STUDENTS' CORNER - 160

Since there is mutual confidence, the relationship buyer is always friendly.

Let us look into some more types of customers.

Price Buyers, a kind of customers, focus on only price; they want to buy a product at the lowest price. They are least influenced by the vociferous ads that proclaim values of the products compared with other products. For them, the only value is money they spend on the product. The budget decides for them. Of course marketing personnel might feel enraged in a way because for these price buyers, their efforts to distinguish the product on real value-addition are not considered at all by them.

An impulsive customer is one who has no plans of purchase in advance. Emotions possibly rule over their act of purchase and there is no guarantee that they will repeat the impulsive purchase. If the same product is bought again, the act ceases to be impulsive.

The purchase of the impulsive customer can range from a simple chocolate to some expensive four wheelers. For him, neither the budget nor any specific product matters except what his feelings drive him on the spur of the moment towards a purchase.

Relationship Buyers do not attach much importance to what is commonly called ‘shopping game’ a game in which the seller wants to sell the product with as much profit as possible and the buyer tries to get the product as cheaply as possible. In the transaction what matters ultimately money spent on the product.

Relationship Buyers want to build a sort of relationship which is dependable and trustworthy; they are convinced that the sellers are not taking any deceptive efforts to extract money in the name of profit; with the result, the question of bargain does not arise; between them, there is no win or lose game; on the other hand, it is a sort of win-win game. The greatest value of this game for marketing is the relationship buyers will be almost constantly repeat customer. They will not become exit-customers unless their faith in the seller becomes rather weak and questionable.

We will deal with two more kinds of customers in our next session: Discount Customer and Loyal Customer.