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-7180-3.ch003

II. Motivation references

Nesbo, E. (2022, March 10). 10 Ways to Improve Your Smartwatch’s Battery Life. MUO;
MUO. https://www.makeuseof.com/ways-improve-smartwatch-battery-life/

Melpignano, D. (2014, November 5). Anno Domini 2014: the year of the smartwatch. While
this technology is not a recent invention, 2014 will be... Linkedin.com; LinkedIn.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141105150930-256382-10-ways-to-improve-customer-
experience-with-a-smartwatch

III. Personality References

Nguyen, N. T. (2021). Factors affecting the intention of purchasing the smartwatch of Nha
Trang Consumers by using extended theory of planned behavior. Science & Technology
Development Journal - Economics - Law and Management, 5(1), 1187–1199.
https://doi.org/10.32508/stdjelm.v5i1.689

Determinants that Influence Consumers’ Intention to Purchase Smart Watches in the UAE: A
Case of University Students - ASTES Journal. (2022, March 8). ASTES Journal.
https://www.astesj.com/v06/i01/p142/

Krey, N., Rauschnabel, P., Chuah, S., Nguyen, B., Hein, D., Rossmann, A., & Lade, S. (n.d.).
Smartwatches: Accessory or Tool? The Driving Force of Visibility and Usefulness. https://d-
nb.info/1114136433/34\

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IV. Learning References

Ambrose, S., Bridges, M., Dipietro, M., Lovett, M., Norman, M., & Mayer, R. (2010). 7
Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching. https://firstliteracy.org/wp-
content/uploads/2015/07/How-Learning-Works.pdf

Tutorials Point. (2022). Consumer Behavior - Learning. Tutorialspoint.com.
https://www.tutorialspoint.com/consumer_behavior/consumer_behavior_learning.htm

Tutorials Point. (2022). Consumer Behavior - Decision Making. Tutorialspoint.com.
https://www.tutorialspoint.com/consumer_behavior/consumer_behavior_decision_making.ht
m

Zainal, R. (2018, August 28). 10 Jam Pintar Yang Sesuai Dijadikan Sebagai Hadiah Buat
Pecinta Sukan. MASKULIN; Maskulin. https://www.maskulin.com.my/10-jam-pintar-yang-
sesuai-dijadikan-sebagai-hadiah-buat-pecinta-sukan/

Bedford, T., Peckham, J., & McCann, J. (2022, February 16). Best smartwatch 2022: the top
wearables you can buy today. TechRadar; TechRadar.
https://www.techradar.com/sg/news/wearables/best-smart-watches-what-s-the-best-
wearable-tech-for-you-1154074

Baker, T., & Frazier, M. (2022, May 2). The best cheap smartwatch sales and deals for May
2022. TechRadar; TechRadar. https://www.techradar.com/sg/deals/smartwatch-deals-sales-
prices

Oba, D. (2019, February 28). Is Positive Reinforcement the Secret to Customer Behavior?
The Smile.io Blog; The Smile.io Blog. https://blog.smile.io/is-positive-reinforcement-the-
secret-to-customer-behaviour/

Mertes, A. (2019, April 15). Building a Community: Why Starbucks Gets Customer Service
Right. Promotional Products Blog. https://www.qualitylogoproducts.com/blog/building-
community-starbucks-gets-customer-service-right/

V. Perception’s References

Kumar, Dr. P. K. (2017). Consumer Perception and Purchase Intention towards
Smartwatches. IOSR Journal of Business and Management, 19(01), 26–28.
https://doi.org/10.9790/487x-1901042628

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