An Analysis of Youth’s Behavior Towards Sports Shoes: A Multiple Case Study

Introduction

This research paper highlights the behavioral approach and viewpoint of the youth’s buying behavior towards sport shoes specially the branded shoes.Every single person has his or her own decision making process.This research aims to identify and elaborate the factors that have an impact on the buying behavior of the youth specifically when they buy.Furthermore, this research is about how the buying behavior of youth affects the market of branded sports shoes. According to Hoyer and MacInnis, 2010, the primary factors that influence the behavior of youth while purchasing are: product features, price, psycho-social influence, availability and preference.Price is one of the most important factor that consumers look for buying an affordable branded product. The identification and the evaluation of the behavioral factors of the customers is very important as it directly link to the profit generation of an organization.

Objectives of the research

• To identify the advantageous factors of studying the consumers buying behavior and their usefulness in improvement of marketing strategies
• To evaluate the whole concept of consumer’s buying behavior.
• To elucubrate the popularity of sports shoes among the youth.
• To study the satisfaction level of consumers, i.e. whether the consumer is satisfied by shoes offered by branded stores or companies or is satisfied only with the sports shoes offered by local stores.

Research Questions

1. What is the importance of a brand name in the decision making process of youth while buying a pair of sports shoes?
2. What are the methods or techniques and approaches that explain the concept of Consumer Behavior?
3. How the popularity of branded sports shoes affect the buying behavior of the youth?
4. How does the satisfaction level of the consumers vary while purchasing any branded pair of shoes or shoes from local stores?
5. How the knowledge of consumer behavior help in improving the marketing strategies of any company?
6. How to make surety of repeat purchase?

Literature Review

Consumer behavior is the study of viewpoint, attitude and decision making process of consumers while buying any product. Consumer behavior is a key successful implementation of marketing strategies. It enables a company to fulfill the need of customers and maintain a good relationship with them while having feedback from the customers (either positive or negative). According to Amin and Amin, 2013, behavior occurs on individual and organizational basis. Individual’s behavior is little easy to judge than the organizational behavior because in organization, behavior of each individual collides.

When a company got to know about the consumer’s behavior, it becomes easy for them to explain about the usage and benefits of the product and this further increases the possibility of consumption as individual’s satisfaction will effect the buying behavior of other customers. Consumer behavior not only provide knowledge about the trends of society but also helps to improve and make changes in the marketing strategies adopted by the company. In actual, consumers want maximum level of satisfaction; for them price of any product should be less for any qualitative product. Marketers are now finding more and more strategies including promotional offers so that the consumption of products can be increased. According the theory proposed by Ranjbarian, Mahmoodi and Shahin, 2010; the basic factors that can define consumer’s behavior are recognition of needs, purchase decision, post purchase decision etc. There are also varieties of factors that influence customer behavior and some of them are personal factors, social factor, cultural and psychology factor. There are also three different types of buying behavior decisions which are complex buying tendency, dissonance and variety based decision.

Methods

The tools and the techniques that a researcher adopts to provide proof and reach to the conclusion of the research topic are referred to as research methodology. To complete a research in a prescribed time period is the basic challenge for the researcher. The methods through which a researcher can collect data for the report can be primary data collection method and secondary data collection method. Probability method can be used by the researcher for sampling.

Conclusion and Recommendation

This research paper mainly focuses on the buying behavior of youth customers while purchasing or buying branded shoes. This study further reveals that the consciousness of branded shoes is generally high among youth customers. Thus, they aim to buy shoes at reasonable and affordable price. Among youngsters, influence of peers also affects the buying decision. Hence, consumer behavior strongly affects the marketing of a product and marketing strategies of any company.

Reference List

Amin, B. and Amin, P. (2013).A Conceptual Framework to Understanding Online Consumer Buying Behavior. International Journal of Online Marketing, 3(1), pp.47-63.

Hoyer, W. and MacInnis, D. (2010). Consumer behavior. Australia: South-Western Cengage Learning.

Ranjbarian, B., Mahmoodi, S. and Shahin, A. (2010).Packaging elements and consumer buying decisions. IJBIR, 4(4), p.376.

Solomon, M. (2012). Consumer behavior. Boston: Prentice Hall.