Havaianas and Consumer Behavior

Consumer Behavior

Today is extremely important to study and constantly monitor consumer behavior, because with this concern, marketers and business managers can detect opportunities and threats to their businesses with the possible dissatisfaction or rejection of their customers.

In the detailed analysis of the various behaviors of consumers, you can target the best launch strategies for a product or how best to tackle the dissemination of a service, so with that, no matter the relationship that give meaning to the work of professionals of marketing, featuring the exchange between company and customer, to meet the needs of both.

WAYNE, D. Hoyer, MACINNIS, Deborah J (2008) defines consumer behavior as:

“Consumer behavior reflects the totality of consumers’ decisions with respect to the acquisition, consumption, and disposition of goods, services, activities, experiences, people, and ideas by (human) decision-making units [over time].2” (2008, p.3).

One can understand the need as a basic biological reason and desire as the way we have been taught by society to meet that need. That is, the need has existed initially. Thus, the marketing professional task is simply to recommend ways to meet the needs from their identification. The marketing does not aim to create such needs, but create awareness of its existence Solomon apud Duval 2013 (2011).

WAYNE and MACINNIS (2008) explain that the consumer behavior involves three stages:

1. Psychological core

1. Motivation, ability and opportunity: this regards to the personal relevance and risks of buying a good or service according to the knowledge and/or complexity of the information given. The decision is also influenced by time, distractions and repetition and control  of information;
2. Exposure, attention and perception: the way products or services are exposed and how to increasing attention to it through sensorial and perceptual processing.
3.  Knowing and understand: consumers access content and process in order to categorize and comprehend what is/are the best option for themselves. Consumers make associations that are helpful for them; especially; regarded to brand’s image and personality in order to categorize their preferences.
4. Attitude formation and change: when consumers are likely to devote a lot of effort to processing information, marketers can influence consumer attitudes either (1) cognitively—influencing the thoughts or beliefs they have about the offering or (2) affectively—influencing the emotional experiences consumers associate with the offering. Furthermore, marketers can try to influence consumers’ attitudes through characteristics of the source used in a persuasive communication, the type of message used, or some combination of both.
5. Memory and retrieval: consumer memory is a vast personal storehouse of knowledge about products, services, shopping excursions, and consumption experiences. In essence, memory reflects our prior knowledge. Retrieval is the process of remembering or accessing what we have stored in memory.

1. The process of making decision:

1. Problem recognition: the buying process starts when the consumer recognizes a problem or need. The consumer finds a difference between the current situation and the desired. Consumers search the environment for appropriate data for decision making. The interested consumers tend to seek more information on the type of purchase
2. Judgment and decision: based on the collected data, consumers evaluate ways to satisfy their needs and desires. The purchase decision phase is divided into three parts: identifying the choice (completion of alternatives), purchase intent (check if the budget or parameters remain attractive) and implementation of purchase (how and when to pay).
3. Post-decision process: By purchasing produce one of two results: the consumer feels satisfaction in changing the situation compared to the previous or feel dissatisfaction. To achieve customer satisfaction and the delivery of the expected value for them marketing primarily addresses the relationship between desires and needs of groups and individuals. The marketing professionals should try to arouse emotions and decision making of consumers with marketing strategies.

Now let’s discuss about the tactics used by Havaianas to increase brand awareness in the consumer’s mind through implementation of marketing techniques based on consumer behavior theory. The Brazilian company well recognized worldwide has implemented a successful internationalization of the brand exploring the Brazilian image and innovative communication to help consumers in their purchasing decision (in favor of the brand, of course).

When the consumers of flip flops recognize they need a new one, many factors are considered in the process of choosing. Some people may opt for the cheapest one; others give more attention to design, better resistance, etc… Havaianas offers a diversity of designs and colors in order to satisfy all tastes and preferences. The pictures below show the wide variety of products offered by Havaianas:

[pic 1] [pic 2]

The way in which the product is exposed is of strategic importance, and therefore custom displays have been developed, called "Havaians" (Figure below), in order to show the sandals differently and; consequently; increasing the attention for the products. These displays let the Havaianas organized by size and color. So the product had an image glamorous and therefore better quality.